f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\1984 Report.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1984 by George Orwell Character sketch by Jeffrey Bowerman. The two main characters in 1984 are Winston Smith and Julia. Winston has his beliefs. It is very hard to make him believe in someone else's ideas or lies. He is a little paranoid about people watching him. In the story 1984, people can be watched through TVs (telescreens). Because of this paranoia, he found a place in his apartment were he could sit without being seen. He spends much of his time sitting in this corner writing in his diary. In his diary, he writes things that could easily have him killed. Winston is a quiet person who has a few friends. He has a strong feeling about how the world is and a stronger feeling about how it should be. Here is my example from the book that shows Winston's character: "Just now I held up the fingers of my hand to you. You saw five fingers. Do you remember that?" "Yes." O'Brien held up the fingers of his left hand, with the thumb concealed. "There are five fingers there. Do you see five fingers?" "Yes." And he did see them, for a fleeting instant, before the scenery of his mind changed. He saw five fingers, and there was no deformity. Then everything was normal again, and the old fear, the hatred and the bewilderment came crowding back again. But there had been a moment - he did not know how long, thirty seconds, perhaps - of luminous certainty, when each new suggestion of O'Brien's had filled up a patch of emptiness and had become absolute truth, and when two and two could have been three as easily as five, if that were what was needed. It had faded out before O'Brien had dropped his hand; but though he could not recapture it, he could remember it, as one remembers a vivid experience at some remote period of one's life when one was in effect a different person. Earlier in that section O'Brien had tortured him into believing two plus two equals five. Julia's feelings are not nearly as strong as Winston's. She is somewhat sneaky, and she is very good at eluding The Thought Police. Julia is quiet, and she likes to think of the future and the past rather than the present. She enjoys small things that are old and simple. Julia is somewhat interested in the way the world is turning. She enjoys nature and animals. Here is my example from the book that shows Julia's character: She fell to her knees, threw open the bag and tumbled out some spanners and a screwdriver that filled the top part of it. Underneath was number of neat paper packets. The first packet that she passed to Winston had a strange and yet familiar feelings. It was filled with some kind of heavy, sand-like stuff which yielded wherever you touched it. "It isn't sugar?" he said. "Real sugar. Not saccharine, sugar. And here's a loaf of bread - proper white bread, not our bloody stuff - and a little pot of jam. And here's a tin of milk - but look! This is the one I'm really proud of. I had to wrap a bit of sacking round it, because---" But she did not have to tell him why she had wrapped it up. The smell was already filling the room, a rich hot smell which seemed like an emanation from his early childhood, but which one did occasionally meet with even now, blowing down a passage-way before a door slammed, or diffusing itself mysteriously in a crowded street, sniffed for an instant and then lost again. "It's coffee," she murmured, "real coffee." Julia had more interesting things in her bag after the coffee, this example shows her interest in old and simple things. If Winston had a flat tire, he would probably sit in his car for a while. After maybe one half hour, he would get out of the car and deal with it. When he was dealing with it, he would not think about the work very much. Winston would definitely write a lot about it in his diary. In 1984, all the dish washing is done by the cooks. If Winston had to do the dishes, he would probably not be very good at it. He would take a long time. He probably would not break very many dishes. If he had the option to use a dishwasher, he would definitely do it. Winston would probably have a few dishes that he liked using and would use only them. Before he met Julia, he would eat without much appetite and was skinny. If Winston were faced with a bully, he would react with anger. After his first reaction, he would look the person over. If he thought the person were stronger, he would become afraid and sulky. Winston would begin to tell the person that he was right, in hope of escaping pain. Winston does not like trouble; but if he has to deal with it, he does it with force. If Winston had to go grocery shopping, he would be as quick as possible. He would probably not do the best possible job, and he would probably forget things. Winston would not use any coupons or go to certain stores because they were cheaper. He would not enjoy shopping. Winston would try to get other people to do the shopping for him. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\21 For Everyone .TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 21 For Everyone? Mike Bilyeu In the United States, the legal drinking age for all 50 States and the District of Columbia is 21 years of age. The drinking age is 21 because the powers that control our government decided that when one becomes 21, one is magically transformed into a responsible person capable of handling the burden that comes with the right to consume alcohol. The drinking age is too high in this country. Why enact laws to prohibit an act that will be ignored by many of our peers? The opposition may say that the higher drinking age discourage teenagers and young adults from consuming alcohol. They say the laws that force merchants to refuse to sell alcohol to persons under 21 years of age will help stem the "problem" of underage consumption. They believe this will make it virtually impossible for people under 21 to obtain alcohol. The opposition also believes that the laws against underage consumption of alcoholic beverages will dissuade young people from drinking alcohol. The laws that prohibit merchants from selling alcohol to persons under 21 are hard to enforce. Even if they are enforced by the authorities, the establishment that breaks that law is rarely punished severely. For example, in Belmont County in Ohio, the police conducted raids of 5-10 different establishments in 1993 that had liquor licenses and reportedly to sell alcoholic beverages to minors. It was proven that each business in question had indeed been guilty of the charges. What would one suspect happen to the business? Wouldn't one expect for them to lose their liquor license? On the contrary, these businesses were given probation without so much as a fine. Also, even if the person under 21 cannot go buy the alcohol himself because he is refused by a merchant, he can find an adult and give them the money needed to purchase the alcohol and have them purchase it for them. This is especially active around college campuses, where it seems to be an accepted practice for seniors, who are generally over 21, to go and purchase the alcohol for the underage drinker. If a person did not want to go through the hassle of asking an older person, they could go someone skilled in the art of making fake ID's. This is a burgeoning business among the different campuses I visited. Spending two weeks at Ohio State, one had the offer of three different authentic looking Ohio driver's licenses. So, as one can see it is quite easy for an underage drinker to obtain alcohol. One may think that the penalties for underage drinking would be severe while in fact they are quite light unless one is unfortunate enough to be arrested for DUI. The penalty for being convicted of underage consumption is generally a slap on the wrist for offenders. They usually are required to pay court costs and attend an alcohol rehabilitation counseling session. Finally, why can other countries condone the act of consuming alcohol as a young person when it is such an "immoral" act in the United States? In many other countries it is a widely accepted practice to drink a glass of wine or other alcoholic beverage with their meal. In this way, they learn moderation. If people in the United States learned moderation at a young age, then they would be less apt to binge drink (drink just to become drunk). This would result in far fewer deaths from alcohol related causes since more people would know how to imbibe without excess. Obviously then the law is not working. Why keep a law that cannot be enforced? If the repercussions from the act of breaking the law are few and light, Why retain the law at all? The legal drinking age in the United States must be lowered now. If young people in other countries can handle the responsibility of drinking, why can't it be the same for our country? f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\A Comparison of Piaget Freud and Erikson.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The field of psychology may have grown to be respected as a science. Objectivity and the scientific method are both part of the psychologist's mode of operation. However, even the greatest of psychologists can only theorize about what makes human beings act the way they do. Absolutes are not part of psychology . Everything is relative and open to speculation. Theorists give us their views or ideas about life. In the field of psychology, there have been many different areas of interest. Human development is one of the most popular areas of interest for those who study psychology. Freud, Erikson and Piaget are all great theorists with different ideas concerning human development. Each theorist developed ideas and stages for human development. Their theories on human development had human beings passing through different stages. Each theory differed on what these stages were. These theories also differed with their respect towards paradigmatic assumptions, learning and development, and relationship towards educational practice. Freud is known as the father of psychology. Although some of his work has been dismissed, most of it still holds weight in the world of psychology. Freud believed that human development was fueled by inner forces. He believed the most powerful of all inner forces was our sexual being. Freud linked everything with sex. This includes any bodily pleasure whatsoever. Thus, when Freud discusses the sexual needs of children, they are not the same kind of sexual needs that an adult would experience. Children experienced sexual gratification in different ways. Sucking their thumbs or retaining their excrement could be seen as sexual gratification for small children. Freud also specified certain areas of our body as erogenous zones. Those areas included the mouth and genitals. This all fit in to Freud's obsession with sex. An obsession that could be linked to the era that Freud lived in. It was a very conservative period in history. Sexual feelings were often repressed. Freud's theory on human development could be labeled the psychosexual stages of development. Freud believed human beings passed through different stages in their life based on which part of their body gave them sexual gratification. Freud's psychosexual stages of development are five in total. The Oral stage takes place from birth to about one year. During this stage, a child is orally oriented. The mouth is the child's erogenous zone. Everything a child touches is put in his mouth. Freud believes children do this because it gives them pleasure. When a child sucks his thumb, it does so because it gives it gives him gratification. According to Freud, the gratification is sexual. The second stage in Freud's psychosexual development theory takes place between the ages of two and three years of age. The erogenous zone shifts location, thus moving from one stage to another. The second erogenous zone in Freud's stages of human development is the anal region. Freud believes children experience sexual gratification during bowel movements and when they withhold bowel movements. Some children may even experience pleasure handling, looking at, or thinking about their own feces. Once the Anal stage of development has been completed, the next stage of development for Freud is the Phallic Stage. This usually occurs at about three years of age. The shift in erogenous zones moves from the anal region to the genital organs. This stage is also known as the Oedipal Stage of psychosexual development. This name comes from the legendary king, Oedipus, who killed his father and married his mother. During this stage children take interest in their sexual organs. Soon they notice differences and similarities between themselves and their parents. Each sex wants to be with the parent of the other sex, for girls this is referred to as the elektra complex. Once the children realize they can not be with their mother or father, they identify with the parent of the same sex. The next stage is called the stage of Latency. This stage is characterized by a lack of change or absence of erogenous zones. After the realization that the child can not be with a parent sexually, the child shifts its attention to same-sexed relationships. Boys will shift their sexual urges and drives to something acceptable, such as sports. This is a time of relative calm. The last stage of Freud's psychosexual development is the Genital Stage. The erogenous zone returns in a very powerful way in the genital organs. This stage takes place from puberty into adulthood. This stage is marked by true sexual desire and sexual relationships. Erikson took Freud's ideas and enhanced them. He added stages for the adult years. He also shifted his attention to identity rather than sexuality. Erikson developed the psychosocial stages of development. He is known for his eight stages of life. Erikson's first stage is during infancy. It deals with trust versus mistrust. The child develops an outlook on life and whether the world can be trusted or not. The child develops trust if the parents give the child something it can rely on. The child develops a sense of optimism or pessimism during this stage. according to Erikson. The next stage in Erikson's psychosocial development is during early childhood and is known as autonomy versus shame and doubt. The child becomes autonomous and realizes he can say yes or no. This stage will determine whether or not a child develops a sense of self-certainty. Erikson's next stage takes place during the ages of three to six years. This stage is marked by initiative versus guilt. This stage is important in developing the child's sense of enterprise. The child develops initiative when trying out new things and is not scared of failing. The fourth stage of Erikson's developmental theory takes place at about six years of age and lasts till puberty. This stage deals with industry versus inferiority. The child learns skills of the culture and must deal with feelings of inferiority. Adolescence brings about the next stage for Erikson. This stage is known for identity versus identity confusion. During this stage, Erikson believes adolescents must develop a sense of self and who they are. They develop a sense of identity. The sixth stage for Erikson is known for intimacy versus isolation. This stage takes place during young adulthood. The person seeks commitments from others. If he is unsuccessful, he may take on isolation. Erikson believes this stage is important in learning love. The seventh stage for Erikson takes place during adulthood. It is marked by generativity versus stagnation. During this stage, the adult is concerned with guiding the next generation. This stage according to Erikson gives the adult a sense of caring. Erikson's last and eighth stage takes place at a mature age. Old age is marked by integrity versus despair. During this time, the person may achieve a sense of acceptance of their own life, which in turn allows for the acceptance of death. When one passes through this last stage, Erikson believes that a person has achieved wisdom. Piaget also believed in developmental theory. Her stages were cognitive stages. These stages were based on what the child can do. According to Piaget a child passes through four stages in its life. Piaget was interested in the child's abilities and senses, not sexual desires like Freud was. Piaget believes the first stage of development should be a cognitive one. Her first stage is known as the sensorimotor stage. It takes place from birth to about two years of age. During this time a child learns motor meaning, object permanence, and Th. beginning of symbolic representation, also known as language. The child will change from someone who responds only through reflexes to one who can organize his activities in relation to his environment. It does this through sensory and motor activity. The next stage in Piaget's cognitive development theory is the preoperational stage. This takes place from about two to seven years of age. During this stage the child's language develops. He develops a representational system and uses symbols such as words to represent people, places, and events. From about the ages of seven to thirteen, Piaget believes children enter the concrete operational stage. They can solve problems logically. They can understand rules and form concepts. Some children become moralistic. The last stage Piaget believes is the formal operational stage. This stage takes place from about twelve years of age through adulthood. Once someone has reached this stage, one should be able to think abstractly, manipulate abstract concepts, use hypothetical reasoning, and use creative language. Someone should be able to think about the possibilities. These three theories on human development each have their own good points and bad points. One problem all theories must deal with are paradigmatic assumptions. These are ideas that the theorist has taken for granted as facts. An example is Freud's notion that women suffer from a lack of self esteem or self worth all their lives because of penis envy. Freud's assumption could have been a product of the times he lived in. It was a time when women were treated as second class citizens. Today, the idea of penis envy has lost its worth. Freud's assumption that sex is the driving force behind everything could also be a product of his times. Sexual feelings were often repressed. The problem with paradigmatic assumptions is that each person grows up in a different culture and some theories don't apply to everyone. The problem with psychology remains that it is not an exact science. It is difficult to develop good paradigmatic asumptions because of that. Erikson assumes a child must learn these virtues or skills in this order. But, what if a child does not? Someone may never has a meaningful relationship, but they may develop wisdom. This would undercut Erikson's assumptions that everyone must pass through these stages in this order. Piaget also has some assumptions in her theory. A man who never learns to add, may be able to think hypothetically. These mistakes only show that psychology still has its flaws. Each of these theories has some value because they are not totally wrong. These theories have withstood criticism and are some of the best. Each theory is similar in its time table and sequence of life events. Where they differ is in their focus. Freud focuses on sex, Erikson focuses on the self and social orientation, and Piaget focuses on the child's ability and senses. Each theory is also useful when applied to its relationship to educational practice. Each theory guides a teacher in trying to understan f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\A Continuous Decline in India Without Modernization.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ A Continuous Decline in India, Without Modernization Hypothesis: Modernization is the Key to economic growth for India. If modernization occurs, then the economic status of India will increase tremendously, even if the price India has to pay is a change in culture, and tradition. India has remained financially stagnant since its beginnings. One may argue that non-modernization has plagued this sub-continent in economic growth and development since early times. One may continue to argue that if modernization occurs, India will achieve in many different ways, including economically, socially, and nationally. In order for modernization to occur, India must move from small scale industrialization to large scale industrialization. If this occurs India will become much more financially sound and achieve a higher status in the world. Modernization will bring many positive change to India, but people may argue that "modernization" will bring destruction to the Indian civilization. By bringing modernization, many jobs will be taken over by machines. Unfortunately, this process will result in the elimination of jobs done by local peasants. There are many additional prices India will have to pay to be able to modernize, including: (1) a loss of culture and tradition; (2) probable religious conflicts; (3) loss of caste; (4) social divisions; and, of course (5) TAXES. With modernization, taxes will definitely increase for India to pay for the new advances in industry and technology. Taxes are the primary means for any government to raise money and support its programs. However, the overall price that India will have to pay will be relatively small compared to the positive changes modernization will bring. When India became independent its leaders recognized the urgency of strengthening the Indian economy. The leaders of new India were determined to raise the standard of living, which was among the lowest of the major nations in the world. Indian leaders agreed to establish a "mixed economy," which combines the use of private capital and public in he development of industry, mining and farming. If modernization occurs there will be change from traditional order. The model of change assumes: (1) a sharp dichotomy between the traditional and modern order, including the order of mutual exclusiveness, and (2) the change from one to another is predicted in terms of a historically deterministic pattern, that is, it must take place in a certain predetermined sequence. If this happens, India will have a better economy and a higher standard of living. Through greater economic prosperity, India will also obtain better health care. Also industry will promote a better education system by encouraging students to study for more technical and professional jobs. Finally modernization will foster a better sense of nationalism, as future generations become healthier, stronger, and more prosperous. Today, there are many Indians without jobs or work. Currently the vast majority of jobs are done by villagers, limiting the number and types of jobs that can be performed. Specifically, without a coordinated system the only jobs that can be performed are simple ones that can be completed by a relatively few individuals. No technologically advanced jobs can be performed or created in this type of system. Modernization will bring factories that will produce many jobs - more than any village can produce. In addition, factories will allow for the manufacture of new products not possible for village workers to produce by themselves. As mentioned previously, one of the by-products of modernization is advances in health care. Presently, the life expectancy in India is placed at a low 58, for females, and 57 for males. This is compared to the United States where the life expectancy is 79 for females, and 72 for males. If modernization occurred life expectancy should raise considerably. Similarly, the literacy rate of India can be expected to dramatically improve with the advent of modernization. Presently, the literacy rate in India is 41 percent, relative to a 96 percent rate for the United States. Again, it is expected that India's literacy rate will significantly rise with the introduction of modernization and greater emphasis on educational preparation. To help foster modernization foreign companies have established small businesses and technical schools in India to help villagers understand how modernization can help improve their lives. Certainly economic success, expressed as better pay and better living conditions, is an appealing feature of modernization. Despite the allure of high wages and good pension plans, the modernization of the village as a whole can not take place without strong modification of its social structure. Traditional small communities seem to rely upon "total cooperation and consensus in getting things done, whereas urban-influenced communities rely on public spiritedness, partial cooperationness, and a absence of strong disagreement." The success of this transformation will require the involvement of the villagers and their active participation in the modernization process. India faces the decision of remaining a small scale industrial society or stepping toward the furture by modernizing and developing advanced technological opportunities for its population. Without modernization India will never be able to excel as a nation and its citizens will continue to dwell in poverty. Critics of modernization may argue that this process will destroy Indian society and culture. On the contrary, modernization will save the Indian soceity and allow this proud country to prosper. Bibliography Clark, J. I. India. McDougal, Littell & Co., Evanston, Illinois, 1989. Ishwaran, K., Change and Continuity in India's Villages. New York: Columbia University Press, 1970. Shady Side Academy. Historical Perspectives, undated. The Software Toolworks Multimedia Encyclopedia. "India." Grolier Electronic Publishing, Inc., 1992. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\A Critique on the Impact of Advertising in our Society.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Advertising Critique A critique on the impact of advertising in our society. Consider visuals and verbal or written language. (1000 words) The impact of advertising on our society is a fiercely debated topic, and has been ever since the conception of advertising in its most basic form. There are negative and positive social and economic impacts upon society from advertising in its various forms. For instance, advertising promoting public welfare has a positive social impact upon society, whereas advertising portraying women as sex objects has negative social impacts. There are also positive economic impacts on society such as providing funding for the media and stimulating an active, competitive economy. There are a number of proven ways to persuade the consumer that he or she needs the product being advertised. These methods of persuasion, instead of concentrating on the actual product, usually concentrate on the benefits that will be brought to the consumer. These benefits may include the hope of more money and better jobs, popularity and personal prestige, praise from others, more comfort, social advancement, improved appearance, or better health. For example, an automobile advertisement, as well as mentioning the mechanical attributes of the car, would most likely focus on the excitement, prestige and social advancement it may bring the buyer. This social advancement is very often sexual, or involving attraction of the other sex- so the car advertisement may also mention the glamorous women/men that the consumer will attract with his/her fancy car. Advertising has been blamed for a great variety of negative social impacts. One of the major criticisms received by advertising is that it forces people to buy things they don't really need, often by projecting negative emotions such as fear, anxiety or guilt upon the consumer. It is claimed that advertising plays with our basic human emotions and takes advantage of them, using them as merely another technique to sell goods or services. Advertising also encourages people to buy products by making them think that purchasing and consuming are the major activities of their lives. It is said to also evoke fears of inferiority upon the consumer by depicting the 'normal' person as young, attractive, wealthy and successful. This may encourage a person to act on his or her desire for success and, for instance, go out and purchase that particular brand of make-up or deodorant hoping to emulate the seeming success of the person depicted in the advertisement. In opposition, advertisers state that the public is intelligent enough to, and quite capable of, making up its own mind and will definitely not buy anything they don't want or need. People are not inclined to be swayed by false claims that they need a particular product, and will usually be very discriminating in what they take as being true, when it comes to advertising. In fact, advertisers would say that there are many positive social impacts on our society from advertising. Advertising can be used to increase awareness in society about particular issues, and in so doing, becomes a form of education. Anti drug advertising such as "It's OK to say NO", and drink driving campaigns are just two examples of how society uses the advertising industry as a means to promote public welfare. Other forms of socially positive advertising include those advocating safe sex, thereby considerably slowing the spread of deadly STDs throughout the community. As well as social benefits outlined in the previous paragraph, there are economic benefits experienced by society, as a result of advertising. Without advertising, the media, including newspaper, television, radio, etc, would be much less vigorous. Advertising provides revenue for commercial mediums which would otherwise need to be funded by the actual consumer of these mediums. For example, a newspaper would cost up to three times as much money (since advertising provides two thirds of the revenue of the print media), or all television, bar government funded networks, would be pay-TV (since nearly ALL revenue for television is provided by advertising, while the consumer provides no financial support except for providing the service of watching the advertising messages). So we can see a major economic infrastructure based around advertising, in which the big companies fund and subsidise the commercial media by way of advertising. The price a consumer may have to pay to receive very cheap, or even free news and entertainment may include sitting through a 30 second advertisement break while watching a prime-time television program, or flicking a couple of extra pages in a magazine to move through the advertisements to get to the articles. The Internet is based very heavily around advertising, and this is one of the major incentives for individuals and institutions to provide content online. Advertising is so important because it is extremely difficult and impractical to attempt to bill the consumer directly. Security issues involving credit card fraud and the sheer inconvenience and hassle surrounding minor financial transactions over the Internet have made it very undesirable for companies to charge the consumer for content. Some may argue that the economic drawback of advertising in our society is that it raises the price of goods and services. The basis of this argument is that, while companies subsidise the mass media with advertising, we, the consumer, subsidise advertising by paying a grossly increased price for heavily advertised goods and services. For instance, a box of Omo washing powder costs around two or three dollars to produce, but the consumer might pay around seven or eight dollars. A large proportion of the difference obviously supports the heavy advertising television and print media campaigns. In response to this argument, it can be said that advertising stimulates a much more active economy, with vigorous competition between institutions, and higher buying rates of products which leads to lower product costs for the consumer anyway. The effects upon society brought about by advertising come in mixed forms, depending on the purpose and execution of various campaigns. However, society as we know it is based very heavily upon advertising, and the negative social and economic impacts are not serious enough to outweigh the many positive social and economic effects on our society. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\A hands on guid to Ancient china.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ China An essay on ancient China can be educational but also very fun and interesting. China differs from other culteres by its wide range of topics such as government, religion, and its ethics...... I hope you find this essay very informative and the info. not to be wrong. Geography has always played a important role in Chinas history. Beca- use of Chinas enormous size it has always been hard to conquer and even harder to unite. China is split into three parts by three river vallies, the Haung, the Chang, and the Xia. Because of heavy rainfall. Major flooding took place all the time and in reaction to this the floods would wash away good soil used for farming It would also wash away cities, and villages with records and stuff like that. Most of the rest of China is covered with mountains or is very dry and hilly, and on the northwest border of China there is a huge, cold desert called the Gobi. Because of this, the north-west part of China was extre- mely less populated. Alot of the features of China have kept itself isolated so they have really evulutioned all by itself without much outeside activity. Chinas history did not really have (or mention) leaders, it really just mentioned dynesties. Chinas had three dynasties. The first of which was the Xia (2,000 b.c. to 1,500 b.c.) except for ancient legions one really doesn't know much about the Xia rulers. In 1,500 b.c. the Xia rulers were overthrown and the Shang dynasty came into focus and into place. During the Shang dynasty, Chinese artists were busy making beautiful art figures, religious stuff, and were making weapons out of bronze. Eventhough the Shang dynasty lasted for several hundred years most of the rulers were extremely viscious and had fun playing games of tort- ure. The nobles lived very rich lives and were treated very good in contrast to the peasents who were extravigatingly poor and were spit upon as if they were the scum of the earth even though the rich folk couldn't get along in life without the peasents because the peasents provided their food. They rulers of the Shang dynasty were so cruel that they would not only sacrifice animals for religious sarimonies they would also have humans sacrificed. Because of the way people were treated the chinese drove the Shangs out. After that the Wu Wang dynasty came into play at around 1100-256 b.c. It lasted longer than any other dynesty in the history of china. The Wu Wang dynast grew to have land from the eastcoast and from the Chang river in the south. China is a humoungis country stretching for over 1,800 miles from the mountains and ice in Tubet. In the west trough lots of trees and deaserts to the coastline in the east. Chinese root first started at the mouth of the Yellow river in the midle of the country where the soil is a rich, yellowish earth named Loess. Peasents almost allways provided the food for the entire Chineze empire. Usually there wasn't enough food for the entire so great famines were not totally unusual (some times the peasents even rebelled against their rich owners. Rich people had a pretty cool diet it ranged from ox to bears and bird soup to dog meet. Some times at great feasts their would even be over 300 meals to choose from. While rich people had a "exciting" diet peasents had often not even enough food to survive. Their "diet" usualy consisted of only vegetables and rice. People up in the north usually ate alot of cereal but in the south they usually ate rice, nuddles, bread, and bean churd. Most of the time the Chinese ate food out of small bowles and used chop sticks as eating utenciles. Rich and poor people of China wore totally differint clothes. The poor folk of China wore baggy hemp trousers and a loose shirt underneith and for shoes they wove together straw. While rich men and women wore robes of silk tied together tied at the waist with a large slash at the top of the robe. The front of the womens robe opened a little to reveal a differ- ent colored undershirt made of silk slippers with wooden shoes on their feet. So as I have shown U a report on China can be ver fun and interesting. China An essay on ancient China can be educational but also very fun and interesting. China differs from other culteres by its wide range of topics such as government, religion, and its ethics...... I hope you find this essay very informative and the info. not to be wrong. Geography has always played a important role in Chinas history. Beca- use of Chinas enormous size it has always been hard to conquer and even harder to unite. China is split into three parts by three river vallies, the Haung, the Chang, and the Xia. Because of heavy rainfall. Major flooding took place all the time and in reaction to this the floods would wash away good soil used for farming It would also wash away cities, and villages with records and stuff like that. Most of the rest of China is covered with mountains or is very dry and hilly, and on the northwest border of China there is a huge, cold desert called the Gobi. Because of this, the north-west part of China was extre- mely less populated. Alot of the features of China have kept itself isolated so they have really evulutioned all by itself without much outeside activity. Chinas history did not really have (or mention) leaders, it really just mentioned dynesties. Chinas had three dynasties. The first of which was the Xia (2,000 b.c. to 1,500 b.c.) except for ancient legions one really doesn't know much about the Xia rulers. In 1,500 b.c. the Xia rulers were overthrown and the Shang dynasty came into focus and into place. During the Shang dynasty, Chinese artists were busy making beautiful art figures, religious stuff, and were making weapons out of bronze. Eventhough the Shang dynasty lasted for several hundred years most of the rulers were extremely viscious and had fun playing games of tort- ure. The nobles lived very rich lives and were treated very good in contrast to the peasents who were extravigatingly poor and were spit upon as if they were the scum of the earth even though the rich folk couldn't get along in life without the peasents because the peasents provided their food. They rulers of the Shang dynasty were so cruel that they would not only sacrifice animals for religious sarimonies they would also have humans sacrificed. Because of the way people were treated the chinese drove the Shangs out. After that the Wu Wang dynasty came into play at around 1100-256 b.c. It lasted longer than any other dynesty in the history of china. The Wu Wang dynast grew to have land from the eastcoast and from the Chang river in the south. China is a humoungis country stretching for over 1,800 miles from the mountains and ice in Tubet. In the west trough lots of trees and deaserts to the coastline in the east. Chinese root first started at the mouth of the Yellow river in the midle of the country where the soil is a rich, yellowish earth named Loess. Peasents almost allways provided the food for the entire Chineze empire. Usually there wasn't enough food for the entire so great famines were not totally unusual (some times the peasents even rebelled against their rich owners. Rich people had a pretty cool diet it ranged from ox to bears and bird soup to dog meet. Some times at great feasts their would even be over 300 meals to choose from. While rich people had a "exciting" diet peasents had often not even enough food to survive. Their "diet" usualy consisted of only vegetables and rice. People up in the north usually ate alot of cereal but in the south they usually ate rice, nuddles, bread, and bean churd. Most of the time the Chinese ate food out of small bowles and used chop sticks as eating utenciles. Rich and poor people of China wore totally differint clothes. The poor folk of China wore baggy hemp trousers and a loose shirt underneith and for shoes they wove together straw. While rich men and women wore robes of silk tied together tied at the waist with a large slash at the top of the robe. The front of the womens robe opened a little to reveal a differ- ent colored undershirt made of silk slippers with wooden shoes on their feet. So as I have shown U a report on China can be ver fun and interesting. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\A Look Back on the Great Depression of 1936.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ A Look Back on the Great Depression of 1936 The Great Depression was a time of tremendous poverty and depravation. It put many hard-working men and women out of their jobs and sources of income. It left many wholesome, decent, families out on the street, homeless; their pride and dignity stripped of them. Many people would be left to starve, without money to buy food or pay for shelter. Some people even turned against their own friends so that they could support their families. Many became oblivious to the needs of others and thought only of how they themselves could benefit. As the days went by, the number of people with illness and disease increased, and with little money for food or medicine to treat their needs, they had to suffer or die because they could not afford the treatment necessary for them to get better. Because of the Great Depression, the cost of many items went up to an extreme amount if money, thus, even more people could not afford simple everyday things. Though there were many factors that helped cause the Great Depression, the main cause of it was the huge stock market crash that occurred in 1929. Many people lost a lot of money when the market crashed. Herbert Clark Hoover was president at that time and many people blamed him, and were very upset about his decisions involving the economy. They dealt with their anger by not reelecting Hoover, but instead, electing Franklin Delano Roosevelt for president the next time around. He was the one who helped get the economy back in shape by creating a program called the "Big Deal." The Big Deal was a government funded program that gave jobs to the jobless, and homes to the homeless. In return for getting the economy back in shape, FDR was elected again for another term and yet another four years. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\A report on how life would be without minerals.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Life without minerals. By Rimas Simaitis First of all let's get to the point. Life without minerals would not be life. You use minerals every day. Plus you do not live without "minerals". You would not stand on ground, drink water, eat food or do anything else. Without minerals you would not be able to write reports on the computer, like I am doing now. It all began when the first humans arrived on Earth. There were no minerals. They could not walk so they just kept on falling. It was just like they were in a big black hole getting closer and closer to the edge of the universe. A few days later they they died of thirst but they just kept falling and falling and falling. That was version number one and here is version number two. It all began when the first humans arrived on Earth. They landed when they were asleep and soon woke up to a glorious place. They walked around and soon discovered that there were glorious fruit trees everywhere. Soon they stumbled on a hole made by some sort of animal. So they kept walking and soon found a spring with sparkling water spouting from it. They drank some water and went wading and soon saw that there were little silver sparkling things moving around in the water. They were mysterious little things. So they moved on and and then saw some animals. Well you basically get the point of this essay. Life just would not be life without minerals. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\A Time To Kill.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ In Cold Blood: Death Penalty Capital Punishment has been part of the criminal justice system since the earliest of times. The Babylonian Hammurabi Code(ca. 1700 B.C.) decreed death for crimes as minor as the fraudulent sale of beer(Flanders 3). Egyptians could be put to death for disclosing the location of sacred burial sites(Flanders 3). However, in recent times opponents have shown the death penalty to be racist, barbaric, and in violation with the United States Constitution as "...cruel and unusual punishment." In this country,although laws governing the application of the death penalty have undergone many changes since biblical times, the punishment endures , and controversy has never been greater. A prisoner's death wish cannot grant a right not otherwise possessed. Abolitionists maintain that the state has no right to kill anyone; . The right to reject life imprisonment and choose death should be respected, but it changes nothing for those who oppose the death at the hands of the state. The death penalty is irrational- a fact that should carry considerable weight with rationalists. As Albert Camus pointed out, " Capital punishment....has always been a religious punishment and is reconcilable with humanism." In other words, society has long since left behind the archaic and barbous" customs" from the cruel "eye for an eye" anti-human caves of religion- another factor that should raise immediate misgivings for freethinkers. State killings are morally bankrupt. Why do governments kill people to show other people that killing people is wrong? Humanity becomes associated with murderers when it replicate their deeds. Would society allow rape as the penalty for rape or the burning of arsonists' homes as the penalty for arson? The state should never have the power to murder its subjects. To give the state this power eliminates the individual's most effective shield against tyranny of the majority and is inconsistent with democratic principles. Family and friends of murder victims are further victimized by state killings. Quite a few leaders in the abolishment movement became involved specially because someone they loved was murdered. Family of victims repeatedly stated they wanted the murderer to die. One of the main reasons- in addition to justice- was they wanted all the publicity to be over. Yet. if it wasn't for the sensationalism surrounding an execution, the media exposure would not have occurred in the first place. Murderers would be quietly and safely put away for life with absolutely no possibility for parole. The death penalty violates constitutional prohibitions against cruel and unusual punishment. The grotesque killing of Robert Harris by the state of California on April 21,1992, and similar reports of witnesses to hangings and lethal injections should leave So 3 doubt that the dying process can be- and often is -grossly inhumane, regardless of method(Flanders 16). The death penalty is often used for political gain. During his presidential gain, President Clinton rushed home for the Arkansas execution of Rickey Ray Rector, a mentally retarded, indigent black man. Clinton couldn't take the chance of being seen by voters as " soft on crime." Political Analysts believe that when the death penalty becomes an issue in a campaign, the candidate favoring capital punishment almost inevitably will benefit. Capital punishment discriminates against the poor. Although murderers come from all classes, those on death row are almost without exception poor and were living in poverty at the they were arrested. The majority of death-row inmates were or are represented by court-appointed public defenders- and the state is not obligated to provide an attorney at all for appeals beyond the state level. The application of capital punishment is racist. About 40 percent of death-row inmates are black, whereas only 8 percent of the population as a whole are black(Flanders 25). In cases with white victims, black defendants were four to six times more likely to receive death sentences than white defendants who had similar criminal histories. Studies show that the chance for a death sentence is up to five to ten times greater in cases with white victims than black victims(Flanders 25). In the criminal justice system, the life of a white person is worth more than the life of a black person. The mentally retarded are victimized by the death penalty. Since 1989, when the Supreme Court upheld killing of the mentally retarded, at least four such executions have occurred. According to the Southern Center for Human Rights, at least 10 percent of death row inmates in the United States are mentally retarded(Long 79). Juveniles are subject to the death penalty. Since state execution of juveniles also became permissible in the decision cited above, at least five people who were juveniles when their crimes were committed have executed(Long 79). Innocent people can-and have been- executed. With the death penalty errors are irreversible. According to a 1987 study, 23 people who were innocent of the crimes for which they were convicted were executed between 1900 and 1985(Long 79). Until human judgement becomes infallible, this problem alone is reason enough to abolish the death penalty at the hands of the state more dedicated to vengeance than to truth and justice. Executions do not save money. There are those who cry that we, the taxpayers, shouldn't have to "support" condemned people for an entire lifetime in prison- that we should simply " eliminate" them and save ourselves time and money. The truth is that the cost of state killing is up to three times the cost of lifetime imprisonment(Long 80). Judges and others are reluctant- as they should be- to shorten the execution process for fear that hasty procedures will lead to the executions of more innocent people. The death penalty has been imposed most for murders committed during the course of another felony. Aggravating circumstances for murder are defined in the applicable death penalty statute. Circumstances considered for murder include: -The crime was particularly vile, atrocious, or cruel. -There were multiple victims. -The crime occurred during the commission of another felony. -The victim was a police or correctional officer in the line of duty. -The offender was previously convicted of a capital offense or violent crime. -The offender directed an accomplice to commit the murder or committed the murder at the direction of another person. (Flanders 12) In the novel, In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, the main characters Dick and Perry were guilty of several of the circumstances that eventually led to their demise: -The multiple victims included all four of the Clutter family. -The event occurred during an attempted robbery. -Both were former inmates and had previous dealings with the law. -Dick had chosen Perry for his instinct as a "Natural Born Killer". Further,it seems that both Dick and Perry fell almost directly under the common background of one convicted of death. The death penalty is flawed in many facets. Juries in rural counties are more likely to impose the death penalty than those in urban areas. Dick and Perry were convicted in Garden City, a small to moderate sized town. Both Dick and Perry were unemployed, poor, white criminals whose actions wrecked havoc not only on the remaining Clutter family and relatives, but on the entire town of Holcomb and surrounding areas. This only justifies and reinforces the points stated above that capital punishment is biased, racist, and is harmful not only to the offenders themselves, but to the entire community. Opposition to the death penalty finally acheived its goal when in 1972 the Supreme Court struck down death penalty laws, finding fault not with the theory, but with the method. However, all was lost when four years later, the decision was once more revised and ruled the death penalty once more legal. Death row will continue to expand. It is almost certain that the rising level of executions will be widely condemned. The future of capital punishment may finally come down to the question of expense. A single capital trial now costs millions of dollars. The enormous volume of continuing appeals strain both federal and state court systems. Unless workable solutions are found to the practical difficulties involved in the administration of the death penalty. American society eventually may decide to significantly restrict or even abandon capital punishment. So 7 Works Cited Flanders, Stephen A. Capital Punishment. New York, NY: Facts on File, 1991. Long, Robert Emmet. Criminal Sentencing. New York, NY: H.W. Company, 1995. In Cold Blood: Death Penalty Capital Punishment has been part of the criminal justice system since the earliest of times. The Babylonian Hammurabi Code(ca. 1700 B.C.) decreed death for crimes as minor as the fraudulent sale of beer(Flanders 3). Egyptians could be put to death for disclosing the location of sacred burial sites(Flanders 3). However, in recent times opponents have shown the death penalty to be racist, barbaric, and in violation with the United States Constitution as "...cruel and unusual punishment." In this country,although laws governing the application of the death penalty have undergone many changes since biblical times, the punishment endures , and controversy has never been greater. A prisoner's death wish cannot grant a right not otherwise possessed. Abolitionists maintain that the state has no right to kill anyone; . The right to reject life imprisonment and choose death should be respected, but it changes nothing for those who oppose the death at the hands of the state. The death penalty is irrational- a fact that should carry considerable weight with rationalists. As Albert Camus pointed out, " Capital punishment....has always been a religious punishment and is reconcilable with humanism." In other words, society has long since left behind the archaic and barbous" customs" from the cruel "eye for an eye" anti-human caves of religion- another factor that should raise immediate misgivings for freethinkers. State killings are morally bankrupt. Why do governments kill people to show other people that killing people is wrong? Humanity becomes associated with murderers when it replicate their deeds. Would society allow rape as the penalty for rape or the burning of arsonists' homes as the penalty for arson? The state should never have the power to murder its subjects. To give the state this power eliminates the individual's most effective shield against tyranny of the majority and is inconsistent with democratic principles. Family and friends of murder victims are further victimized by state killings. Quite a few leaders in the abolishment movement became involved specially because someone they loved was murdered. Family of victims repeatedly stated they wanted the murderer to die. One of the main reasons- in addition to justice- was they wanted all the publicity to be over. Yet. if it wasn't for the sensationalism surrounding an execution, the media exposure would not have occurred in the first place. Murderers would be quietly and safely put away for life with absolutely no possibility for parole. The death penalty violates constitutional prohibitions against cruel and unusual punishment. The grotesque killing of Robert Harris by the state of California on April 21,1992, and similar reports of witnesses to hangings and lethal injections should leave So 3 doubt that the dying process can be- and often is -grossly inhumane, regardless of method(Flanders 16). The death penalty is often used for political gain. During his presidential gain, President Clinton rushed home for the Arkansas execution of Rickey Ray Rector, a mentally retarded, indigent black man. Clinton couldn't take the chance of being seen by voters as " soft on crime." Political Analysts believe that when the death penalty becomes an issue in a campaign, the candidate favoring capital punishment almost inevitably will benefit. Capital punishment discriminates against the poor. Although murderers come from all classes, those on death row are almost without exception poor and were living in poverty at the they were arrested. The majority of death-row inmates were or are represented by court-appointed public defenders- and the state is not obligated to provide an attorney at all for appeals beyond the state level. The application of capital punishment is racist. About 40 percent of death-row inmates are black, whereas only 8 percent of the population as a whole are black(Flanders 25). In cases with white victims, black defendants were four to six times more likely to receive death sentences than white defendants who had similar criminal histories. Studies show that the chance for a death sentence is up to five to ten times greater in cases with white victims than black victims(Flanders 25). In the criminal justice system, the life of a white person is worth more than the life of a black person. The mentally retarded are victimized by the death penalty. Since 1989, when the Supreme Court upheld killing of the mentally retarded, at least four such executions have occurred. According to the Southern Center for Human Rights, at least 10 percent of death row inmates in the United States are mentally retarded(Long 79). Juveniles are subject to the death penalty. Since state execution of juveniles also became permissible in the decision cited above, at least five people who were juveniles when their crimes were committed have executed(Long 79). Innocent people can-and have been- executed. With the death penalty errors are irreversible. According to a 1987 study, 23 people who were innocent of the crimes for which they were convicted were executed between 1900 and 1985(Long 79). Until human judgement becomes infallible, this problem alone is reason enough to abolish the death penalty at the hands of the state more dedicated to vengeance than to truth and justice. Executions do not save money. There are those who cry that we, the taxpayers, shouldn't have to "support" condemned people for an entire lifetime in prison- that we should simply " eliminate" them and save ourselves time and money. The truth is that the cost of state killing is up to three times the cost of lifetime imprisonment(Long 80). Judges and others are reluctant- as they should be- to shorten the execution process for fear that hasty procedures will lead to the executions of more innocent people. The death penalty has been imposed most for murders committed during the course of another felony. Aggravating circumstances for murder are defined in the applicable death penalty statute. Circumstances considered for murder include: -The crime was particularly vile, atrocious, or cruel. -There were multiple victims. -The crime occurred during the commission of another felony. -The victim was a police or correctional officer in the line of duty. -The offender was previously convicted of a capital offense or violent crime. -The offender directed an accomplice to commit the murder or committed the murder at the direction of another person. (Flanders 12) In the novel, In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, the main characters Dick and Perry were guilty of several of the circumstances that eventually led to their demise: -The multiple victims included all four of the Clutter family. -The event occurred during an attempted robbery. -Both were former inmates and had previous dealings with the law. -Dick had chosen Perry for his instinct as a "Natural Born Killer". Further,it seems that both Dick and Perry fell almost directly under the common background of one convicted of death. The death penalty is flawed in many facets. Juries in rural counties are more likely to impose the death penalty than those in urban areas. Dick and Perry were convicted in Garden City, a small to moderate sized town. Both Dick and Perry were unemployed, poor, white criminals whose actions wrecked havoc not only on the remaining Clutter family and relatives, but on the entire town of Holcomb and surrounding areas. This only justifies and reinforces the points stated above that capital punishment is biased, racist, and is harmful not only to the offenders themselves, but to the entire community. Opposition to the death penalty finally acheived its goal when in 1972 the Supreme Court struck down death penalty laws, finding fault not with the theory, but with the method. However, all was lost when four years later, the decision was once more revised and ruled the death penalty once more legal. Death row will continue to expand. It is almost certain that the rising level of executions will be widely condemned. The future of capital punishment may finally come down to the question of expense. A single capital trial now costs millions of dollars. The enormous volume of continuing appeals strain both federal and state court systems. Unless workable solutions are found to the practical difficulties involved in the administration of the death penalty. American society eventually may decide to significantly restrict or even abandon capital punishment. So 7 Works Cited Flanders, Stephen A. Capital Punishment. New York, NY: Facts on File, 1991. Long, Robert Emmet. Criminal Sentencing. New York, NY: H.W. Company, 1995. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\A WORLD OF DREAMS.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ For many years jobs such as doctors, accountants, and corporate executives were considered high profile . In the last decade, careers in the field of law have become more important due to the increasing number of lawsuits. One of my many long term goals is to become a tax lawyer. This is a goal I have held near to my heart form several years. I can see myself walking into a packed court room with my Italian suit and penny loafers on. The court room grows silent as my client pleads not guilty. The judge raps his gavel and a court date is set. It is a goal that is very distant and may change, but it is one goal that I must strive for to achieve. For many teenagers this is the leading cause of failure later in life. Many people loose their focus. A wise man once said, "Dreams are what life is made up of." This statement is true in the sense that if you have dreams you have something to look forward to; something to focus on; even something to live for. Knowing that you are a VIP is important in the decision-making process. To accomplish your dreams, you must first face adversity in the eye and conquer your fears. For me personally, training to be a lawyer will take time and commitment. I must constantly look at where I am now and evaluate where I need to go from here. There will never be a time in your life where you are at the top. You must keep climbing the ladder of success. Fortunately I know that. I have a good G.P.A., but I know there is always someone smarter than me, so I continue to expand my knowledge. Also, there are many obstacles that will stand in my way. Most of the decisions I will make in the next ten years will have a profound impact on me as a person, and society as a whole. I hope that we, as the graduating class of 2000, make good decisions because we are the future. Whether we choose to be drug addicts, alcoholics, or thieves will change the way people treat us and look at us. I know that things such as drugs will only hurt me, and my performance in school. That is why I have made up my mind to never compromise my life or values due to peer pressure. There is only one way for me to get where I'm going and that is through hard word and determination. I must get my high school diploma as well as go to college. The truth of the matter is that good people sometimes fail. But if they really care, they will not go down without a fight. Many times the people you think care about you most will be the ones who lead to your demise. If your friends are truly your friends, they won't make you do something you don't want to do. It is okay to say no! There are no problems so big you can't solve them. As long as you have your goals in prospective, you can accomplish them. Part of being a teenager is growing up, knowing your limits, and taking responsibility for your life. There are consequences for every action you make (small or large). Having goals is about keeping your focus. Don't forget to see the big picture. When a situation arises, you must act--not react. It is important that you maintain a healthy lifestyle. Everyone around you is effected by the way you talk, act, and express your feelings to others. Ronald Regan once said, "If you don't have a dream, any road will get you there!" In other words if you don't have dreams, you don't have direction. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Abnormal Psychology Mental Disorders.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Andrew Walters 2/26/97 Psychology II Abnormal Psychology-Mental Disorders Schizophrenia http://www.mentalhealth.com/book/p40-sc02.html#Head_1 Schizophrenia is a disorder that can effect anyone. It is the greatest the greatest disorder that effects teenagers. When someone is effected by the disorder it is not just that one person that has to learn to deal with it, the families of the patients must also learn to deal with it. There are many possible causes for the disorder with many doctors believing that there is more than one cause. What has been thought as the main cause for many years is a chemical imbalance in the brain. This could be an imbalance in the number of neurotransmitters and/or an imbalance in the amount of dopamine. Stress is not thought of as directly causing Schizophrenia, but often makes already present symptoms worse. some doctors feel that Schizophrenia might be the result of a slow acting virus since the symptoms can be delayed many years after the first infection. Another possible cause for the disorder is a genetic disposition. This has yet to be proven but it is thought of as a likely cause since children who have a parent with the disorder have a ten times greater chance of developing the illness than children who have abnormal parents. If both parents have the disorder the chance of their off spring having the disorder jumps to forty times that of of an off spring with normal parents. Some times as equally as important as finding what causes a disease is finding what does not cause a disease. It is said that Schizophrenia is: not caused by a domineering mother and/or a passive father, not caused by childhood experiences, poverty, or not caused by the feeling of guilt or failure. People who have schizophrenia can be divided up into three equal groups: those who only have one episode in their entire life, those who have continual episodes but live normal lives between them, and a third group who have never ending symptoms. The symptoms that define an episode of schizophrenia can generally be described as deterioration from a previous level of functioning. The number one symptom of schizophrenia is the inability to separate the real form the unreal. As stress starts to build and the symptoms get worse there is often a decline in work achievements along with declining of relations with others. Because the these symptoms might start off very minor, it is mostly the families that notice them first. Thus it is up to the family to insist on a professional assessment of the person in question. Families also must play a key role in watching over the patient while there are undergoing treatment which usually consist taking medication in different amount until the proper amount is found. The constant research going on leads to putting more pieces of the puzzle together all the time. Using EEG¹s it was found that the impulses sent by the brain to other parts of the body are not normal in people with schizophrenia. It has also been found that there are definitely abnormalities in the proteins of those suffering from the disease. Bipolar Disorder http://pages.prodigy.com/bipolarcyclone/facefear.htm http://www.mhsource.com/expert/exp1042296a.html http://www.healthguide.com:80/Bipolar/common.stm Bipolar disorder is a mood disorder in which the effects who a person feels about the world around and even themselves. It makes them feel depressed and if left untreated suicide is often the result. Around 1.5% of the population is effect by some type of the disorder. Unlike many other disorders, bipolar effects a higher percent of those with a higher social status. Bipolar disorder usually comes on while the person is in their early twenties. It is thought that the disorder is ³polygenetic² meaning dependent upon several genes. This conclusion was reached because child who have parents with the disorder are up to twenty times more likely to suffer from it. Though the disorder can cause serious problems, many famous and successful people have suffered from it including Ernest Hemingway and Vincent Van Gogh. One of the major steps in treating some one with bipolar disorder is diagnosing it. People often say they of symptoms similar to those of the disorder as a result of a different disorder. These symptoms include hearing voices, being possessed by something, and having a sleeping disorder. In order to determine if a patient suffers from the disorder or not, family members are often questioned to see if the patient acts the way they claims they do. They are often asked about the patients sleeping since it is hard to fake a sleeping disorder. A family history is often obtained to help decide if bipolar is a lily candidate. Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder http://www.ocdresource.com/helpingocd.html http://www.psyc.memphis.edu/students/abramowitz/ocd.htm http://www.social.com/health/cic/mental_health/obsess.html Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder is a anxiety disorder that about one million people in the United States suffer from. Those suffering from the disorder have repetitive thought, images, or ideas that they can not get out of their head. These repetitive thoughts lead to anxiety which causes the suffer to resort to a competitive behavior.Then in order to try to deal with these thoughts sufferers often have rituals they preform to try to satisfy their thoughts. One of the more common repetitive thoughts that those with obsessive compulsive disorder have is that they contaminated by dirty objects. This leads to them often washing their hands constantly often taking off layers of skin. Similar to the Glen in the movie who would go through more than a bar of soap a day. Obsessive compulsive disorder was once thought to be rare but now is thought to effect around two percent of the population. Many cases go unreported making to hard to get an exact number of those who suffer. It effects people of all ethnic backgrounds and social classes the same. It is thought to be a neurobiological based problem because patients respond well to medication. There are two major treatments for suffers of obsessive compulsive disorder. One treatment is medication, either clomipramine, which is usually used to fight depression, and fluvoxamine and fluoxetine which have also been found to work. The second type of treatment is behavior therapy. Here patients are exposed to what they fear and are encourage not to carry out their usual compulsive response. Unlike many mental disorders, suffers from obsessive compulsive disorder often know they have a problem. However, this knowledge is not enough to get them to stop what they know is a senseless activity. Therefore, many try to hide their problem from others with a rather high success rate. The only problem with this is that they often don¹t get treatment until they have been dealing with it for a long time. Depression http://www.save.org/student.html Depression is often used to describe someone who is feeling low about themselves at the moment, when in reality it is a whole lot more than that. It is a total body illness that no mater how hard a person try to talk them selves out of it they still feel bad. It can effect a person in every aspect of their life from home to work to their social life. Depression is thought to be caused by a combination of factors including genetic, psychological, and environmental ones. It can be caused by living a stressful life or just living a bad life, but it doesn¹t have to be. It also occurs in all economic classes with about the same consistency. There are often times now clues as to what triggered the onset of the depression. About fifteen million Americans a year are faced with the illness. Depression effects the thinking of the person who has it so they are often not aware that they are suffering from it. Thus the family is often forced to acted upon it before they sufferer even knows they have a problem. It is important that the family does act one in because the number one cause of suicide is depression that went untreated. The signs of depression that one should be on the look out for in a suspected sufferer include: hopelessness, sadness, inability to make decisions, inability to concentrate, sudden weight changes, constant complaining, and many others. The treatment for such sufferers often include ³talk therapy² and a prescription for antidepressants. The most important think that can be done for some one facing a depression is for their friends and family to be there for them. 80- 90% of those faced with depression can be helped but they can¹t beat it alone. Multiple Personality Disorder http://wchat.on.ca/web/asarc/mpd.html Multiple personality disorder is the existence of more than one dominate personality within an individual. Each personality having its own behavior and social relationships. The disorder is most commonly associated with physical and/or sexual abuse of the sufferer at a young age. The abuse they go through is often prolonged and done by a family member. Diagnosing someone with multiple personality disorder is often hard for many reasons. Patients often withhold important information that would be used to diagnose the disorder because they do not want to be labeled crazy. Doctors¹ ignorance about the disorder is another reason it is often misdiagnosed. Multiple personality disorder was originally thought of as being extremely rare, so must professionals thought they would never see a case. It was not even in he DSM until 1980. In treating someone with multiple personality disorder their trust must first be gained so they then are willing to participate in the treatment. The patient must then be told what their problem is, which needs to be done very gentle in adults so that they do not get offended. The third stage in treatment is to learn all the personalities, their names, origins, problems, and relationships to the other personalities. The original personality must then be taught to deal with all the impulses that the other personalities would deal with such as anger, sexuality, and depression. The final stage is fusing all the personalities back into one. The patient must then practice dealing with all kinds of emotions to prevent a renewed dissociation. Electroconvulsive Therapy http://www.i1.net:80/~juli/ect/brain/brain.html Electroconvulsive therapy is the process of passing an electrical current through the brain causing unconsciousness and convulsions. In this procedure electrodes are placed on both temples, or just one temple in unilateral treatment, and electricity is passed between them. This proceeder is usually used for patients suffering from severe depression after all other treatments have failed. The treatment is very controversial because many believe that there are side effects from passing electricity through the brain. Five major areas are looked at to see if there are side effects: the brains of epileptics, animal brains, psychological test findings with history of many ECTs, spontaneous seizures, and human brain reports. In study brains of epileptics it was concluded that ECT cause lasting effects, much in the same way that grand mal seizures did. When studying animal brain both reversible and irreversible damage was found to brain cells after multiple ECTs. The results from studying psychological test were inconclusive because of the experimenters inability to set up a controlled experiment. There were always too many variables that could not be accounted for. Patients who have received ECTs have been known to have post-ECT spontaneous seizures. Though some had them prior to the numerous had not who afterwards did. It is unsure if the seizures last forever because often the patient i s put on medication to prevent them. However the studies have concluded that in at least some cases after people received ECT they started to have seizures. In studying human autopsies it was found that some patients of ECT had irreversible damage done to their brain while others damage was reversible. The explanation for the different was that if the patient was in good health prior to the ECTs they had a much better chance of not receiving irreversible damage. The conclusion from looking at all the different areas mentioned is that there are many factors that at least partially determine whether or not the patient of ECts will receive permanent damage from them or not. Eating Disorders http://www.vicnet.net.au:80/vicnet/community/anorexia/abnc_tot.htm#1c Eating disorders occur when a person becomes preoccupied with their body weight and food. The two major kinds of eating disorders anorexia and bulimia. Bulimics feel as though they can not control the amount of food they eat leading to binging and then either purging or self-induced vomiting. Anorexics keep their body weight low by usually either self-induced vomiting or by eating very small amounts of food and exercising heavily. It is not uncommon for a person to switch back in forth between the two types. The typical anorexic or bulimic person if a female,in their teenage years, from the middle class, all though people from all backgrounds can suffer from it. Males make up about 5% of all reported cases. The cause of the disorders is not clearly, but many experts blame the media for emphasizing the ideal shape. The relationship that the child has with their parents is considered a major factor as well. The side effects of the disorders can range from malnutrition to death. Girls often menstrual cycles often become irregular or even stop. If self-induced vomiting is occurring, that can cause a sore throat and gullet and even destroy dental enamel. These disorders but a great emotional strain on those with it, having many side effects of it¹s own. The first thing that must be done to help a person wit a eating disorder is to talk to them about it. It is not uncommon for them to get mad at first because their secret is out, but they must be forced to seek professional help. Though there are many different mental disorders and illnesses it seems as though they all have a few things in common. The uncertainty of the cause seems to be the case with many disorders. Some doctors feel strongly one way while others think that there is a totally different cause. Over time what is thought to be the causes of a disorders often change because of new research that is being done everyday. Until the causes of disorders are found it will always be a guess on how to best treat patients suffering from any certain disorder. It even varies as far as one doctor saying a certain kind of treatment helps and another doctor saying that the exact same treatment is useless or even harmful, as the case is with ECT. Until researchers better understand the brain the treatment for disorders that are found in it will always be up for discussion. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Abortion.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Everyday there are pregnant mothers who abuse drugs and alcohol totally ignoring the living, growing person inside them. Then, when these children are born, they are usually born with a drug addiction or birth defects which sometimes leads to death. One thing's for sure, these children's lives are greatly complexed before they even reach the light of day. Which leads to my position that the rights of the child should be extended to the unborn. A mother should not have the right to use drugs or drink alcohol while she is pregnant, it is unfair for the child not to even have a chance for a normal life. If a mother beat her baby and was reported to the child welfare board they would be thrown in jail without a second thought, but just because a child is not yet born doesn't that mean that a mother can do anything she wants to it. Take a child who has been born, then goes through the pain of having an abusive parent. If the parents are exposed to the authorities they will go to jail and lose the rights to the child, and with proper counseling and therapy the child will live a normal life. Yet, if the child is unborn, the mother can do whatever she would like, even if it means harming the baby and the authorities can do nothing. When the baby is born, the child might have irreparable brain damage or some physical defect and would not be able to live a normal life, for the rest of it's life. The abuse that the unborn child goes through is the same as if it was born but the severity is much greater, and nothing can be done. To me, this is child abuse of the worst kind. An unborn child is getting abused with drugs, alcohol, or whatever the mother may be ingesting, and the child is unable to defend itself. If the child was born it could call someone for help, but an unborn child cannot speak and therefore needs someone to speak for it in case of any danger that might come to it. Our unborn children should have the same rights as any living person. In our society we give rights to any living creature, human or not human. Is it right that we give more rights to animals than we do our own unborn? I figure that unborn children are not far off from animals. Animals are living creatures who grow, eat, sleep and cannot communicate with human beings, and unborn babies are living beings who also grow, eat, sleep and cannot communicate with us. If we can give rights to animals who are not even our own species, why can't we give rights to our own unborn children. We initially gave rights to animals on the basis that they were helpless and were unable to speak their minds, yet, unborn babies are in the exact same boat, and we still overlook them. I believe that if we don't give rights to abused children before they are born they will have to live a life of great pain after they are born, a life that we could have prevented. Usually, if the parents abuse a child or has a drug/alcohol problem, the child will be taken away from the mother and placed into foster care until adopted or the mother is rehabilitated. But, if the child is abused while still in the mothers womb, then it might have physical or mental defects and it won't be so easy for the child to get adopted and/or the mother might not want the child back. A child should not be denied a chance to live a normal life just because it's parents are not responsible enough to have a child. These children should be protected against any wrong doing on the mother's part, and have a chance to a normal life. It is sad but true, but in our society the mentally and physically handicapped are not accepted and even ignored by the common person. I don't think it is right to bring a person who is going to be handicapped, by what their mother consumes during the time of her pregnancy, into a world such as this if we can do something about it. To be handicapped means to be totally dependent on whoever would be willing to take the time to take care of you, for the rest of your life. By making laws that will protect the right of the unborn children, who are incapable of communicating with us, we can protect them from harm until they are born so that they at least have a chance to a normal life. If we can give rights to an animal that will most likely not have any effect on anyone's life, why can't we give rights to an unborn child who will have an influence on many people thoughout his or her life. Obviously there will still be many mothers who will not be caught using drugs while pregnant, but if we could save just one child from a life of total dependency and misery, then it would be worth while. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Abraham Lincoln.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Abraham Lincoln by Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, was very important to the past history of our country. He helped to abolish slavery in this country and kept the American Union from splitting apart during the Civil War. At 22, he moved to New Salem, Illinois. With his gift for swapping stories and making friends, he became quite popular and was elected to the Illinois legislature in 1834. In his spare time, he taught himself law and became a lawyer. In 1847, he was elected to the U.S. Congress, but returned to his law practice until 1858, when his concern about the spread of slavery prompted him to return to national politics and run for the U.S. Senate. Lincoln rose to greatness from a humble beginning. Born in 1809 in a log cabin in Kentucky, Lincoln spent most of his childhood working on the family farm. He had less than a year of school but managed to educate himself by studying and reading books on his own. He believed that slavery and democracy were fundamentally incompatible. In an 1858 speech, he said: What constitutes the bulwark of our own liberty and independance? It is not our frowning battlements, our bristling sea coats, our army and our navy . . . Our defense is in the spirit which prized liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands everywhere. Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism at your own doors. Familiarize yourself with the chains of bondage and you prepare your own limbs to wear them (World Book Encyclopedia). He lost his campaign for the Senate, but during the debates with his opponent Stephen Douglas, he became well known for his opposotion to slavery. The southern states, which believed they depended upon slavery to remain prosperous in the cotton, tobacco, and rice industries, threatened to secede from the nation if Lincoln won the election. Lincoln was inaugurated on March 4, 1861, and by April 12, the southern states had formed the Confedrate States of America and the Civil War began. It was during the Civil War that Lincoln proclaimed the slaves free in the Confederate states. This was his famous Emancipation Proclamation, issued in 1863. But Lincoln knew that something else had to be done to insure liberty for the slaves after the war. So he worked hard to pass an antislavery amendment to the Constitution. The Thirteenth Amendment, passed by Congress in 1865, prohibited slavery in all states. It was this important act, and the Emancipation Proclamation, that won Lincoln his reputation as the Great Emancipator. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Account of the Siege of Yorktown.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Siege of Yorktown It was four o'clock in the morning when my commanding officer awoke me and we were ordered to prepare to march. We had set up an extensive camp at Chatham in New York, we all believed that we would attack New York City. It turned out that we were marching on towards Yorktown. When we arrived at Yorktown the bay was full of French ships. Our army along with the French encircled Cornwallis. Cornwallis did not surrender, he waited for a larger British fleet to save him. Being in the Corps of Sappers and Miners we were to prepare mines and trenches. On the night of October 5th we sneaked within 150 ft. of the British lines. We were under heavy protection, for it was a dark and rainy night. We laid down pine wood end-to-end so troops would know where to dig trenches. The trenches allowed 100 cannons to be close to the British but still be under protection. Soldiers were moved to the area and issued shovels and picks. It was truly a patriotic moment to see General Washington break the first ground at the Siege of Yorktown. We had sent a small band of men to the western side of us to fire on the British. Our plan worked and all the British inside were soon firing on them while we dug our trenches. When dawn came around they saw their mistake and started firing on us but no harm was done. It took nine days to dig all of the trenches. Finally on October 15th we were prepared to start the siege. As the American Flag rose ten cannons fired simultaneously. Since we were firing from 150 ft. away our cannons had a devastating effect. Later, during the second afternoon the Sappers and Miners, including myself were issued axes and we were instructed to chop a path through the abatis (the tops of trees cut with a slanting stroke to act as spikes) they were nearly impossible to get through. As American and French soldiers rushed through the British ran in terror, only minor hand to hand combat took place. Soon afterwords the British handed over their regimental flags and stacked their weapons in a pile. That was it the war was over! f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Acient Pharos.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Making Sense of the Plagues: The Education of Pharaoh I. INCONSISTENCIES WITHIN THE PLAGUES Then YHVH said to Mosheh, "Pharaoh's heart is hardened; he refuses to let the people go. Go to Pharaoh in the morning, as he is going out to the water; stand by at the river bank to meet him, and take in your hand the staff that was turned into a snake. Say to him, 'YHVH, the God of the Hebrews, sent me to you to say, "Let my people go, so that they may worship me in the wilderness." But until now you have not listened.' Thus says YHVH, "By this you shall know that I am YHVH." See, with the staff that is in my hand I will strike the water that is in the Nile, and it shall be turned to blood. (Sh'mot [Exodus] 7:14-17) In this account of the warning of the first plague (blood), there are several details which show up again in some - but not all - of the other plagues: 1) Mosheh warns Pharaoh about the upcoming plague - but not every time (only before the plagues of frogs, wild beasts, pestilence, hail, locusts and the first-born). 2) Some of these warnings take place in the early morning by the banks of the Nile (wild beasts and hail) while others take place in Pharaoh's palace. 3) A theological message (e.g. "By this you shall know that I am YHVH") is appended to the warning - whereas other warnings are bereft of such a message. 4) Mosheh's staff is used in some of the plagues - but not all (it is only used in the plagues of blood, frogs, lice, hail and locusts). Our first simple and straightforward question is: Is there any rhyme or reason to the plagues and their attendant warnings which would explain these apparent inconsistencies? f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Ad Evaluation.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Introduction Sex in advertising has been the theme of much 20th Century American Advertising. It seems like all we see these days are advertisements which use the human body and sexuality to sell all kinds of products from food and cars to colognes and exercise equipment. It is virtually impossible to tune into any type of media they days and not encounter some type of an ad which uses sexuality to sell it's product. Most of the time sexuality and the use of the product in a real world setting is irrelevant, but for centuries if sexual connotation is put upon the use of a certain product then the product has been a success in the market place. In the following pages we will be analyzing an ad for Robert Lee Morris Watches, placed in Harper's Bazzar, which uses the concept of "sex" to sell it's watches. For a copy of the ad please refer to the end of this report. We will be applying the basic Principles of Advertising to help use critique this ad. Objectives and Mission The objectives of any company using the concept of using "Sex" in it's advertising campaigns are clear. The company wants to appeal to the conscious level of the target market to sell it's product. The company wants to appeal to the consumer who appreciates his/her sexuality and will spend a few extra dollars to look especially sexy. The mission of this type of advertising is to convince the target market that the product, in this case a watch, is essential to their need and want to be seductive and portray that image to his/her fellow peers. Consumer Analysis Before any company decides what kind of an ad will be used to represent their company and their product, they will need to consider their target consumer. The advertising agency will need to take personal influences and environmental forces into consideration. While choosing a type of ad, it is very important that the advertiser take marketing stimuli into consideration, these stimuli include: demographic factors, cultural/social influences, and reference groups. The advertiser needs to understand the perceptions, motives, needs, personalities, lifestyles, and attitudes of their target market. In this ad, it is obvious that the advertiser is trying to appeal to the fashion conscious woman in her 20's or 30's with a moderately high income level who could spend a few extra dollars for the sake of being fashionable. The ad is placed in a high class fashion magazine which shares the company's target market. Finally, consumer analysis can be thought of the most important of the Principles of Advertising. If an ad is positioned to appeal to the interests of anyone but the target market, then the ad would simply be a waste of precious time and resources. Advertising Effectiveness Advertising effectiveness is a measure to see how effective the advertisement is on consumer recognition and intentions on buying a certain product. There are two kinds of classifications of advertising effectiveness. The first is the communication effects and the second is sales effectiveness. The Robert Lee Morris Watches uses the second type, sales effectiveness. Sales effectiveness measures the impact of advertisement on sales. There are three types of sales effectiveness a company can use. They are inquiry testing, direct response and market testing. Robert Lee Morris Watches uses the inquiry test method. We know that they use this method because they offer a toll free phone in the upper left hand corner of the advertisement. The ad does not offer a lot of content in regard to words. They want the consumer to call them and tell them what they think about the ad and to inquire about additional information. Creative Strategy & Creative Appeals The "big idea" for a creative strategy in regards to the concept of sexual appeal in advertisement is virtually to attract the attention and maintain the visual process of the incoming information. Sex in advertisement grabs the attention of a sexual attitude of behavior for the targeted audience. The "love/sex" creative appeal directly impacts the emotions leading to a change in attitude or behavior of the targeted audience. Sexual appeal may be displayed by using naked bodies, illustrative emphasis on attractive body parts, and romantic or intimate moments for selling a hopeful image to the target market. The image of sexual feelings, therefore, lead audiences to believe that the purchase of the product will lead to fulfillment of being part of that romantic moment. Four components make up the focus for the creative side of advertising. First of all, the "Big Idea" is the starting point and it is important because it is what the audience looks at. The idea must be created to grab the attention of the audience and differentiate the product from other related products in a magazine ad. The "Big Idea" can jump out of the ad, leading the audience to an illusion of "wow" (product image) for purchase and increase in sales. In the magazine ad chosen, the big idea presents the Robert Lee Morris Watch by using a lady's naked waist and having her wear the watch on her wrist as she tries to cover up her private body part. Robert Lee Morris ad does not present the display of the watch to the audience in a surrounding that a watch would normally be involved in. the idea of wearing a watch while unclothed is irrelevant to a watch wearing purpose. The ad dresses the watch displayed on her wrist by making it visually inviting for the audience to recognize product, create an image of the watch and brand name, and positioning the ad in an environment for the upper class consumer. The ad is placed in Harper's Bazzar to appeal to the more fashion wise and image conscious shoppers who are usually earning a substantial amount of income to dress for this image. The creative process designs the ad's originality for product differentiation. Using the concept of sex in advertisement is very common in the advertising industry for all media types. The magazine ad must create a powerful impact on the audience, which the Robert Lee Morris ad does. The ad's creative process uses demonstration to present the product and brand name, unique selling proposition which focus on the correlated attributes between the beauty of the watch and the beauty of the woman, resonance by printing an ad that makes you think about the ad, and image by the unity of layout and positioning of the ad. Layout Strategy The particular layout strategy in this ad is to use a large photograph and a few words to grab the reader's attention. The photograph primarily accomplishes this with its sexual design. The words Robert Lee Morris Watches are strongly supported by the picture. The idea is that the lady has nothing on but she still is wearing the watch. Now, it may seem that only these elements are what make the ad appealing, but there are other qualities that participate in the overall appearance of the ad. These certain qualities are referred to as layout qualities. The layout qualities most pertinent to this ad are balance, contrast, proportion and gaze motion. The balance of an ad pertains to the placement of elements on a page. Formal balance is when the elements are evenly placed on a page and informal balance is when the elements are unevenly placed on a page. The elements in this ad are the photograph of the woman wearing the watch and the words used to designate a brand of watch. By observing the article one could tell that the strategy here is to use informal balance, because the elements are not completely centered on the page. For example, the woman in the photograph is standing at an angle which makes the left and right borders completely different. The left border is a curvaceous hip while the right border is more linear, with the woman's hand reaching straight down. Another example of informal balance in this ad is the placement of "Robert Lee Morris Watches." The phrase is not centered, instead it is placed on the right portion of the ad. There is on other phrase to counter it on the left side. The informal balance of this article may seem like it is a bad thing, because the elements are not evenly dispersed, however, informal balance is what makes the ad appealing. The contrast of the ad deals with it's shape and color. It there is any shape that could be used to describe this ad, it would be the shape of an "S." by looking at the left side of the ad, the woman's hip is a mirror image of the letter "S." The color also plays an important role because readers envision the ad to be a real naked person wearing a watch, by virtue of the actual color of a woman being used. The color is not exaggerated as to project a sense of fantasy. The actual color projects a real person and therefore makes the ad more concrete and believable. The proportion of this ad is key. The entire page is encompassed by the photograph of the woman. The picture lies in the background while the words are in the foreground. By using this approach the picture and the words can be viewed separately. It can be seen from big (woman's picture) to small (Robert Lee Morris Watches). Gaze motion is another quality of layout that plays an important role in this ad. Gaze motion has to do with how a person' eyes move through an ad. This particular would be referred to as an S-gaze, because a person's eye moves through the ad in the shape of an "S." This is very evident on the left side of the ad where the woman's hip is shaped like an S. With S-gaze a reader may start at the torso, follow it down to the curvaceous hip, which leads directly to this most sexual part. Message Strategy The message strategy is the strategy used by advertisers to convey the idea of the advertisement. The message strategy consists of the selling premise and execution. The selling premise is the sales logic behind an advertising message. It can be a claim, benefit, promise, reason why or a unique selling proposition. The selling premise that our ad, Robert Lee Morris Watches uses is a unique selling proposition, which is sex appeal. It is not a unique selling position in the sense that on one has ever used sex appeal before. It is unique considering what they are selling, which is watches. The use of an almost completely nude woman to sell a watch is unique. The other element of message strategy is execution. Execution is the form taken by the finished ad. The execution of the ad was done very well and accomplished what they set out to do. When considering the message strategy one must decide if they want the ad to be on the conscious level, being able to perceive the message, or subconscious, being below the consciousness of the senses. Our ad uses the conscious level, more specifically, the sight. The advertisers want the consumer to see the partial f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Adult.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The young adult has numerous stresses placed upon them through the route of development. Erikson has theorised developmental stages of growth into tasks. Of Eriksons' theoretical tasks, one task describes the theory of intimacy versus isolation. This task theory can be examined using the normative crisis model. The knowledge of developmental tasks of the young adult can be beneficial to the nurse especially associated with their ability to relate to the young adult. One of the stages in life is the young adult, which suggests significant changes and an increase of responsibility. This stage of development is described as between twenty and forty years, where "...the potential for furtherance of intellectual, emotional and even physical development occurs". (Gething, 1995, p.377). As people age the progress of the developmental stages can differ, so they have formulated to assess the progression by using two principal crisis models. The first, are the normative crisis model and the second includes the timing of events crisis model. The normative crisis model has been powerful in shaping the psychology of the developmental stages as it has allowed theorists to imply that stages of development can follow an age related time sequence. (Gething, 1995). The normative crisis model suggests that human development has a built in ground plan in which crisis as describe by Erikson are seen as a requirement that must be resolved by the person before successful progression from one developmental stage to another. Such achievement of this task crisis should provide the young adult with the ability to challenge previous ideas held by the adolescent about intimacy and isolation. This model is adapted for progression of the tasks to follow the chronological age of the adult, while the related social and emotional changes progress through a sequence that Erikson characterises in to eight specific crisis tasks over the life span. (Kozier, erb, blais & wilkinson, 1995.). The second crisis model depends upon the timing of events and is not dependant upon resolution of crisis or a ground plan, but stresses the importance of each event that occur in the young adults life. Life events that proceed as expected will encourage development, where as life events that are unexpected can result in anxiety and a slow progression of development. (Gething, 1995.). The young adult according to Erikson's theory of personality should be progressing through the psychosocial crisis of intimacy versus isolation. The tasks for this stage of life consist of courting and selecting a "mate", marriage and associated choices, e.g. children and monogamous relationship, career choices and lifestyle changes and furthering intellectual abilities to accommodate choices. (Turner & Helms, 1987.). Some of the personal abilities that the young adult must employ include decision making, career planing, understanding nature of increased responsibility and being able to accommodate greater demands of self. Erikson's theory describes the crisis of the young adults developmental stage being intimacy versus isolation. This indicates the maturity of psychosocial development from the prior stage of crisis of adolescence. Erikson's theory has been adapted and modified from Freud's psychosocial theory to incorporate the entire life span, defining eight crises each with various tasks. (Kozier, et al 1995). Erikson believes that "...the greater the task achievement, the healthier the personality of the person", (Kozier, et al, 1995, P.572.) thus suggesting from his theory that failure to achieve these tasks, will result in the inability to proceed to the next task or crisis. Erikson believed that failure to achieve any given task could lead to a detrimental effect on the ego. (Rapoport & Rapoport, 1980.) One of the tasks of the theory of intimacy versus isolation, relates to courting and selecting a mate for marriage. Courting usually starts prior to this developmental stage and may continue for an undesignated period. The continuation of courtship is entirely reliant on the individual but the development of issues such as independence and sharing associated within a serious relationship should be initiated. A result of this task achievement should be that the individual has developed or learned skills that are essential to relationships, e.g. sacrifice, compromise and commitment. This task is considered a major issue that helps the individual to conclude their own feelings on intimacy with another. (Gething, 1995.). The union of marriage is dependant on the partners involved as to the reason to extend a long-term relationship to marriage. Some reasons for marriage can consist of a long-term commitment to sharing, companionship, monogamous relationship and a desire to start a family. These characteristics symbolise dedication, expression and development of the individual's identity. Marriage is an opportunity to overcome Erikson's negative theory of isolation and to continue through intimacy in a positive manner. (Turner & Helms, 1987). These issues of marriage and courtship indicate a sense of achievement between identity and intimacy as Erikson stresses it is important as "...before one can achieve intimacy, it is essential to have a sense of identity, which should be achieved in adolescence" (Gething, 1995, P.401). As this sense of identity and intimacy develop the young adult should also be generating their own sense of moral values and ethics related to relationships. (Gething, 1995,P.401). Erikson also considers marriage a mark of an adult and constantly refers to the developmental importance of identity. With marriage, a change in "normal" lifestyle occurs, leading to greater demands, responsibilities and development of identity. (Gething, 1995.). The changes in a lifestyle from an adolescent to a young adult lead to adjustment of situations, e.g. living arrangements, change of school to a career/job and coping abilities, e.g. financial responsibilities. The establishment of this new identity can be stressful and demanding on the young adult. These new changes require a considerable degree of maturity, which Erikson believes will promote physical and psychological achievement. One change in lifestyle leads to a new task, career preparation. This is an important part of a positive aspect of identity that plays a major role in individual development. (Rapoport, 1980). Career preparation and achievement assist the individual to achieve further personal and developmental goals. The ability to maintain a job gives the young adult financial independence and they are now at a stage where they can relate establishment of themselves as a worthwhile and significant person to their choice of careers. (Turner & Helms, 1987.). Career development fuses with many other facts of adult life. Erikson believes the gender of a person affects the eventual career that the young adult, the abilities, interest and personality will also play a role in the choice of career. The consequences of career choice are often voluntarily but can be forced upon for any number of reasons, e.g. parental advice. (Gething, 1995.). The young adults choice in career gives identity, self-respect, pride, values and ideas about the world. According to Erikson this gives the individual a healthier personality if they achieve set goals. The young adults first choice of career may not be the best choice, "...young adults are less satisfied with their jobs, and are more likely to change later in life". (Rapoport & Rapoport, 1980, P.393). In this task the young adult discovers that work is a consequence of life, and is bound tight with their ego and self-image. Erikson expresses that if they are not successful with this task, the ego will be affected. (Gething, 1995). The nurse uses this information and knowledge about the young adult's developmental tasks to assess the domains of health. These domains can include physical, psychological and emotional and then intervene according to the positive and negative aspects of their health. Assessing and intervention is for the well being of the young adult. To maintain the autonomy and sense of achievement of the young adult the nurse should suggest positive alternatives as appropriate. Erikson describes the development of depression, anger and failure or delay of intimacy as a result of dysfunctional development. (Gething, 1995). As the nurse can assist with advice and positive encouragement, he or she must also accept the decision made by the young adult, "...assisting with necessary adjustments relating to health."(Kozier, Erb et al, 1995, P.843). The young adult period is marked with many changes to the life of a person. The decision related to career paths, development of relationships with peers and romantic relationships all places a lot of pressure on young adults. Erikson's psychosocial theory of development describes intimacy versus isolation to be the major issue for the young adult in personality development for the person in the twenty to forty years age ranges. In the tasks of this stage the young adult must resolve the issues to achieve growth and pass on to the next stage of development. The nurse should posses the ability to asses the development of the young adult and appropriately provide support and encouragement. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\AIDS and You The lethal relation.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ George Stamatopoulos Mrs. Polychronopoulou English 110 19 February, 1997 AIDS and You: The lethal relation We know enough about how the infection is transmitted to protect ourselves from it without resorting to such extremes as mandatory testing, enforced quarantine or total celibacy. But too few people are heeding the AIDS message. Perhaps many simply don't like or want to believe what they hear, preferring to think that AIDS "can't happen to them." Experts repeatedly remind us that infective agents do not discriminate, but can infect any and everyone. Like other communicable diseases, AIDS can strike anyone. It is not necessarily confined to a few high-risk groups. We must all protect ourselves from this infection and teach our children about it in time to take effective precautions. Given the right measures, no one need get AIDS. AIDS is a life and death issue. To have the AIDS disease is at present a sentence of slow but inevitable death. I've already lost one friend from AIDS. I may soon lose others. My own sexual behavior and that of many of my friends has been profoundly altered by it. In U.S.A. one man in10 may already be carrying the AIDS virus. While the figures may currently be less in much of the rest of the country, this is changing rapidly. There currently is neither a cure, nor even an effective treatment, and no vaccine either. But there are things that have been PROVEN immensely effective in slowing the spread of this hideously lethal disease. AIDS stands for Acquired Immune Defficiency Disease. It is caused by a virus. The disease originated somewhere in Africa about 20 years ago. There it first appeared as a mysterious ailment afflicting primarily heterosexuals of both sexes. It probably was spread especially fast by primarily female prostitutes there. AIDS has already become a crisis of STAGGERING proportions in parts of Africa. In Zaire, it is estimated that over twenty percent of the adults currently carry the virus. That figure is increasing. And what occurred there will, if no cure is found, most likely occur here among heterosexual folks. AIDS was first seen as a disease of gay males in the world. This was a result of the fact that gay males in our culture internationally, in the days before AIDS had an average of 200 to 400 new sexual contacts per year. This figure was much higher than common practice among heterosexual (straight) men or women. For these reasons, the disease spread in the gay male population immensely more quickly than in other populations. It became to be thought of as a "gay disease". Because the disease is spread primarily by exposure of ones blood to infected blood or semen, drug addicts who shared needles also soon were identified as an affected group. As the AIDS epidemic began affect increasingly large fractions of those two populations (gay males and drug abusers), many of the rest of this society looked on smugly, for both populations tended to espied by the "mainstream" of society here. But AIDS is also spread by heterosexual sex. In addition, it is spread by blood transfusions. New born babies can acquire the disease from infected mothers during pregnancy. Gradually more and more "mainstream" folks got the disease. Finally, even the national news media began to join in the task of educating the public to the notion that AIDS can affect everyone. The best way to avoid AIDS is to regard it as a highly lethal disease and practice commonsense prevention. Avoiding infection is IN ONE'S OWN HANDS. People can protect themselves. To stop its spread, people are encouraged to obtain and apply accurate AIDS information to their living styles and sexual habits in order to reduce the risk of getting or transmitting the virus. Sadly, health promoters claim that "reaching the many who don't want to know" is no easy task. Health promoters suggest that educators must learn how and when to communicate AIDS information-in the right way at "teachable" moments. Many Public Health Departments are now taking the lead in disseminating education about AIDS with large-scale public awareness programs For those who would have sexual activity, the safest approach in this age of AIDS is monogamous sex. Specifically, both parties in a couple must commit themselves to not having sex with anyone else. At that time they should take AIDS antibody tests. If the tests are negative for both, they must practice safe sex until both members of the couple have been greater than six months since sexual contact with anyone else. At that time the AIDS blood test is repeated. If both tests remain negative six months after one's last sexual contact with any other party, current feeling is that it is now safe to have "unprotected" sex. Note that this approach is recommended especially for those who wish to have children, to prevent the chance of having a child be born infected with AIDS, getting it from an infected mother. Note also that this approach can be used by groups of three or more people, but it must be adhered to VERY strictly. For those who wish to have sexual contact with folks on a relatively casual basis, there have been devised rules for "safe sex". These rules are very strict, and will be found quite objectionable by most of people who have previously enjoyed unrestricted sex. But to violate these rules is to risk unusually horrible death. Once one gets used to them, the rule for "safe sex" do allow for quite acceptable sexual enjoyment in most cases. A condom must be used by a man in order to obtain the safe sex. By conclusion, it is my own strongly held view, and that of the medical and research community world wide, that the AIDS epidemic is a serious problem, with the potential to become the worst disease this species has ever known. This is SERIOUS business. VASTLY greater sums should be spent on searching for treatments. On the other hand, we feel strongly that this is "merely" a disease, not an act by a supernatural power. And while it does not seem likely we will find either a cure or a vaccine in the foreseeable future, it may be that truly effective treatments that can indefinitely extend the life of AIDS victims may be found in the next few years. When science and technology do finally fully conquer AIDS, we can go back to deciding what sort and how much sex to have with who ever we choose on the basis of our own personal choice. May that time come soon. In the mean time, we must all do what we can to slow the spread of this killer. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Alexander the Great.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Alexander the Great, was born in June, 356 BC, in Pella, the ancient capital of Macedonia. His parents were Philip II and Olympia. Some say that Zeus was his father but it is probably just a myth. Aristotle taught Alexander in his early teen years. He stimulated his interest in science, medicine, and philosophy. In the summer of 336 BC, Alexander's father was assassinated, and Alexander ascended to the Macedonian throne. He found himself surrounded by enemies at home and threatened by civilizations all over. But Alexander disposed of quickly of all his enemies by ordering their execution. Then he took off to Thessaly, where partisans of independence had gained ascendancy, and restored Macedonian rule. Before the end of the summer of 336 BC as general of the Greeks in a campaign against the Persians, originally planned by his father before he croaked, he carried out a successful campaign against the defecting Thracians, penetrating to the Danube River. On his return he crushed in a single week the threatening Illyrians and then again took of to Thebes, which had revolted. He took the city by storm and razed it, sparing only the temples of the gods and the house of the Greed lyric poet Pindar, and selling the surviving inhabi¬ tants, about 8000 in number, into slavery. Alexander's promptness in crushing the revolt of The¬ bes brought the other Greek states into instant submission. Alexander began his war against Persia in the spring of 334 BC by crossing the Hellespont (now Dardanelles) with an army of 35,000 Macedonian and Greek troops: his chief officers, all Macedonians, included Antigonus, Ptolemy, and Seleucus. At the river Granicus, near the ancient city of Troy, he attacked an army of Persians and Greek soldiers which totaled 40,000 men. His forces slatured the enemy and according to tradition, only lost 110 men! After this battle all the stated of Asia Minor submitted to Alexander. Continuing south, Alexander encountered the main Persian army, commanded by King Darius III, at Issus. The size of Darius's army was unknown; but ancient tradition said it contained about 500,000 men but now is considered a very big exag¬ geration. The Battle of Issus, in 333 BC, ended in a great victory for Alexander, who treated them with the respect due to royalty. Tyre, a strongly guarded seaport, offered obstinate resistance, but Alexander took it to by storm in 332 after a siege of seven months. Alexander captured Gaza next and then passed on into Egypt, where he was greeted as a deliverer. By these successes the Nile River, the city of Alexandria, which later became the literacy, scientific, and commercial center of the Greek world. Cyrene, the capital of the ancient North African kingdom of Cyrenaica, gave up to Alexander soon afterward, extending his dominance to Carthaginian territory. In the spring of 331, Alexander made a trip to the great temple and oracle of Amon-Ra, Egyptian god of the sun, whom the Greeks identified as Zeus. The earlier Egyptian pharaohs were believed to be sons of Amon-Ra; and Alexander, the new ruler of Egypt, wanted the god to ac¬ knowledge him as his son. Amon-Ra (Zeus) agreed. I tried doing that the other day and Amon-Ra accepted but I told him that he wasn't good enough for me. So he has cursed me by making my right arm longer then my left are for 7 years. Crossing the Euphrates and the Tigris rivers, Alex¬ ander met Darius at the head of an army of unknown size, which, according to the exaggerated accounts of antiquity, was said to number a million men! This army he completely defeated in the Battle of Guagamela, Oct 1, 331. Daruis fled as he had done at Issus and was later killed by two of his own generals. Babylon surrendered after Gaugamela did, and the city of Susa with its enormous treasures was soon taken over also by Alexander. Then, in midwinter, Alexander forced his way to Persepolis, the Persian capital, and plundered in and the royal treasures and took the rich by their butt, and burned the city during a drunken binge and thus completed the destruction of the ancient Persian Empire. His domain now extended along and beyond the southern shores of the Caspian Sea, including modern Central Asia. It had taken Alexander only 3 years to master this vast area. In June, 323 BC, Alexander contracted a dangerous fever and died. He left his empire, in his own words, "too the strongest"; this resulted in huge conflicts for half a century. Alexander was one of the greatest generals of all time, noted for his brilliance as a tactician and troop leader and for the rapidity with which he could traverse great expanses of territory. He was usually brave and generous, but could be very cruel and ruthless when politics demanded. Is has been said that he was actually and alcoholic having, for example, killed his friend Clitus in a drunken fury. He later regretted this act deeply. He himself, in his life had a few wives and a few children. He was also reported to have had sexual relations with his close friend Hephaestion, who was a man. "ick" f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Amazing Grace.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Amazing Grace Introduction Jonathan Kozol's Amazing Grace is a book about the trials and tribulations of everyday life for a group of children who live in the poorest congressional district of the United States, the South Bronx. Their lives may seem extraordinary to us, but to them, they are just as normal as everyone else. What is normal? For the children of the South Bronx, living with the pollution, the sickness, the drugs, and the violence is the only way of life many of them have ever known. In this book, the children speak openly and honestly about feeling 'abandoned', 'hidden' or 'forgotten' by our nation, one that is blind to their problems. Studying the people themselves would only get us so far in understanding what their community is really like and why they feel this way. Jonathan Kozol really got to know the people individually. We can take his knowledge and stories to try for a better understanding of the environment in which they live. By doing this, we can explore the many reasons why the people have problems, what some levels of intervention could be, and possibly find some solutions to making the South Bronx a healthier and safer place for these children and others to live. Problem Identification The environment in which we study these people can only be defined by first taking a look at possible reasons why the people have problems. Some of the problems discussed in Amazing Grace have festered throughout the United States for some time now. The high numbers of drug users in the community, the high amounts of gang-related violence, and the numerous cases of people who have contracted the AIDS virus are just some of the problems that have arisen in this ghetto. There are many differences between this community and others in the United States, one of which is that the government has grouped these people all together and made a ghetto of the lowest income families. This has ostracized them from the rest of the nation. It has given them many abandonment issues to deal with, while also telling them they are not worthy of living among the wealthier population. Environmental factors are involved in the problems arising in the South Bronx. Pollution, for example, could be the biggest source of the high number of children in the community who have asthma. Asthma is a condition in which one has trouble breathing. Without clean air, breathing for an asthmatic is almost impossible. A waste burner in the middle of the South Bronx causes a lot of pollution and makes the air the people breath, below safe levels of cleanliness. Another environmental factor that affects the resident's healths has to do with how most of the buildings in these neighborhoods are run down and infested with rats. Many of the buildings have no working elevators. This causes people to have to walk several flights of stairs each time they want to leave their apartments. This is very time consuming and tiresome. Then, when they find that there is so much violence and drugs in the street, that it is not safe to be out there anyway, they usually end up staying in their apartments for most of their free time. The cultural differences between these people and others of higher income communities is also a reason why they may have problems. Racism is very obvious to the people of the South Bronx, especially when they go outside of their district. If a woman from this area goes to a hospital outside of her district, a hospital that is more than likely wealthier and cleaner, she is usually turned away and told to go to a hospital in her own district. Others, who are admitted into these hospitals, are put on a special floor, mainly for the lower income or Medicaid patients. (Amazing Grace, p. 176) Another way the government discriminates against them is how they are housed. Most of the residents are living in government housing where the government pays their rent. When the government helped the people to get off the streets and out of homeless shelters and then put them into low cost housing, they put all of the residents in the same area. This created their ghetto and kept them segregated from the rest of the world. Level of Intervention If we look at these people through an exosystem, or "a setting in which a person does not participate but in which significant decisions are made affecting the person or others who interact directly with the person," we would ask the questions "are decisions made with the interests of the person and the family in mind?" (Social Work and Social Welfare, p.79) Did the government really think of the people of the South Bronx when they grouped all of the sick, troublesome, and low income families together in the same community? What kind of opportunity structure can people have when the government puts them into never ending situations such as giving them only enough money to get by, but not enough to get out of poverty? Some people say that it is not the government's responsibility to get people out of poverty, but then whose fault is it that they got there in the first place? No one asks to be poor, no one asks to be homeless. Cultural differences are an excuse some use for treating people of different backgrounds differently. But can the government also participate in this obvious form of racism? Our nation has tried for many many years now to stop racism and prejudices, but the problem is still prevalent in communities all over the world. We could also look at the people and their problems using a macrosystem, or the "'blueprints' for defining and organizing the institutional life of the society," (Social Work and Social Welfare, p.79) to decide if some groups are valued at the expense of others and do these groups experience oppression? As we have seen, the people of the South Bronx feel abandoned, this is a type of oppression. They are pushed away from the rest of society, where the only place they can turn is to this community that is filled with crime, violence, disease, and poverty. The residents have shared assumptions about what the government wants and expects from them. The government's attitude towards these people is such that the residents feel devalued and not worthy of being seen or heard. Without much hope of financial stability, many have turned to selling and/or using drugs. Selling drugs is seen as an easy way of making some money, and using drugs keeps a person on a high so they do not have to face reality. This just continues the cycle of problems they face since selling drugs to others keeps those others high, and staying on a drug induced high only prolongs the problems. Discussion and Recommendations Because of all the trials and tribulations they go through, you would think that everyone in this community would lose hope. This is not true for many of the children that Jonathan Kozol talked to and became friends with on his many journeys into their neighborhood. The children speak of their problems with great maturity. Many of these children are far older than their years on Earth, for they have felt true abandonment by our nation. Many of the issues they have had to deal with are not ones which we think of as children's issues. AIDS, for example, is not something that many think of as an issue that children talk about or even think about. For the children of the South Bronx though, it is a major issue. With "one-fourth of the child-bearing women in the neighborhoods where these children live testing positive for HIV," (Amazing Grace, inside cover) pediatric AIDS takes a high toll. The numbers of children who have had one or both parents die of AIDS in the South Bronx and surrounding areas is the highest among the nation. If the government keeps sending the low income and troublesome families into these neighborhoods, "it is likely that entire blocks will soon be home to mourning orphans, many of whom will follow their own parents to an early grave." (Amazing Grace, p. 194) The government's placement of a waste burner in the South Bronx is another prime example and a reason why the children feel like they are being "thrown away." Many residents believe that the waste burner is to blame for their health problems. Many children in the community are only able to breathe with the use of a breathing machine because their asthma has gotten so bad.(Amazing Grace, p. 170) Why then would the city decide to put one there? Did the city have the residents in mind when they built the waste burner in this community? The residents do not have much of a say in city, state or governmental issues. Positions in government are held by wealthier and more powerful people who more then likely have no first hand knowledge of life in a low income ghetto. How can we change this? To change a whole community involves much more then direct practice with individuals. Counseling people on an individual basis gives individual responses. The problems of the South Bronx are not with the individuals themselves, but rather community organizational problems. Changing the social policy of the community is of utter importance in making it a better place to live. The norms for the people in these neighborhoods have gotten to be that of violence and drugs. These are not healthy norms. To change them, the communities could use more education on social issues in the schools and communities to help the people learn to live healthier lifestyles, to get the word out that violence and disruptance are not all right, and to help the people obtain some community unity. Getting some of the well known community members involved in politics is another way they could get their voices heard and let the government know their needs and desires. Support groups held for people with AIDS, for people who have lost loved ones, and also for people who just need a place to talk about their emotions and get their frustrations out, would help the community as a whole and get more people involved in the healing process of that community. If the people in the South Bronx would act as a community bound together to help themselves and each other, there would be less tolerance for deviant behavior among it's members. Then the ones who act defiantly could be out-numbered, and the good citizens of the South Bronx could reclaim their homes and their lives. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\American Gov Sociology Paper.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The American Government: For the People, By the People? Every year millions of Americans vote on various laws. After all, our government motto is "for the people, by the people". However, how many of our choices are actually represented by the laws that are made? In recent years there have been many crucial debates concerning issues that represent the beliefs of a group of people, predominantly Christian. These issues concern topics such as same-sex marriage, using the word evolution, and abortion. Several states have made rulings on behalf of these issues, rather, largely on behalf of the religious Christians in their states. However, the First Amendment of the Constitution states that, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances" (www.usconstitution.net). The beliefs of many other people are unfairly not represented in these rulings because they are not the majority. Although our country institutes laws based on majority rulings, the government should not be allowed to institute laws that are biased against certain groups of people merely because morals are at stake. In a country that is often engaged in major international problems, the issue of gay marriage still manages to stir even the calmer people in the United States society into becoming irate. In the 1770's when we were fighting for independence from England, one of our countries prominent reasons for starting the American Revolution was in order to gain freedom of religion, and civil rights. Now, almost 300 years later religious orders are fighting to make sure than gay marriage does not become legal because their religions say that it is not morally right. Society's general attitude toward legalizing gay marriage is based on religion and "moral values", rather than on the politics and constitutional rights that we as a people chose for our country. Issues that will augment this case consist of religious beliefs versus politics, security, child welfare, and gender discrimination. Many religious activists state that gay marriage is not moral and that marriage is a sacred communion between a male and female, that can naturally result in the life of another human being. I do not feel that religion should be mixed with politics. It outrages me that so many people put all their efforts into making sure that it never becomes legal, when there are more valuable problems that they could be concerning themselves with in order to make a much more worthwhile difference in the world. In the past election eleven states passed anti-gay marriage amendments to their constitutions. The majority of Bush voters cited moral values as their reasoning for voting for President Bush (Witkowski 1) . Many of those moral values stem from religious beliefs. Legislations in various states have used moral values as reasoning behind banning same-sex marriages, sidestepping around the sensitive separation of church and state issue. Many advocate that marriage is a sacred union between a man and a woman. Ironically, many of those same people think that divorce is okay. In my opinion those people do not deserve to call marriage sacred when they will also be the same people to have affairs, get separated, or decide to divorce after twenty-five years of marriage. Therefore, they are not people who should have the right to say that marriage is such a "sacred" thing. Marriage, legally, is something that is mandated by the state, not legally by religion. A justice of the peace can legally marry any male and female. A marriage does not have to be related to a religious order. Therefore, why are some marriages restricted? It should not matter what gender the two people are, whether the same or different. Gender discrimination is illegal in our country. However, our own laws seem to violate and contradict each other, especially after the recent election. Another aspect of the situation is that many areas in our society grant married couples certain rights or privileges. For example, if a woman's husband were to die when they were only thirty years old, than that woman would still be entitled to receive his social security years later when he would have been of age. However, gay couples are deprived of this security in their relationships (with the exception of a few states such as Vermont and Massachusetts) merely because of their type of relationship. The issue of a gay couple having children also brings up another point of security within their relationships. Although, I personally believe that every child should be entitled to a mother and father, that does not change the fact that gay couples can adopt a child through various ways. Thus, if that is taken into account, if the guardian gay parent dies, does our government really want to take that child out of their home because the other gay parent was not legally their parent? There should be laws that protect the welfare of the child, and if the parents were given the legal right to marry than there would not be a whole series of legal problems if one of the parents were to die. Not only is gay marriage not allowed, but school officials in Austin, Texas have called upon the publishers of a school-used textbook to change the wording of it to unmistakably state that marriage is "between a man and a woman" (Official 1). The textbooks have stated "'asexual stealth phrases' such as 'individuals who marry' instead of husbands and wives" (Official 1). Robert Ellis, the executive director of the Lesbian/Gay Rights Lobby of Texas said that the officials are tying to institute a "religious rights agenda" into the students' textbooks (Official 2). People So why is gay marriage truly illegal? The real reason does not lie in any sort of rules or regulations, but in the prejudice of the people who make those alleged "rules and regulations" in the first place. People, who I believe let their own personal values and morals, or rather their own religions stand in the way of what should be simply a political matter and nothing more. The reasons gay couples should be allowed to marry outweighs the reasons they should not, especially considering all the reasons that they should not be allowed to marry consist of beliefs that stem from a person's own morals. Legal issues should not be mixed with religion. It is every citizen's right in this country to have our own beliefs, and thus gay people should be allowed theirs instead of being discriminated against. In addition to marriage disputes, religion is appearing in other areas of the classroom. In Georgia the state Schools Superintendent Kathy Cox proposed earlier this year to remove the term "evolution" from science curriculums in public schools. She said that the term "changes over time" would be more suitable. The proposal never went through but the underlying meanings are critical. Religion is now not only limiting marriages; it is limiting what students learn in school. Currently a federal lawsuit is being heard in Georgia over school officials placing a disclaimer on high school biology texts that said, "Evolution should be critically considered" in 2002 (Some Worry 1). Science instructors argued that the disclaimer made the state look "backward" and that it sends the meaning that evolution did not happen. Wes McCoy, a high school teacher, said that he was afraid that "college admissions counselors would think less of their science educations, thinking they hadn't been taught evolution or something" (Some Worry 2). Carlos Moreno, a molecular biologist at Emory University, said that the prestigious northern universities look down upon southerner's educations, due to issues like these. Why is it such a big deal? Parents like Marjorie Rogers think that the evolution theory is atheistic and insults the intelligence of the students because they are taught only evolution, and not the religious reasons. The evolution theory may be atheistic, but it is science and it is proven. Perhaps, the Bible should be the book with the disclaimer. The latest United States Commission on Civil Rights, an assessment of President Bush's civil rights record, was put the Internet in September. Of Bush's public statements about civil rights, only seventeen have actually outlined plans of action. Over half of those have pertained to "faith initiatives" (NYTimes.com). With a President running our country who is guilty himself of mixing state and church, how can our society hope to keep the two separated? While the country was formed with freedom of religion as one of its foremost attributes our President in 2004 seeks to impose his own religious beliefs upon the whole of our country. In 2002, the CIA World Factbook published the percentages of religions in the U.S. Fifty-two percent were Protestant, twenty-four percent were Roman Catholic, two percent were Mormon, one percent was Jewish, one percent was Muslim, ten percent made up other religions, and ten percent were of no religion. Although approximately half of the population may be Protestant, and another quarter has similar "moral values" no one should be able to impose an order's religious standards on people who do not believe in them when the Constitution states, "no law should be made respecting a religious establishment". Even if the changes are made under the guise of "moral values". Di Chiaro 1 f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Amerigo Vespucci.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Amerigo Vespucci, an Italian explorer was born in Florence, Italy in the year of 1454. Florence was a good city to grow up in for young Amerigo, because of the growing interest in the field of exploration. Some of the adults told young Amerigo about the wonders and riches of the Indies. Like the other Italian boys in his village, undoubtedly Amerigo was fascinated with by those tales. Amerigo lived in the Ognissanti section of Florence with a lot of the Vespucci family. The Vespucci family was pretty well off, so Amerigo thought that he was in line for a lot of money after his father's passing, but his brother Antonio was highly favored over the rest of the children. Most of the Vespuccis living with Amerigo were merchants dealing in wine, olive oil, or wool. Not all of the Vespuccis were merchants, a small percentage of the Vespuccis were bankers. All of the family liked art and learning, poetry and music just like the rest of the Florentines. The ruler of these interesting Florentines was Lorenzo de' Medicior, who was also know as Lorenzo the Magnificant. When Amerigo was older, but still a young man, his father Antastagio Vespucci sent him to the Monestary of San Marco to study with his uncle Giorgio. In his new school, Amerigo along with the other European boys learned Latin, math, grammar, history, Italian and Greek Literature, geography and astronomy. Amerigo learned to love astronomy, because he was fascinated about all of the shapes the stars made, that his uncle called constellations. Amerigo thought about traveling about the Earth, but he thought it to be impossible, because he was tought in school that the equator was a ring of fire that made the waters boil there. Amerigo's hopes of traveling the world were become more realistic over time. The first thing that sparked this was the invention of the caravel, a light, narrow, 60 to 70 foot boat. The Portugese, that started making this boat had learned to rig the caravels to sail well against the winds and currents of the rough oceans. Another reality check occured when Amerigo was 19. What happend was the Portugese finally sailed to the equator and found no boiling seas, which proved the Roman theory that young Amerigo was taught in school wrong. But then came a period in his life that Amerigo realized he would never see the world, for Florence, unlike the nation of Portugal, which had humongus navies, where Florence had just tiny merchant ships. Later on in Amerigos life, Christoper Columbus went on a great journey to the Indies. People had thought that he and crew were swallowed up by a sea of mud. Just about 7 months later, though Columbus came back with gold, tropical animals, and copper-skinned people he named "Indians". When all the excitement was over, Columbus spoke to Vespucci and Gionatti Bernardi a friend of Amerigos about a voyage back to the island Columbus found called Hispaniola. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\an attempt at understanding dreams.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ An Attempt At Understanding Dreams A few months ago I watched a movie called "The Candyman". It was a horror movie about this psychotic woman who massacres people around her but has no idea what she's doing. An imaginary creature called "The Candyman" is appearing to her and talking to her, and she actually thinks that he's the one who is doing the murdering. Anyway, it was a scary movie and I had a bit of fun freaking out my mother that night by telling her that "The Candyman" will appear to her in her dreams (although I didn't think about the consequences if he really appeared to her and she killed all of us while we were sleeping!). Fortunately for my mother (and the rest of us), she didn't dream about him that night. A few weeks later, I did, though! However, I didn't get very scared in my dream because thanks to a certain technique that I developed a few years ago, I can somehow avoid any dangers in my dreams by knowing that I'm dreaming and that nothing bad can happen to me. This helped me in a lot of annoying dreams before because when I'm in trouble I sometimes just "fly away" in certain situations in the dream or I just ignore it and tell the bad guy that he can't hurt me because I know it's just a dream. I have no idea until today how I'm able to do that, but it really makes me wonder. I also don't know why I had that dream a few weeks after the movie and not the same night I watched it, especially that I had completely forgotten about it until the night of the dream, at least consciously. Anyway, I decided to use the chance of having to write a paper for Psychology 201 (especially that I hardly write papers because I'm an Engineering major), and I almost instantly knew that I was going to explore the world of dreams and the process of dreaming. Before I go any further though, I think I know from the start that no matter how much material I gather or people I interview, I will not be able to explain the process of dreaming because I believe that it is so complex and mysterious that no man can claim to really understand it. The maximum that I wish to achieve is just to admire this incredible phenomenon and to at least try to clarify some of the little details surrounding it. Some questions come to my mind immediately when I think about dreams: What causes dreams? Does everybody dream? Do dreams have significant meanings in reality? Why do some dreams seem so weird and out of touch with reality? What causes nightmares? Can someone be aware that he is dreaming? Why are we unable to remember most of our dreams? I decided to try to answer at least some of these nagging questions. The problems with dreams, however, is that they are so diverse in nature; I can spend the rest of my life interviewing people and listening to their dreams and I still might not have something concrete. But nevertheless, it's worth a shot. When I told my friend Mahmoud about the paper I'm writing, he immediately elected his fiancee Safinaz as an interview candidate, because she often has these bizarre dreams and nightmares. So I headed for my first victim. Safinaz told me that she recently had this dream that she was a young girl and that she saw another girl eating a watermelon, so she asked her to give her a piece but the other girl refused. Safy kept crying until her grandmother went down and bought her this huge watermelon that weighed 50 kg, and Safy cut it in two pieces and started eating it. Now this seems like a fairly normal dream except for one thing: Safy's grandmother died when she was 4 years old, and the event about the watermelon actually happened in real life with almost the same details before her grandmother died, but Safy had no recollection of it. She only became aware of it after she told her mother about the dream and her mother told her that this incident actually happened about 18 years ago. I think that this dream clearly shows that some information is buried deep in the brain and we have no access to it, until it suddenly just presents itself in one of our dreams. Another person I interviewed was Ranya Abdel Hamid. Her dreams are no less bizarre than those of Safinaz. She dreamt recently that she was being chased by this mad cow in a dark, long alley where there was no exit. The cow had almost reached her, but fortunately she woke up in the right time. Mariam Farrag is another one I interviewed. She keeps dreaming that her boyfriend travels away without telling her and she never sees him again. Actually Safinaz had a similar dream where she dreamt that her fiancee traveled somewhere where there was a beach without telling her, and as it turns out, Mahmoud - who was taking a summer course at UCLA at the time - did go to Santa Barbara for the week-end (without taking his fiancee's precious approval from Cairo!). Off the subject, Mahmoud and I once decided to go to Alexandria for a day, again without him telling her, and the tire exploded on the way and we almost died! I hope it was just a bad coincidence and not her magic powers. By the way, Mahmoud is very loyal to her although he goes some places without telling her sometimes, but she is just too jealous. But this is really off the subject now! Anyway, dreams such as Ranya's, Mariam's , and Safy's seem to reflect the inner fears of these people; whether it's fear of catching the mad cow's disease, fear of loosing a loved one, or any other form of fear for that matter. Freud suggested that dreaming is an excellent chance for our inner fears and desires to come to surface and present themselves clearly - or perhaps less clearly sometimes - before us. Everybody, at some point or another, must have had some experience with dreams that supports this argument. I know I have when I dream of being turned down by the girl I like, failing a course, loosing someone, getting my dream girl, becoming successful in life, etc. All these are feelings inside of me that reflect my fears and desires and somehow try to predict my future by setting up a certain scenario that takes place in my dreams. My mother keeps dreaming up to this day that she is sitting in the classroom taking an exam she is not prepared for, and that she fails it. Obviously my mother finished school some time ago (and she never failed exams) but the fact that she has this dream might reflect her fears, not of failing exams, but perhaps fear of failure in general. Some dreams are very controversial when it comes to trying to interpret them. For example Nadine, whose father has died five years ago, had a dream once where her father appeared to her and wanted to take her with him somewhere, but her grandmother, who is also dead, tells her father that Nadine is still young and that she can't go to where her father wants to take her yet. Dreams like this have always been controversial, and some people suggest that when someone dreams of a dead person it is the dead person who is actually trying to contact them. However, no proof exists on either side of the argument. Another common dream category is when people dream that they are falling. Teymour Ghaleb mentioned this as one of his dreams when I interviewed him. He dreams that he is falling down from a high cliff, but he wakes up before he reaches the ground. This particular type of dreams is quite controversial and I saw Dr. Moustafa Mahmoud, the famous Egyptian writer and philosopher, talking about it once on his TV program. He said that when someone dreams that he is falling down, it is in reality his spirit trying to escape from his body or in other words, that person is dying. The body usually clings on to the spirit and does not allow it to escape when it is not time for him to die, and that is why the person never hits the ground. If he did, he would actually die in his sleep. Dr. Mahmoud goes on to tell the story of this young man who dreamt that he was falling down and he hit the ground. That person was rescued from a severe stroke that he got during his dream. This is just a theory, however, and I don't think there is enough concrete evidence to support it. One thing I realized in my interviews is that there are hardly any guys that shared their dreams with me. I don't know if it's because the ones I asked really have no interesting dreams to share or if they are more reluctant than the girls to talk about their dreams. Perhaps this is an observation that provides a topic for another research paper! The interview that I learned the most from was with a psychiatrist by the name of Dr. Farouk Hassan, whom I had the great fortune of meeting in Abu Talat, a beautiful beach at the northern coast. Dr. Hassan, to my great luck, is our neighbor there and my father knows him a little bit. This was a great opportunity for me to interview him and I went to his villa one evening with certain questions and goals in mind. He was very friendly, and I think the information he provided me with proved to be essential for this paper. Dr. Hassan told me that there are two extremes as to the actual cause of dreams. One extreme is the Freudian idea that dreams are caused by the subconscious thoughts and desires, while the other extreme holds that dreams are caused by random "noise" in the neurons without any special meaning. The answer is probably somewhere in the middle, with the idea that small parts of memory and imagination combine to form dreams, at conscious and subconscious levels. Dr. Hassan also explained that everybody experiences dreams; in fact, not only humans, but also all kinds of mammals. People that say they never dream probably just don't remember their dreams. Dreams occur in a period of sleep called REM (rapid eye movement), where the brain becomes very active and our eyes move back and forth very quickly. REM sleep occurs up to 30 times in one night, and their periods become longer as the night progresses. The last period can last up to 40 minutes. That's why people usually just remember their last couple of dreams. In order to remember the dreams, one should concentrate hard right after waking up. Sometimes keeping a pencil and paper handy helps because you can write down the dream upon waking up. Some times people suddenly remember their dreams later in the day, without even thinking about it. I managed to get some more information about REM sleep from Rita Atkinson's Introduction To Psychology. It says in the book that there is a period of REM sleep where we experience dreams, but there are also four other periods of non-REM (NREM) sleep. During those periods the brain is very relaxed, and the dreams that we have are not really dreams, but rather thoughts and stimuli from the outside world. This means that our senses are operating normally and we can hear different noises around us, and our brain is thinking. This is the time when several great inventors solved their problems and discovered solutions and ways for great inventions and ideas, as we often hear. During REM sleep, on the other hand, the brain is very active but isolated from outside stimuli, and the body seems to be paralyzed. Giant neurons that come from the brain stem drive the brain and fool it into thinking that the motor neurons are active. That's why we think that we are actually seeing or moving, although the body itself is not doing anything (Hobson, 1989). I now return to the interview with Dr. Hassan. On the question of the possibility of dreams having significant meanings in our lives he said that this is really up to the individual and we cannot generalize. In other words, it is nonsense when someone dreams of something and goes to someone else who tells him what his dream really means. The reason for that is that each human being has an individual character, and an outsider cannot jump into his brain and tell him what his dreams mean for him. Everyone must decide for himself what his dreams mean for him and what they indicate in his daily life. I asked Dr. Hassan if dreams can predict the future, and he told me that this has been reported in several cases, but this might be due to coincidence, or maybe the unconscious tying together of known information. A few laboratory studies have been made to study predictive dreams, but the results were varied because these kinds of dreams were difficult to study in laboratory settings. According to Dr. Hassan, some people keep getting the same dreams over and over again. This is a sign that there are certain thoughts that occupy the dreamer much, either consciously or unconsciously. Sometimes these dreams are quite unpleasant, and they indicate that there is a certain problem that the person should face soon. As for the case of the person dreaming that he is falling down, Dr. Hassan has an explanation that is no less interesting than that of Dr. Mahmoud. He attributes the feeling of falling down to a sudden contraction that takes place in the big body muscles, which is known as a myoclonic jerk. The exact cause is unknown, but it is probably some disturbance in the brain's functions in the first stage of sleep. The heart rate goes down, the breathing slows, and the brain might interpret this as the body dying, so it sends an electrical pulse to the muscles. He does not believe that if the dreamer actually hits the ground he will die. The part of Dr. Hassan's interview that was of great interest for me was when he started explaining to me about being aware that you are dreaming, especially that this is something that happens to me personally. This phenomenon is known as lucid dreaming. Lucid dreamers can achieve a certain degree of control over their dreams. For example, they can decide to face the dream figure that is intending to harm them, instead of just running away. They know that they can't be harmed because they are dreaming, so they just relax in the dream. Lucidity is a technique that can be developed by hard concentration in the dream and by always trying to test the reality of the dream, and by testing the environment to see if you are awake or dreaming. Some people achieve very high levels of lucidity where they can create their own dream world in the dream, take any actions, and live any fantasies that they can imagine. However, some people would argue that it is nicer to just experience the dream as it comes, without being able to control it by being lucid. Concerning nightmares, Dr. Hassan explained that they are usually caused by some serious problems that affect the person, possibly unconsciously. It's a phenomenon that is difficult to analyze because sometimes it is not clear in nightmares where the real problem lies. Dreamers experience feelings of anger, guilt, sadness, fear, or anxiety in nightmares, and they usually wake up very distressed. Although children have the largest share of nightmares, many adults experience them at least once a month. An interesting fact is that nightmares can be caused by certain drugs or medications, or by illness and fever. Some traumatic events and accidents also cause terrible nightmares that are repeated over and over again. To get rid of nightmares is a very difficult issue, because it depends on the dreamer and on the type of nightmare. Some nightmares can be avoided by learning to become a lucid dreamer, and some nightmares just go away with time. Sometimes the person has to deal with his problems that are causing these nightmares. This is where the interview with Dr. Hassan ended, and I must say that I got much more than I hoped for. However, I'm getting the feeling that the more I learn about the issue, the more I realize how incredibly huge and complex it is. For my last source of information I decided to use the Internet. As I expected, I typed the phrase "sleep and dreams", and in a matter of seconds I was bombarded with hundreds of articles and links. I found several dream analysis links where you share your dreams on the Internet, and sometimes you get them analyzed. I also found some frequently asked questions about dreams and nightmares, many of which are like the ones answered in my interview with Dr. Hassan. I printed some articles offering dream interpretations, and I chose three of them to attach with this paper. One is about the dream of being chased, and the cause is attributed to outside pressures from a job or a relationship. The second article interprets the dream of flying, and it explains it as the dreamer's feelings of freedom, glory, and success, that make him fly over cities and hover around above all people. The last article interprets the common dream of being unprepared for an exam, which my mother often gets. They say that the people that get this dream were usually never unprepared for exams in real life, but they tend to evaluate themselves very harshly in their daily lives and who face up to challenging situations. When I think about this it makes sense, at least where my mother is concerned. In conclusion, I think that in spite of all the scientific material available on the process of dreaming, it is far from being unraveled. Such an attempt was made as early as 350 B.C. by Aristotle. He stated that "the dream is a sort of presentation which occurs in sleep" and that "not every presentation which occurs in sleep necessarily a dream. For in the first place. some persons when asleep actually, in a certain way, perceive sounds, light, savour, and contact; feebly, however, remotely. Nor should the true thoughts, as distinct from the mere presentations, which occur in sleep be called dreams. The dream proper is a presentation based on the movement of sense impressions, when such presentation occurs during sleep" (Aristotle 'On Dreams' ).This ingenious paper by Aristotle managed to define dreams and to distinguish the thoughtlike dreams that we encounter during NREM sleep from the real dreams that we experience in REM sleep. Nevertheless, even more than 2,000 years after this paper, our information about dreams is still very limited when compared to other areas that human beings achieved great success in, such as science and technology. The main problem is the great diversity of the issue and the difficulty of conducting physical experiments and analysis on such a phenomenon. It is a phenomenon that defies the laws of physics and society, and the limits of dreams are stretched as far as the human imagination goes. The best we can do is to give limited explanations that we think might work with us, but the true secrets of dreaming will never be uncovered. We can just share our dreams and try to understand some events that happen to dreamers all around the world, which makes us appreciate dreams more and more. Works Cited Abdel Hamid, Ranya, 22 yrs., Mechanical Engineering major at AUC. Aristotle, "On Dreams", 350 B.C. Atkinson, Rita L., "Introduction To Psychology", 1993. Dreams Interpretation Services & Resources, "http://www1.rider.edu/~suler/dreams.html", 1996. Farrag, Mariam, 20 yrs., Political Science major at AUC. Ghaleb, Teymour, 23 yrs., Marketing Analyst at Daewoo Co. Hassan, Farouk, Dr., Practicing Psychiatrist. Rafik, Nadine, 17 yrs., student at DSB. Shawky, Safinaz, 21 yrs., Economics major at Cairo University. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\An Introduction To AfroCaribbean Migratio.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ My decision to write in response to Gary Soto's work, "Like Mexicans" was influenced for the most part because of the similarities between myself and Gary Soto, and our families included. Gary Soto is a Mexican American male, who grew up in the San Joaquin Valley in the industrial part of a town called Fresno. His grandparents came to this Great Valley in search of creating a better life for themselves and their families. I am also a Mexican American male who was born and raised in the San Joaquin Valley in a small town called Porterville. My grandparents migrated with their children, my mother, father, and their brothers and sisters in hopes of creating a better life for themselves as well. At the time economic betterment meant working as a hired slave for minimal income and keeping your mouth shut. After all, you were nothing more than a wetback who came to America to reap her benefits.(This ludicrous ideology is still present today) Gary Soto's grandparents and my grandparents, although they may be a generation behind one another, I am sure were exposed to many of the same hardships and or social barriers. It was not uncommon back then as it is not uncommon today for Mexican families with minimal work skills to be forced into the fields to work with their children alongside in hopes of escaping poverty. For the most part such families remained poverty stricken due to unfair and illegal wages and work conditions. However irrelevant this all may sound, facing similar hardships or obstacles will often create a sense of unity among those who are affected by such conditions. In short, I feel that not only do Gary Soto and I share a common ethnic origin, but all that comes with our origin, be it pride, shame, or ideology. "Like Mexicans" is a short story in which Gary Soto is constantly being reminded that he should marry his own kind. His own kind being one of Mexican descent, and of poverty and refraining from others, especially "Okies" as his grandmother used to always say. Soto ends up marrying a Japanese woman, not a Mexican. But he still has to deal with his internal struggle and acceptance of this choice. One cannot be looked down upon for questioning oneself and the decisions one makes, especially when it comes to marrying after being raised in a household that reinforced the belief , "Marry Your Own". My mother and my father never told me that I should marry one of my own. My mother always told me to do what ever it would take to make myself happy. Now that I think about it, she did sometimes tell me that I could meet a nice girl at church. "Mijito," she always began, "Don't you want to marry a nice girl? There are a lot of nice girls that go to church. How can you want to marry a girl who will sleep around?" I was reluctant to tell her that the nice girl's parents were saying the same thing to them about me. Gary Soto's mother never said too much to him in regards to marrying any one type of woman in particular. "If you find a good Mexican girl, marry her of course," (page 696) she once replied to him. She did however respond in a worrisome manner and with hesitation when she realized that her son was going to marry a Japanese woman. I was in love and their was no looking back. She was the one. I told my mother who was slapping hamburger into patties. "Well, sure if you want to marry her," she said. But the more I talked, the more concerned she became.(page 697) I recall vividly when my mother met Tanya, my wife, for the first time. She said that she liked Tanya, but that she didn't think she was really my type. What then was my type? After marrying Tanya, I began to wonder if she was "Mexicana" enough for me. After all, she was very liberal, strong and open minded. I think this is why my mother used to tell me she didn't think Tanya was my type. My mother reminds me of Gary's grandmother, very submissive, docile, your stereotypical Mexicana. Tanya didn't like to cook, she was in no way submissive, and was at times what my mother would term as unlady like. Gary Soto's grandmother believed that just about everyone was an "Okie" if they were not Mexicans. Gary's grandmother, although I am sure she wanted the best for him was very stereotypical. She once again reminds me of my mother in this way. Their weakness in being stereotypical is almost forgivable and cute. I think it is more out of ignorance of others and there is no real harm meant. One thing we must keep in mind as well, is the time in which this story took place and the exposure the grandmother might have had to others outside of her immediate family. My mother lived a sheltered life and really never had the opportunity to be exposed to the real world. My mother had a habit of trying to make me believe that children who did not obey their parents were in general bad children. Parents were the divine authority and should never be questioned, since they are the parents they always know what's best. This was at least what my mother was taught by her mother and can you blame her for inheriting such an ideology. For her, everyone who wasn't Mexican, black, or Asian were Okies. The French were Okies, the Italians in suits were Okies. When I asked about the Jews, whom I had read about she asked for a picture. I rode home on my bicycle and returned with a calendar depicting the important races of the world. "Pues si, son Okies tambien!" (page 696) I also found Gary's Soto's grandmother amusing because she would ridiculously lump people together. This however is easier than trying to recognize each and every different ethnic group that exist on the face of the earth, but it is our differences that often make us so unique. One particular part in this short story that really disturbed me, was the fact that Gary and his friend Scott at a young age could make the distinction among their different ethnic groups. By this I mean that there was an acknowledgment that both Gary and his friend Scott came from different ethnicity groups and should therefore keep within their groups when considering marrying. Couples often marry those of the same ethnic identity for a sense of familiarity. One may also want to spend their life with an individual who shares the same cultural ideology. This shared ideology could be political, religious, economic etc. A shared or common ideology reduces conflict and creates a sense of unity. Marriage after all is supposedly the act of two people uniting for the rest of their lives. I would not be a bit surprised if Scott at the same time was being reinforced by family members or peers that he too should stay among his own people. "No offense, Scott," I said with an orange slice in my mouth, "but I would never marry an Okie" We walked in step almost touching, with a sled of shadows behind us. "No offense, Gary," Scott said , "but I would never marry a Mexican." (page 696) I often have similar conversations with my good friend and housemate Adrian, in which I often find myself believing that I should marry a good Mexicana. I haven't been reinforced by family to this ideology. I think it is due more towards the frustration I have with our social structure. I have the sense that I could relate better to someone of common descent. Someone who has endured the same pain and or confusion of ones own distinctiveness, social class, ethnicity, etc.. I can honestly see myself living the rest of my life with a person who is "Other" than white. However wrong or contradictory it may sound, my feelings are such. I felt that Gary and Scott shouldn't have felt the way they did about marrying their own, yet I shared the same feelings. I believe in the pride of ones own heritage and descent but I also believe in a diversified world. I often tell people that as long as you love an individual their ethnicity should have no significance. I now have to ask myself whether or not I really believe that. It's very confusing for me, as I am sure Gary was confused. Gary is somewhat reluctant at first to go to his future mother in law's house with his fiancee Carolyn, but later is relieved upon his discovery. When we pulled into the drive, I panicked and begged Carolyn to make a U turn and go back so we could talk about it over soda. She pinched my cheek calling me a "Silly Boy." I felt better though when I got out of the car and saw the house: the chipped paint, a cracked window, boards for a walk to the back door. There were rusting cars near the barn. A tractor with a net of spiderwebs under a mulberry. A field, a bale of barbed wire like children's scribbling leaning against an empty chicken coop.(page 697) Gary Soto's discovery of his fiancee and her family was that they were similar to Mexicans. "These people were just like Mexicans, I thought. Poor people." (page 698) Of course not all Mexicans are poor, but a large percentage of the Mexican population do have to overcome many more obstacles and hardships, such as racism and discrimination in order to sustain the equivalent social status of a middle class Caucasian group. "On the highway, I felt happy, pleased by it all. I patted Carolyn's thigh. Her people were like Mexicans, only different."(page 698) Asian immigrants are subjected to many of the same social and economic barriers as are Mexicanos who migrate from Mexico. They are often wrongfully perceived as a group of people who are coming to take advantage of an economically rich system.(Our economic system may seem plentiful in comparison to their economic system back home) They are therefore looked upon as "The Other" and are treated as such. Gary Soto at the end of this short story I believe overcame his self questioning of whether or not Carolyn was right for him. It is a shame that one is socially conditioned so much that he or she would have to justify their validity and wanting of another human being. I suspect that this is simply just another characteristic out of a million that has evolved out of a complex social order. It saddens me sometimes to think that I often believe that there are people for me and people that are not for me. In actuality, there are no rules to relationships that determine who one ought to marry. These are all what I will term social constraints. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\ANCIENT EGYPT OLD MIDDLE AND NEW KINGDOM.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ANCIENT EGYPT: OLD, MIDDLE, AND NEW KINGDOM Outline I. Thesis: Ancient Egyptians were the basis for many western traditions. Their influences are noticable in art, architecture, and religion. II. The Old Kingdom A. Zoser, the first pharaoh. 1. built the famed Step Pyramid 2. brought unity to Egypt B. Religion 1. creation 2. gods C. Art D. Downfall of the Old Kingdom III. The Middle Kingdom A. Pyramids B. Middle Kingdom religion 1. Myth of Osiris 2. Similarties between the myth of Osiris and Christian beliefs C. Middle Kingdom art D. Downfall of the Middle Kingdom IV. The New Kingdom A. Valley of the Kings B. Shift in religion 1. Aton 2. Akhenaton C. New art form, naturalistic D. Downfall of the New Kingdom V. Conclusion ========================================================================================== The ancient Egyptians are considered among many to be the civilization upon which much of the western world's views and attitudes are based. Everything from religion, to architecture, to art has been handed down, generation by generation, to us in the present day. Although many of the ancient Egyptians' traditions have been modified or altered, the majority of their core principles remains constant. Yet, despite the ancient Egyptians' conservative nature, there were some changes within the infrastructure of their society. Throughout the ages known as the Old Kingdom, Middle Kingdom, and New Kingdom, there has been alterations to their religion, art, and architecture. Internal forces, as well as outside influences, have molded ancient Egyptian civilization. This paper will attempt to determine these forces which changed the Egyptians. Modifications of Egyptian life were subtle, but noticeable and significant nonetheless. Art, architecture, and religion will be the focus of this paper. Let us begin at the beginning, with the Old Kingdom. The Old Kingdom began in the year 2700 B.C. and ended 2200 B.C. The pharaohs, or kings, of this time include the third through the sixth dynasty, beginning with Djoser and ending with Pepi II. Djoser, who ruled from 2700 B.C. to 2650 B.C., changed his name to the more commonly known Zoser. It was Zoser who made the famed Step Pyramid, the first pyramid to be constructed. Pyramids were erected for the pharaoh in the belief that it would serve as a stairway to the heavens, and allow the divine pharaoh to reach the Milky Way, or the Nile river in the sky. The pharaoh's afterlife was extremely dependent on a proper burial, as were the afterlives of those who served him; therefore, it was imperative that the pyramids be erected. These pyramids could not have been built through coercion or slavery, for such an architectural feat could only have been accomplished by a labor force of 70,000, and there is no possible way for a small group of rulers to force the people to labor day in and day out without some kind of reward in the afterlife. Previously, no such architectural feat had ever been dreamed of, let alone actually thought out and complete. The properties of stone, massiveness, strength, and durability, had not even be contemplated by masons and architects, yet under the guidance of Imhotep, the royal architect of the pharaoh Zoser, this magnificent structure was erected (David 14). It is of little wonder why the Greeks, when they listed the seven wonders of the world, placed the great Step Pyramid at the top. By the fourth dynasty, the pharaohs were buried in true pyramids, that is, all sides were flat planes meeting at some certain point, and the angle of each corner was 52 degrees. The three built at Gizeh, for Cheops, Chephren, and Mycenrinus, were the peak of achievement of this field. The pyramids were of better architecture, more advanced design, and longer durability; however, by the fifth dynasty, the pyramids were significantly smaller and the construction was of a lower quality, the result of which can be seen today; the pyramids of the fifth dynasty are little more than mounds of rubble (David 14). The reason for the decline in the pyramids has to do with the shifting of power due to new religious attitudes. The religion of the ancient Egyptians was rather complex. Creation was believed to have been made out of darkness and chaos. With the physical creation of earth, mankind, and gods came the abstract concepts of law, religion, ethics, and kingship. Those were to last for eternity, which solidifies the notion that ancient Egyptians were very conservative. They believed there was no change; the universe worked according to a certain pattern governed by principles laid down at the beginning of time. Ancient Egyptians took the seasons to mean life was a cylindrical process, and that there was life after death (David 81). There were two distinct groups of gods: local and state, and household. The household gods were the gods of the people; they protected the poor, who worshipped them in their own humble surroundings (David 78). These deities possessed no temples of their own and had no religious doctrines, but it was to these gods the people offered their prayers to. The local gods were usually animal, such as Bastet, the cat goddess, or Sobeck, the crocodile god. When the chief of a particular village came into state power, it was his local god that became a nationally-renowned state god. The first god to do this was Re, the sun-god. He had a steady rise in power beginning in the second dynasty, and by the fifth dynasty Re was considered the chief god of state. It was believed that the pharaoh was a god himself, and that his power was to be revered and worshipped. Such was the case with Zoser, and the pharaohs of the preceding dynasties. But the priesthood that worshipped Re began a slow steady usurpation of power from the pharaohs in the fifth dynasty. The divinity of the pharaoh was reduced in magnitude; he was no longer a god himself, but merely the son of the god Re (David 16). The decline in the quality as well as the size of pyramids were the result of this shift in power. The art of the time flourished nowhere else like it did in Egypt. Art in the Old Kingdom was not simply for beauty, but for utility as well. Everything was to have a purpose. For that reason, statues were not erected in marketplaces, but rather in a temple where they might serve some practical purpose in the afterlife (Breasted 102). Eventually, the pharaohs themselves became a major contributor in their own downfall. There were marriages of non-royal women, as was the case with Pepi I. This led to the belief that the divinity of the royal line was diluted, thereby reducing the pharaoh's power. In addition, the royal treasury was rapidly being depleted due to maintenance costs of pyramids, the construction of new pyramids, and numerous gifts to the priesthood and nobles. It wasn't long before the priesthood and the nobles were as wealthy as the pharaoh himself (David 16). After Pepi II, central government was completely lost, and anarchy reigned. It wasn't until the Middle Kingdom that Egypt began to recapture the glory it once held. This era endured from 2050 B.C. until 1800 B.C., and included the twelfth dynasty (Wilson vvi). Pyramids were once again being used to bury the pharaohs, after a lapse, where kings were buried in rock-hewn tombs during the first intermediate period, but were never anywhere near the size and splendor of those built in the Old Kingdom. There were new pyramids at Lisht, Dahshur, El-Lahun, and Hawara. There were also a great number of temples erected, most of which were later dismantled and incorporated in the structure of other temples (David 20). The once-absolute sun god, Re, was replaced by the god Osiris. The appeal of Osiris was that he promised a more democratic afterlife; the common man could look forward to his own life after death. Osiris began as an obscure local god and rose to great power due to the wide public appeal. The myth of Osiris has its root in mortality. Supposedly, King Osiris was a human king who established order and brought the elements of civilization to his people. His jealous and evil brother Seth had murdered him to gain Osiris' throne, a plot not unlike that of Shakespeare's Hamlet. Isis, Osiris' wife, fled to the delta of the Nile and gave birth to Osiris' son, Horus, posthumously. There she trained Horus to extract their revenge upon Seth. When the confrontation between Seth and Horus occurred, both were severely injured, but it was Horus who finally defeated Seth. Through powerful charms placed by Isis, Osiris was restored to life, albeit as a king of the dead and judge of the underworld. The charm that Osiris had over other deities was the fact that he was once human, and had triumphed over death. This bears striking resemblance to Christian's beliefs that Jesus had died and was resurrected. Isis had become the symbol for a loving and devoted wife, Horus was the embodiment of a courageous and righteous son, whereas Seth became the symbol of absolute evilness. This, too, bears an uncanny resemblance to many Christian beliefs; Isis could be compared to the Virgin Mary, and Satan to Seth. Although great changes were made in religion, even greater advances in Egyptian art were evident. The Middle Kingdom bore witness to the finest pieces of jewelry ever crafted in Egypt. Craftsmen used semi-precious stones inlaid in gold and laden with numerous designs to grace the crowns, armlets, and collars worn by the royal princesses (David 20). Once again, the pharaoh was supreme, and this is reflected in the sculptures of them, as there is a grim determination and disillusionment about the features, perhaps to guard against such mistakes that were made in the Old Kingdom. In addition, the Middle Kingdom was renowned for it's literary masterpieces. The Shipwrecked Sailor was the first literary piece to have a story within a story. In addition, the hieroglyphic language of the period is today regarded as the classical form, and "Middle Egyptian" is the first stage of the language which would-be Egyptologists learn. The Middle Kingdom came to an end when the Hyksos invaded Egypt and took over. It wasn't until 1465 B.C. that Egypt regained control of their country. The ensuing era, known as the New Kingdom, lasted from 1465 B.C. until 1165 B.C. The New Kingdom included the eighteenth through twentieth dynasty. It was the eighteenth dynasty that produced a series of active, able pharaohs who conquered many lands and brought prosperity back to Egypt. Pyramids were no longer used as burial grounds; instead, the famed Valley of Kings is the final resting place for the pharaohs of this age. The tombs were hewn out of the native rock; sadly, with the exception of Tutankhamun, many of them fell victim to grave-robbers. The religion of this period would take a drastic turn. The god Re came back into power when he was unified with another god called Amun. This new god was known as Amun-Re, and was once again the focus of the priesthood. This priesthood was gaining great strength, as they did at the end of the Old Kingdom, by selling magic charms and elixirs to the common people with promises that it will aid in their passage to a favorable afterlife. The pharaoh Amenhotep IV made a revolutionary change in the whole religious system by disbanding the priesthood, defiling all of the old temples, and placing in power a new god, Aton. Amenhotep would change his name, which meant "Amun rests," to Akhenaton, which meant "Aton is satisfied." The significance of such a movement was that it was the earliest form of monotheism. All previous ages practiced one form or another of polytheism, with room for an unlimited number of gods and goddesses. With this new religion, the only supreme powers were Aton and Akhenaton himself. Aton was not embodied in an animal or human form, but rather in terms of the life-giving, warming rays of the sun. Aton was not simply the god of Egypt, but a god of the entire universe. This god was to be thought of a benevolent father, overseeing all of his followers from high above in the heavens. He was the source of all truth and justice, and he would reward those who followed his laws. This new form of religion did not last, for Akhenaton disappeared fifteen years after the beginning of his reign, and the old beliefs came back. Akhenaton did more than simply form a new religion, he started the art form of naturalism. This was partly because he wished to break all ties with the former religion, and partly because it was the teaching of Aton which stated that all things must be admired as they appear, in Aton's desired state. The artwork of this period of time is also the most sought-after, for therein lies the clearest picture of an ancient Egyptian possible (David 18). Eventually, internal struggles led to the weakening of Egypt, until they were finally conquered by the Greeks. But the legacy of ancient Egypt lives on in a great number of our beliefs today. We base much of our culture upon the lives of ancient Egyptians, from art, to architecture, to the basis of western religion, that being Christianity. Ancient Egypt's glorious reign lasted two and a half millennia, and that fact alone makes Egypt a remarkable and notable society, for we are all sobbing babes compared to the longevity and stability of ancient Egypt. =========================================================================================== Bibliography Breasted, James Henry, History of Egypt. New York: Charles Scribner's Son's, 1905. David, A. Rosalie, The Egyptian Kingdoms. New York: Peter Bedrick Books, 1975. Wilson, John A., The Burden of Egypt. Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press, 1951. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Ancient Egypt.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Ancient Egypt The giant pyramids, temples, and tombs of ancient Egypt tell an exciting story about a nation that rose to power more than 5,000 years ago. This mighty civilization crumbled before conquering armies after 2,500 years of triumph and glory. The dry air and drifting desert sands have preserved many records of ancient Egypt until modern times. The ancient Egyptians lived colorful, active, and eventful lives. Many were creative artists, skilled craftsmen, and adventurous explorers. Bold Egyptian warriors won many battles, and their rulers governed wide areas of the known world. The ancient Egyptians loved nature and had a lively sense of humor. They were among the first people to try to find answers to questions concerning man, nature, and God. They also considered the relationship of man to society, but regarded other people as savages. They captured and enslaved thousands of men and women from other lands. The Greek historian Herodotus called Egypt the gift of the Nile, because floodwaters of this great river deposited rich, black soil on the land year after year. Egyptian farmers planted their crops in this fertile soil. Sandy plateaus and towering cliffs bordered the river valley. Beyond these waters stretched the barren wastes of the Sahara desert. On the edge of the desert, the Egyptians built giant pyramids as burial places for their pharaohs. They carved the Great Sphinx out of solid rock as a guardian of King Cheops? Great Pyramid at Giza. The ancient Egyptians called their country Kemet, which means black (after the land). The Greeks called the country Aigyptos, from the name Ha-ka-ptah, the main temple of the Egyptian capital at Memphis. Many modern beliefs and ideals, as well as much of man?s knowledge, had their origin in Egypt. The ancient Egyptians developed the world?s first national government. Their religion was one of the first to emphasize a life after death. They produced an expressive art and literature. The Egyptians introduced stone architecture and made the first convenient writing material, papyrus. They developed a 365-day year and set up the basic methods of geometry and surgery. The boundaries of ancient Egypt changed many times during its history. When the Kingdom of Egypt was formed in about 3100 B.C., it occupied only the fertile valley of the Nile River in northeastern Africa. The kingdom extended south about 680 miles from the Mediterranean Sea to the First Cataract (rapids) of the river. It averaged only 12 miles in width from the Nile delta to the First Cataract. Egypt covered about 8,000 square miles and was a little smaller than the state of Massachusetts. In later years, ancient Egypt usually controlled neighboring areas around the Nile Valley, including oases (fertile green patches), in the desert to the west. It usually governed part of the Nile Valley south of the First Cataract, the Red Sea coast, and the western part of the Sinai Peninsula in Asia. At the height of its power, around 1450 B.C., Egypt claimed an empire that reached as far south as the Fourth Cataract in Nubia, a part of ancient Ethiopia, and as far northeast as the Euphrates River in western Asia. Ancient Egypt was a lot less crowded than Modern Egypt. Historians believe that from one to eight million people lived in ancient Egypt. In Roman times, estimates set the figure at about six million. Most Egyptians lived near the Nile, with an average of 750 people per square mile. Today, the valley averages almost 2,400 people per square mile, although Egypt as a whole averages only 85. The black-haired, dark-skinned ancient Egyptians were short and slender. The belong to the Mediterranean race of the Caucasoid (white) stock. As time went on, the Egyptians mixed with people from Asia, Negroes from other parts of Africa, and people from lands around the Mediterranean Sea. The Egyptians were divided into four social classes. They were from most important: the royalty and nobles; artisans, craftsmen, and merchants; workers; and slaves. The professional army gradually became almost a separate class. Egypt had no fixed caste system. A person of the poorest class could rise to the highest offices in the land. The ancient Egyptians spoke a mixed language. It included words from the Semitic language group of southwestern Asia and the Hamitic group of languages of northeastern Africa. The language died out of everyday use about a thousand years ago but the Coptic (Christian) Church still uses it. No one knows just how the spoken language of ancient Egypt sounded. Written Egyptian developed from picture writing into an elaborate system of symbols called hieroglyphics. Hieroglyphics consisted of 24 alphabetic characters for consonants and semi-consonants. These characters were used in combination with many phonograms (sound-signs) and idiograms (sense-signs). Vowels were not written out. Hieroglyphic writing was carved or painted. Its ornamental character was particularly suitable for inscriptions on monuments. For everyday purposes, a simplified cursive form of hieroglyphics called hieratic was used. Hieratic could be rapidly written on light, easy-to-carry materials, such as papyrus and leather. The Egyptians called their writing the words of the gods. They claimed that on of their gods, Thoth, had invented it. Modern scholars first learned to read when they translated the writings on the Rosetta Stone. In Egyptian, the word pharaoh originally meant great house, but in the late 1300's B.C. it came to mean ruler of Egypt. Education was seen as a different level of importance between classes. Most young boys learned their work from their fathers, or as apprentices in various trades. Boys of royal and wealthy families were trained to become priests or government officials. At an early age, they were placed in the schools for scribes at the capital. Priests controlled the schools. They required the students to memorize classic texts, take dictation, and learn to use the 700 characters of the Egyptian language. They also taught literature. Schoolboys practiced their writing by copying stories and proverbs. Archaeologists have found copybooks that these boys used for practicing their handwriting, although the number of people who could read and write was apparently quite small. Religion appeared in every part of life in ancient Egypt. The Egyptians believed that gods and goddesses took part in every human activity from birth to death. For the Egyptian, the good life depended on obeying the commands of the gods. After someone died, the gods would judge how well the person had obeyed their directions. The Egyptians believed that their king was a god who could keep the country prosperous by his divine powers. In the earliest period, the Egyptians worshipped the forces of nature, such as wind and fire. As towns grew up, each adopted its own special god. In one part of the delta, the people worshipped Horus, the god of heaven. In another district, the people worshipped Osiris, the god of vegetation, who later became the god of the dead. Heliopolis, near Cairo, was the center for the worship of the sun god Re, or Ra. Heliopolis means city of the sun in Greek. About 2500 B.C., priests at Heliopolis developed the worship of Re as the nation?s first state religion. Other members of Re?s divine family included Osiris, and his wife, Isis; Set, the evil brother of Osiris, and his wife Nephthys; Shu, god of the air; Tefnut, goddess of moisture; Geb, god of earth; and Nut, goddess of the sky. The people of Thebes worshipped Amon, or Ammon, the god of the air and fertility. When Thebes became the political center of the empire, the people worshipped Amon and Re together as Amon-Re. The Egyptians believed that certain animals might serve individual gods in a special way. For example, they regarded the ram as acceptable to Amon, and chose on ram to be the temple animal of that god. Other sacred animals included the baboon, bull, cat, crocodile, and jackal. The people of ancient Egypt took great care in preparing for life after death. They denied that death ended the existence of a person who had led a good life. They believed that the next world would be like Egypt in its richest and most enjoyable form. They built stone tombs and filled them with clothing, food, furnishings, and jewelry for use in the next world. They embalmed their dead and wrapped the bodies in layers of cloth. Preserved bodies were called mummies. The Egyptians caved inscriptions on the walls of their tombs. They also wrote on the insides of the coffins. They placed papyrus copies of the Book of the Dead in the tombs to protect the spirits of the dead. The Book of the Dead contained spells and prayers. The priests conducted the rituals and guarded the temples. They acquired much political power. For example, the king did not make them pay the corv?e, a tax in labor that furnished the government with workers. The priests used thousands of people to work in the temples and divine lands. Egyptian discoveries in mathematics and other sciences were rudimentary. The Egyptians used a system of counting by tens, but their system had no zeros. They could multiply and divide whole numbers, and reduce simple fractions. They used a series of simple fractions, such as 1/2, 1/5, and 1/10 to build up complex ones, such as 4/5. The Egyptians could determine areas and calculate the volumes of objects. They were among the first people to survey land. The floodwaters of the Nile washed away the boundaries of farms every year, and new ones had to be fixed by surveying. The Egyptians measured distances accurately with equally spaced knots tied in long ropes. They used a cubit, the length of a man?s forearm, as a standard of measurement. They worked out the foundations of geometry and arithmetic. The Egyptians also pioneered in the field of astronomy. They distinguished between planets and stars, and devised a 365-day calendar. In medicine and surgery, the Egyptians recognized the importance of the heart and its relation to other parts of the body. They related the speed of a person?s heartbeat to his general physical condition. They also know how to sew and dress wounds. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Anthropology by Morgan and Wolf.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ While Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary defines property as "something regarded as being possessed by, or at the disposal of, a person or group of persons species or class," (p. 1078) this definition hardly holds the connotations so emphatically discussed by the anthropologist Morgan. To Morgan, "property has been so immense...so diversified its uses so expanding...that it has become...an unmanageable power." (p.561) Why has it become such an unmanageable power? Morgan answers this question with the simple answer that it is due to the linear evolution of the social institution of property from being collectively owned to being individually owned which has planted the seed of its own destruction in modern society. Morgan, in an attempt to study the role property has played in shaping social structures throughout history, has concluded that the influences property has had on reshaping societies and vice versa can teach the historian many things about both the society being studied and the environment in which it strove to survive. To Morgan, the "germ" of the institution of property slowly infected many different societies in many different parts of the world. His teleological approach states that due to the "unity of mankind" various technological innovations, which gave rise to the ever-growing availability of property, allowed social change to occur in many areas of the globe independently. Every area, went through its own version of evolution in which the importance of wealth grew at varying rates. This discovery leads Morgan to believe that while the past was unified in its variation, it is the future which must presently be addressed. For Morgan, in studying the past one can learn much about the future. Not only does Morgan analyze the social emergence of various types of property, but he is also extremely interested in the human tendencies evident in various societies which surfaced as a result of the ever-growing list of ownable objects. As time progressed from the Status of Savagery through Barbarism and into Civilization new wants and needs arose mostly due to new inventions. It is on this relationship between property, technology, and the human desire for more of each which Morgan centers his work, and it is from this study which he hopes future generations will learn how to improve their institutions until they can be improved no more. Morgan structures his essay around three basic "ethnical periods of human progress" (p. 535) and the basic assumption that the more modes of production and subsistence there are the greater the proliferation of individual objects of ownership. As technology advances and discoveries are made, the amount of ownable objects grow as does the need to own. Every invention leads to new processes for agriculture, pastoralism and industry as well as new methods for invention. Thus, each new invention, whether it is a revolutionary idea or an actual object, births many new inventions which lead to many new modes of production causing many new objects previously not thought of as property to grow in value. The higher in value and demand these objects are the more people want to individually own them. How does one measure the growth of technology and importance of property in past cultures? Morgan feels that by studying the laws of ownership which govern these societies one can gain an understanding of the importance, or unimportance, of individual property. In the Status of Savagery, the first of the periods, property basically took the form of rude weapons, fabrics utensils, apparel, implements of flint, stone, bone, and other various personal ornaments. Due to the fact, though, that these objects were relatively uncomplicated and crude, there was not much "passion for possession." In other words, people did not need to own. Land was owned by the loosely organized tribes, and the tenant houses were owned by all the occupants. As intensive agriculture and pastoralism had not yet been invented the need to own land was not great either. As people died their most valuable possessions were either buried with the corpse or given to the next of kin. This process assured the first rule of inheritance which keeps all property in the gen and does not allow anyone from remote gens to inherit. The Lower Barbaric, the Middle Barbaric, and the Upper Barbaric sub-periods comprise the second ethnical period. In the Lower Barbaric period belts, picture writing, stockades for village defense, shields, war clubs, air guns for shooting, the mortar and pestle and pipes were invented. These objects were more intricate and specialized than those found in the Savage period and the need for acquiring them also grew slightly. Ties to property began to form, but for Morgan these objects had not yet reached the plane of desirability he feels was necessary to institute change in the social structures of society. These objects still, however, remained attached to the blood lines in which they originated and any attempt to detach them from these lines met with considerable opposition. In the Mid-Barbaric period the progress continued. Better and better tools as well as vessels were being made to do more and more specialized tasks and to hold newly discovered materials and beverages. "When the great discovery was made that the wild horse, cow, sheep, ass, sow and goat might be tamed...to produce a source of permanent subsistence" (p. 544) the need for land began to grow. This land, though, was commonly "owned" by the tribe while often some was divided with allotments for government, religion, and gentes. This is the first attempt at subdividing a land originally owned by the common people for while there was no single ownership, the owning bodies began to shrink. People did want to own objects and land, but they wanted it for the gen or for their group, not for themselves. It is in this time that the second rule of inheritance was present where inheritance was more specified for the agnatic kindred within the gen. As time progressed into the Upper barbaric stage, settled agriculture, small scale industry, local trade, and foreign commerce led to property "in masses." Slavery was invented as a means to raise production, but it was the increased abundance of subsistence methods through field agriculture that developed which led to the never-ending struggle for land. Ownership began to take two forms: the state and the individual. "In the land of Solon...lands in general were owned by individuals, who already learned to mortgage them." (p.551) It is in this time that Morgan notes the marked difference of inheritance from being passed along matrilineal lines to patrilineal lines. There were so many houses, lands, flocks and herds as well as exchangeable goods that inheritance became crucial for the Greeks. Fathers adopted any practice they could to allow their sons to inherit the land and property worked on by themselves. The assertions that the immediate family, especially sons, deserved to inherit the property associated with their father had more validity now that modes of subsistence became more labor intensive and required more work from the sons for the family. This is the third and final rule of inheritance; children should inherit from their parents. As methods for domestication of animals improved it was discovered that they held the most value as they could reproduce themselves and allow the owner to gain in both prestige and monetary wealth. The fact that the Greek leader Solon permitted a person to will his property to whomever he chose while he was still alive markedly shows the presence of individual ownership during this period. Somewhere between the Upper Barbaric period and the period known as civilization the position of Aristocracy arose. It arose out of the fact that property along with ownership of slaves, the growth of the gap between owners and non-owners as well as the emergence of official social and governmental positions all contributed to a "wealth" which distinguished the 'haves" from the "have-nots." It is this social change which Morgan mostly feels describes the effects of property on social institutions. For Morgan the emergence of property created by technological innovations in agriculture, industry and pastoralism spurs the need to have more than others. This is the "end and aim" (p.561) that Morgan feels is the ultimate shame of modern civilization. The future for Morgan holds only the destruction of a society bent on acquiring more at the expense of others. The fact that members of society have evolved from ignorant yet happy to complicated yet destructive has created a culture where ownership of property delineates between successful and unsuccessful. Wolf, on the other hand, develops his theory on property in a very different manner. To Wolf the progression from societies in which "property" was collectively owned by the corporate group to cultures where the individual accumulation and control of various types of commodities was sought after was a very non-linear evolution. He does not see stages of increased emphasis on private ownership but instead Wolf simply presents case studies of populations in which most often external influences have forced the move from general/public ownership to private ownership. Unlike Morgan, Wolf does not refer to the various populations as an integrated whole with an internal logic and free from the impact of the world. The period of colonial expansion very much impacted on the various cultures being studied, and it is impossible to separate these relatively remote populations from the attempts of world domination by the superpowers of the time. To Wolf every society which exists concurrently exerts pressure on every other and whatever form any society ends up taking is just a result of how it was articulated in its period of history. Wolf believes that whether or not a society is prepared to be affected by a specific "germ" (i.e. iron smelting), it has relatively no choice. The effects this germ will have on the environment surrounding the given society will directly influence how the culture must operate since it cannot function in a vacuum. Whether or not the institutions which are affecting the culture are forms of capitalist production, they will in the long run cause reverberating changes politically, militarily and socially. To Wolf the evolution in populations from propertyless to property-based is a series of starts, stops and jumps. The stress that he places on economics as the driving force in this transition can be studying by examining social pressures due to changing political policies of various societies. It is important to note, however, that no change can occur without there being ripple effects both to that same culture and to all surrounding populations. Wolf uses as his chief vehicle through which he can describe his theory the fur trade with was introduced to the native American population by the Europeans in the early 17th century. As fur trade grew in popularity for numerous reasons, competition between populations grew as well. This affected not only the European traders but also every native American who provided them with fur. "The advent of the fur trade deranged accustomed social relations and cultural habits and prompted the formation of new responses-both internally...and externally." (p.161) Wolf holds that the hegemonic idea concerning the structure of the capitalist mode of production forced an agenda on the native people of North America which pulled them into a basically capitalistic system in which they were pitted against each other and forced to deal with the Europeans. In turn, this facilitated change in political, military and social relations. The dominant force of imperialism combined with the resources available allowed the Europeans to mold trade with the Amerindians into a profitable, while inconsiderate, business venture. In contrast to Morgan, who holds that both the availability and the definition of the value of objects evolve through time, Wolf is intrigued by the effects property has on every aspect of inter and intra socio-cultural relations. Not one area of a functioning population is untouched by the emergence of practices like the fur trade. In the earlier modes of production, based on kinship and tribute, ownership of property in the form of land begins to allow the owners to force workers to work for them in order to sustain themselves. Much in the same way Morgan examines the phenomenon of increased amounts of technological advances due to past innovations, Wolf describes the method by which capitalism came into being. The increased need for wealth, in many ways though, is almost inconsequential to Wolf. For him wealth in the hands of holders of wealth is not capital until it controls the means of production, buys labor power and puts it to work. (p. 78) He states that the more money there was available to invest the more money was made to invest. This fact contributed to the rise in productivity worldwide and as a result the need for property increased as well. This increased need parallels the need examined extensively my Morgan but instead of being applied to further advancements, in Wolf's scenario this need led to imperialist expansion in the New World at the expense of natural resources and the labor supplied by the providers of goods, the native Americans. Possibly the most distinguishable theory put forth by Wolf is the idea that not all successful economic endeavors are due to any type of economic strategy, but are affected by political and military action in the surrounding area. This might lead one to believe that the mode of production of the area matters less than one might think, while in reality it is the susceptibility of that same mode of production which leaves it open to attack by any new strategy. The fact that native Americans owned land (collectively) and had the ability to trap in great numbers allowed the imperialists to take advantage of them by creating a system in which the Amerindians would not only need to participate but would also want to take part. By initially opening trade with the natives, the Europeans would eventually force the natives to trade exclusively since the Indians had allowed themselves to forsake productive sustaining practices in favor of creating "valuable" goods for trade. As trade grew so did the market for the goods also grow. This obvious progression created the possibility of great accumulation of wealth which eventually would be affected by capitalism on a worldwide scale. As a result of the greater inclusion in world markets a need arose for a body, or position, to supervise these practices. This is the origin of the more centralized body called the state, but it is important to understand according to Wolf that the rise of material wealth might have triggered centralization, but in now way is there a traceable evolutionary line. There are only ramifications of specific practices (usually economic) on specific institutions (usually social and political) which opened the door for change; there are no cause/effect relationships. There are many inherent practices which were present in societies which forced the accumulation of wealth to be restricted. Pot latch ceremonies, in which feasts were held, was one such practice. By forcing a successful leader to hold a feast he gained many things in the eyes of many people. He gained prestige bestowed by the community in which he lived. He gained possible alliances with the guests whom he invited. But best of all he participated in an activity which leveled the wealth of all the participants in the community. As livestock gained in importance it is essential to understand that to slaughter meant not only to kill the animal but also any potential offspring. During the feasts animals would be killed thus equalizing the host's possessions with that of the general community. This was a very important method of keeping the importance of property in the form of livestock down since eventually all would be equal anyway. For Wolf, the quest for greater and greater amounts and types of property carried with it many aftershocks. Natives died do to contact with European diseases. Social and political structures were altered due to the affects trade had on military strategy. Most of all, though, was the seemingly inevitable inclusion of the native Americans into the world market. Property began to no longer be labeled as belonging to one's tribe but instead as belonging to one's self. The competition had grown to immense proportions and it seems almost obvious to Wolf that the exploitation of the natives had become inevitable due to their inclusion in the tough capitalist world market. Unfortunately, though, it seems as if a trap was set for the natives, and just as the beavers were caught and skinned to fuel the capitalist machine so too were the native Americans. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Anthropology Ritual and Symbol.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ I. Classify using Van Gennep's categories and point out aspects which would be of particular interest to Turner and to Chapple and Coons. The Mescalero girls' puberty ceremony is an example of a "Rite of Passage," a ceremony that marks the transition of an individual from one stage of life to another (Chapple and Coons, p. 484). The ceremony marks the transition from girl to "mother of a nation" (p.252). The ritual serves as a means of establishing equilibrium after the crisis of puberty (Chapple and Coons, p. 484). It is a method of making this transition from girl to woman easier. I classified this ceremony as a Rite of Passage, rather than a Rite of Intensification, because it is held in response to a non-periodic change (puberty) and it affects the participants individually. The community plays an important role in supporting the girls-by building the tepee, for instance. At times, as when the boys join the Singers, the community actively participates in the ritual. However, the community is involved only because of its members' relations to the girls. Van Gennep divides Rites of Passage into three parts: separation, transition and incorporation. In the Mescalero puberty ceremony, separation is achieved when the girls move in to their camp homes. During this stage, the Godmothers and Singers take the role of the parents. This may be described as a "cessation of interaction between the individual and the group in which he or she has been interacting" (Chapple and Coons, p. 485). However, there is not a complete separation from the girls and the community. There are instances (such as the time when the participants sleep while the community holds contests) when the two are physically separated, but they are near their families and friends during most of the ceremony. The stage of transition, or liminality, is a period in which the participants lie "betwixt and between" two poles (Turner, p.95). For the puberty ceremony, this period lasts for four days. In these days, the girls receive instruction from their elders-especially from Godmothers and the Singers. For example, the Singer teaches the tribe's history through his chants and the Godmother teaches about sex. Gender differences seem to be exaggerated rather than abolished during this phase, however. The category "female" is related to fire, the color yellow, and the idea of being protected. "Male" is related to the poles, the color red, and the idea of being the protector. Yellow pollen, symbolizing women, is applied to the girls early in the ceremony. Furthermore, rather than being stripped bare, the girls are ornately decorated. However, one may argue that they have been stripped of the attire they wore before the ceremony. According to Turner, the liminal period is one of humility, obedience, and danger. The girls do exhibit these qualities during the period of transition, particularly during the all-night dancing ordeal. I still would not interpret this as a "low" because of the blessings the girls bestow upon the community and because of the massages they receive from the Godmothers. The period of incorporation has been described as phase in which ". . . the individual begins once again his interaction with the members of his community . . ." (Chapple and Coons, p. 485). As noted earlier, the girls' interaction with the community is maintained at different points in the ritual. However, the girls do undergo a radical change during the ceremony, culminating in their reincorporation into their communities as new individuals. The ceremony began with the males constructing a lodge and ended with the girls destroying the lodge. In the beginning, the girls gave blessings and in the end, they received blessings. Through participating in the ordeal of the dance, the girls gain power. This change is expressed in the following chant: "Now you are entering the world. You become an adult with responsibilities" (p. 252). Symbolically, the passage to womanhood is represented by painting the girls' faces white-the color of purity and Mother Earth. II. Where do Durkheim and Turner find communitas? What creates feelings of solidarity in each? Would they find it in this ritual? If so, where and why? Turner believes that communitas arises out of an ordeal shared by individuals. In the case of the Mescalero puberty ceremony, the primary ordeal is the overnight dancing session. Although not explicitly stated in the article, I can imagine strong feelings of solidarity would arise among the girls participating in the ritual. Durkheim's theory of communitas (or "collective consciousness") begins with his analysis of Australian Aborigine culture (Durkheim, p. 34). A totem is used to represent the community, then rituals are performed which make the totem sacred. There is a circular motion inherent in such religious traditions: the totem, as a reflection of the group, indicates that the group is worshiping itself. The rituals performed elicit feelings of effervescence, integration and revitalization. It is this process that promotes group solidarity, providing a connection to a larger community and that community's history. I believe that the Mescalero puberty ceremony is better suited to analysis through the Durkheim model. First of all, the sacred space is a symbol of the Grandfathers. The fourth Grandfather represents humanity: ". . .(O)n the fourth day came man, the Apaches" (p. 243). The Grandfathers and the history of the tribe are integral elements of the ceremony. The ceremony functions to keep the tribe together, functioning as a cohesive unit. The girls discover what roles they must play in this society and what is expected of them as women. For example, it is made clear that they are expected to bear children and to allow themselves to be protected by men. III. Discuss elements which would be of greatest interest to Rosaldo/Atkinson, Ornter, and Gossen. Rosaldo/Atkinson The Rosaldo/Atkinson article places symbols into categories of binary opposition. The dominant binary opposition is that of man the life-taker and woman the life-giver (Rosaldo and Atkinson, p. 130). Elaborating on this idea, I have divided symbols used in the Mescalero ceremony into the following categories: "Female" is associated with motherhood, fire, the color yellow, the protected, and the center. "Male" is associated with warriorship, poles (or structure, such as a frame), the color red, the protector, and the shield. The Mountain God dancers, for example, use weapons in their dance. It is hoped that the girls participating in the ceremony will give birth to warrior sons. If the girls give birth to girls, it is hoped that these offspring will become mothers of warrior sons. The song tally sticks that are placed outside the fire provide a framework. These sticks are described as a "pathway replicating the form of the holy lodge and its runway" (p. 251). There is a balance inherent in these divisions. For instance, the colors red and yellow are the basic colors of the universe. However, asymmetry is also evident. A basket- which represents the center and therefore the female-is placed in the center of a circle formed by poles. The girls wait inside the sacred lodge, awaiting direction from the male Singers. Such incidents suggest the necessity of being restrained by and subservient to the males. Furthermore, there are many digressions from the binary categories. At one point in the ritual, the females dance around the males. Here, the men are the center and the women are the shield, or framework ( p. 248). We see that the basket represents the center and the heart. The heart is also associated with the "left." But at another point in the ceremony, the males are painted on the left side of their faces and the women on the right. Women have been described as mothers (creators) and men as warriors. Yet it is the men who build the sacred structure and the women who destroy it! Ortner Sherry Ortner uses the term "key symbol" to describe the symbols that are most important to a culture. In order to find key symbols, it is necessary to understand their underlying principles. There are five indicators used to locate key symbols: These symbols are culturally important; arouse positive or negative feelings; come up in different contexts, are elaborated by a culture; and have cultural restrictions placed upon them (Ortner, p. 93-94). This is the criteria I use to examine the key symbols of the Mescalero puberty ceremony. The author of The Mescalero Girls' Puberty Ceremony locates 5 key symbols. These are: balance, circularity,directionality, the number 4, and sound/silence ( p. 242). In my analysis, I will examine the key symbol of sound/silence. Singing, chanting, playing musical instruments, making "noise" and observing silence are important elements of the ceremony. The cultural significance of the sound made by the girls when dancing on the hides is explained by one of the Singers: "This is the sound that a people will make on this earth . . . Abide by it" (p. 249). One of the most profound examples of emotional arousal through sound occurs at the beginning of the ceremony. Before sunrise, the lead Singer begins a song while slowly raising his left hand. His song is timed so perfectly that when he sings the last line of the song, the sun rises, striking his raised palm. The writer of the article describes this as "a moment of breath- taking Beauty" (p. 244). Musical instruments include not only items such as sticks, but also articles of clothing. "Jingles" cut from tin cans are sewn onto clothing, providing music when the person dances. This is an example of a symbol appearing in different contexts. Here we see "musical instrument" crossing over into the domain of "fashion." The song tally sticks represent an instance of cultural elaboration. Each stick represents a song that has been sung. All the sticks together comprise a replica of the holy lodge and its runway. Whether it is the "high-pitched ululation" of the women (p. 243); the "hooting sound resembling that of an owl or a turkey" (p. 247); or the chants used to recount history (p. 249), the symbol of sound is significant in almost every aspect of the ritual. At one point in the ritual, females who are not participants in the puberty ceremony are forbidden from wearing clothing or jewelry that might make a noise. Only the participants, the Mountain God dancers and the clowns may wear such articles. This is an example of a cultural restriction surrounding a symbol. Gossen The meaning of the symbols used by the Chamulas and Mescaleros differs greatly. According to Gossen, the Chamula place a variety of meanings upon the cardinal directions. East is the primary direction, associated with God the Father and Creator (Gossen, p. 116). This is the domain of the sun, and therefore, the east is also associated with "up." The sun emits light and heat, through its penetrating rays. Other associations with the east include: male, goodness, day, fire, and mountains. To the Chamula, the north is also good because it is to the right of God in the east. Negative qualities are ascribed to the south. The south is associated with killing frosts and death. The west is "down." Three different levels constitute the Chamula's sky. The bottom level is what people on earth can see. The second level (in ascending order) is where the Virgin Mary and the moon reside. The sun and the guardian of animal souls are at the top level. The Mescaleros associate each cardinal direction with their Grandfathers (p. 243). While the Mescaleros also consider the east to be the primary direction, they associate the east with the First Grandfather, the moon and stars. The west is associated with animals. The sky-as well as wind, rain and mountains-lies in the south. Man is in the north, held up by the other three directions. This can be viewed as a difference or similarity between the Chamulas and the Mescaleros, depending on which of Gossen's informants you listen to. One person described the earth as being supported by man while another described the earth as being supported by bearers at all cardinal points. One of the main differences between the Chamulas and Mescaleros is the value they place on the right or left sides. Mescaleros give preference to the left, and their rituals are primarily clockwise in nature. Left is also connected to the heart, to God and the sun. The Chamulas give preference to the right and to the counterclockwise direction. The Chamulas connect women to the ground and to coldness. The Mescalero connects women to the ground and to heat. "Fire" is the primary symbol for the Mescalero women, particularly the pit fire. Many parts of the puberty ceremony involve the girls' sitting or lying on the ground, symbolizing a connection with Mother Earth. The Chamula's association between women and the ground, however, holds the negative connotation of "lowness." f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Anthropology.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The American Museum of Natural History has many exhibits that demonstrate many aspects of anthropology. The Museum is located on Central Park West between W81st and W77nd streets. The museum is an excellent place to open oneself to many new ideas and cultures. When looking through the museum the exhibits that are anthropological could enhance ones understanding of a culture. The museum is very big and a lot of time is needed to get the most out of it. The following exhibits that demonstrate many aspects of anthropology are located on the first, second and third floors. The first floor has American Northwest Coast Peoples, Eskimos, Human Biology and Evolution. The second floor had African Peoples, Asian Peoples, Mexico and Central American Peoples, and South American Peoples. Finally, the third floor had Primates, North American Eastern Woodlands And Plains Peoples, and Pacific Peoples. The museum also included many other interesting exhibits that did not have to do with anthropology like the Dinosaur Hall. All these exhibits in the museum had detailed information on each exhibit whether it was a big sculpture or a little skeleton. There was also films that could have been seen for a small price, but if one has the time it is very educational and worth seeing. In the hall of Asian Peoples the most intriguing exhibits was the Chinese Wedding. It was very interesting to see how a different culture gets married. In this wedding the Chinese bride sits in this beautiful bridal chair from the groom's family that had carried her from her home. The bride now says her good-byes to her own family because in the Chinese culture she is now part of the grooms family. " Her impressive dowery, displayed by the procession on the road , gives prestige to her family as the beauty of the bridal chair gives prestige to the groom's." Prestige and honor are very important to the Chinese culture and during an important event such as a wedding it is not unusual to flaunt their prestige. To properly perform the dowry and the chair is a must. In tradition Chinese culture the bride must be covered by a veil and the groom never had seen her before he had removed the veil himself when she had arrived at his family's home. In picture #1 this shows the background of a village in Shantung, in northeastern China. In this province is where Confucius was born and lived which also had a great amount of ancient tradition. " The early 20th century wedding chair, of wood, kingfisher feathers, copper wire, gilt and glass was probably made in southern China. The way the Chinese get married is very unusual to our western culture. This exhibit expresses to me that people are very different all over the world and their is much to explore about other cultures even an event such as a wedding. One other exhibit seen in the Asian Peoples were an exhibit about dance. It was called the personality in Dance. The junkai people perform a special dance called the whirling dance. Dance in these peoples culture express a lot of different things. It evokes many moods, inspiration of belief, the hope and energy of young people, and the power of fear that could kill you. Society is very important to these people. Dance also by itself can express the values that a society should have that keep it binded together. One educational exhibit is the Human Biology and Evolution Hall. This exhibit introduces the common biology of humans, and how we evolutionized. The biology of the humans were shown though holographic pictures. These pictures did show the whole body including the muscles and the bones. The evolution part of this exhibit was very interesting. " We humans often think of ourselvess as the culmination of a steady history of a evolutonary improvement. But this idea is wrong, for evolution is neither goal- oriented nor merely a matter of species gradual improving their adaptation to their environments. " This is an excelent quote from the evolution exhibit. This quote explains in a simplistic idea on how humans did evolutionize. Evolution is a long process that can happen for many reasons. One way humans became the way they did was from a common idea of natural selection. The traits that were needed to survive would express themselves more and more over time. This would happen because whoever did not have these traits probably could not have survived and died. This could happen for many reasons but the most likely would be a change in surroundings or environment. The evolutionary trends of the humanbeing toward being better is brain and body size, bipendalism, and their face and teeth. Much of the human ability to make and use tools and other objects stems from the large size and complexity of the human brain. Most modern humans have a braincase volume between 1300 and 1500cc. In the course of human evolution the brain size has more than tripled. Bipedalism or two-legged walking seems to be the ealiest human characteristic to evolve. This form of locomotion led to the mordern human skeletal parts such as the lower spinal column, pelvis, and legs. The face and jaws of humans has decreased in size over time. The teeth had also decreased in size. This exhibit was a very good exhibit because it could teach us a lot about ourselves and where we came from. It explained our trends toward what we are now and why we went in that direction. Evolution is a complicated process that is hard to understand. This is why this exhibit needed to have a lot of simple information for someone that have never lerned about human evolution before. One of the most interesting exhibits was the on of the Aztec stone of the sun. Aztecs our very popular for their monuments and stone sculptures. Their most popular monument is this stone of the sun known as the calender stone. It includes allthe elements of a calendrical system, but it is not a calender. All the symbols on this calender stone relate to the sun and accent. It also expains the role of the sun in the aztecs belief and culture. The aztec preform many rituals that have been drawn on the stone. In the museum they colored in parts of the stone to explain what the deseigns meant. Look at the picture in the back to fully understand this. The orange part of the stone, which is the face in the middle, is the sun god ( Tonatiuh ). The yellow orange, which surrounds the sun god, is cosmogonic myths of the Aztecs. The blue, which is just outside the myths, is emblems referring to the four cardinal directions. The pink, which is outside the cardinal directions, is the 20 day signs of the 260 day ritual calender. The yellow, which is located after the ritaul calender, is the disc of the sun. The red, which is the end of the stone, is 2 fire serpents. The green, the last design on the stone, is the date " 13 need " which is supposed to be the birth of the sun. This stone expresses the great beliefs the aztecs had for the sun. They were a people of great design and expression for their culture. Also in the same exhibit of the aztec stone was the Colossal Olmer Head. This looked like a big head. It was found at the site of San Lorenza. It was the largest and most outstanding sculpture of the great stone heads from the olmer peoples. This head weighed 20 tons carved in a typical olmer style. This hall itself included a lot of out standing sculptures. These people in this hall seemed to like building and sculpturing things. They looked like they spent years on making these sculptures. These sculptures are very remarkable and I am very impressed of the talent these people had. Inside the exhibit of the South American Peoples had a couple of interesting little things. It showed a thing of warfare of the people in that area. The only thing that I found intering about this was it looked like the guy had a hamburger in his mouth. This exhibit itself was probably the worst exhibit. If one of the most interesting things was a guy with a hamburger in his mouth the exhibit could not have been very education or even eye catching. It was very boring and I do not think I spent more then ten minutes in it. The only thing I stared at was a tomb they had of one special person and a few other people. There was not a lot of interesting new cultural ideas in this hall and because I found this very boring and not educational it had to be as a hall the worst one in the museum. Some of the other exhbits that I have failed to talk about also had few interesting factural ideas in them. The one exhibit I also felt was horrible was the eskimos. It was closed the day I went to the museum and I was realy looking foward to seeing the Eskimo exhibit. My favorite hall was the one of the Pacific Peoples. This the hall that I have my picture with my girl friend next to a beautiful stone sculpture. This large stone sculpture was located on easter island. More than 250 complete and partial sculptures still remain on this small isolated island. Some of the figures are more than 30 feet high and weigh 20 tons. These people even impressed me more in a whole then the aztec's and others in that hall that made nice sculptures also. These people cut them from lava and transported from the quarry near the middle of the island. The Marquesas are where the first settlers that came to easter island are beleived to come from. Little are known about the heads and figures made by people. I think this is very interesting and would want to find out more about these peoples and their sculptures. This hall was also my favorite because I was always interested in seeing the beautiful pacific. So seeing exhibits with skeletons in them excited me in a way that I was happy we had saved this exhibit for last. The museum in an overall view gave me a better understanding to anthopology as a whole. Each exhibit had detailed facts about the culture and the people. For Example, we have learned about the human evolution in the class, but the museum as you can see had good exhibits showing the evolution change in humans in great detail. Another example could be the skeletal bones I saw at the museum. After seeing the bones at the museum I could easily relate them to the story in the Phillip Whitten and David E. K. Hunter anthropology book of No Bones Unturned. This had gave me a better grasp at what they were looking at. It had also given me more interest to how they looked at the bones and what techniques they used. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Apartheid in Modern South Africa.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Apartheid in Modern South Africa Apartheid is the legal segregation of races promulgated in the Republic of South Africa. The discovery of gold and diamonds in South Africa during the 19th century, ultimately lead to racially segregated compounds for mine workers becoming the fore fathers of apartheid(Kanfer 79). By the 1920s de facto apartheid was the predominant feature of life in South Africa (79). Apartheid, fought against for many years, until now was still a main factor in South Africa life. Today apartheid approaches its final years as political supporters of anti-apartheid such as President Nelson Mandela continually fights for a multiracial South Africa. The struggle against racial separatism, apartheid, still however continues today as there are many people supporting pro-apartheid movements. The hope for a non-apartheid South Africa, although achieved through bitter battles and political ploys, has today become a reality. The political support of the antiapartheid movement was perhaps seen greatest in 1991. Written in TIME Magazine by Greenwald, Former President F.W. de Klerk in February of 1991 opened Parliament with a pledge to legalize the militantly antiapartheid African National Congress and released A.N.C leader Nelson Mandela from jail (56). De Klerk also showed his intentions to "bring a swift end to legally sanctioned racial segregation" (56). "He called on Parliament to repeal immediately the remaining pillars of discrimination that dictate where blacks can work and live" (56). De Klerk also asked lawmakers to discontinue the Group Areas Act which segregated black and white residential areas and the Land Acts, which prevents blacks from owning land outside of specially assigned homelands (56). The Population Registration Act which forces South Africans to register by racial groups for political and economic purposes was phased out under de Klerk's plans as the act is a major underpin for the apartheid system (56). Indeed, 1991 was the year of a great step forward for an antiapartheid South Africa. Yet another leap forward for a non-apartheid South Africa was the election of President Nelson Mandela in May 1994. Nelson Mandela, the leader of the African Nation Congress, fiercely opposes apartheid. After the first all-race elections in April 1994, the South African population took its leap forward in electing Nelson Mandela who would further antiapartheid movements. The continuing support for apartheid can be seen in many organizations such as the neo-Nazi Afrikaner Resistance Movement. These conflicting battles for support of apartheid are not without their bloodshed in modern South Africa. On March 1994, violence rang out in South Africa about apartheid as three pro-apartheid supporters were shot by black soldiers (Lacayo 49). These three people were indeed members of the neo-Nazi Afrikaner Resistance Movement (49). In TIME Magazine, Lacayo writes that these attempts to defend a remnant of apartheid is doomed as South Africa transforms itself into a multiracial state (49). Weeks before South Africa's first all-race elections in April 1994, thousands of armed white extremists had an incurred with demonstrating residents in their demand to be allowed to vote (49). The eventual outcome of massive gun fire left as many as twelve people dead (49). These remanents of pro-apartheid movements can be seen throughout South Africa. The political end of South Africa looks in support of antiapartheid whereas the few who don't, condone violent actions taken place against the antiapartheid supporters. Violence will plague South Africa so long as people remain racist. But help from people such as South African President Nelson Mandela and former President of South Africa F.W. de Klerk will keep South Africa on its road ahead as the ultimate goal for the multiracial, antiapartheid South Africa is within reach. Works Cited Greenwald, John. "The Twilight Of Apartheid." TIME Magazine Multimedia Almanac. CD-ROM. Cambridge: SoftKey, 1995. Kanfer, Stefan. "Cries of the Beloved Country." TIME Magazine Multimedia Almanac. CD-ROM. Cambridge: SoftKey, 1995. Lacayo, Richard. "Apartheid Apocalypse." TIME Magazine Multimedia Almanac. CD-ROM. Cambridge: SoftKey, 1995. Trevelyan, Mark. "Mandela thanks Commonwealth over apartheid." Reuters 9 Nov. 1995 f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Asian Immigration into America.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Chinese Immigration into America Surprisingly, Asian Americans have been in America for over 150 years. They are as diverse as the immigrants from Europe, ranging from China, Japan, Korea, Cambodia, Korea, Philippines, India, Vietnam, and Laos. (Takaki, page 8) When many people think of American Immigrants, Asians are on the last of their lists. In The Uprooted, Harvard historian, Oscar Handlin, prize winning book with the subtitle "the Epic Story of the Great Migrations that Made the American People," completely left out the "uprooted" from the lands across the Pacific Ocean. (Takaki, page 10) This paper will give some information pertaining to the Chinese immigration into America. China is one of the world's oldest civilizations. It influence have reverberated throughout Asia. It's presence is felt in many of the surrounding cultures. The Chinese people have tried to keep their society pure from outside sources. When foreigners entered their homeland and poisoned the population with drugs, the culture could not stop the imminent alteration of their ways. China was weakened severely and was taken advantage of by many countries. Chinese came to America for a myriad of reasons. The main reason was because of the myth of the Gam Saan ("Golden Mountain.") Other reasons were due to overpopulation, poverty, hunger, flooding, high taxes, bad economy, collapsing government, and crop failure. (Takaki, page 38) James Marshall discovery of gold in California in 1848 prompted many Chinese to take a sojourn into America to get rich quick. A young man in Canton wrote to his brother in Boston saying, "good many Americans speak of California, Oh! Very rich country! O hear good many Americans and Europeans go there very much. I think I shall go to California next summer." Stories like these built up this dream of the "Golden Mountain." The plan for most Chinese was to make their fortune, and return home to their family. The dream of getting rich quick has been around for ages. Due to this, a trickle of immigrants turned into a deluge. The whole thing began in 1835. William Hooper, a young man from Boston, visited a sugar mill in Hawaii. He became determined to start the first sugar plantation in Hawaii. Without a large supply of laborers, Hooper hired "Chinamen" to aid in the success of the plantation. From this humble beginning, sugar grew into a large industry that would need a steady supply of laborers. (Takaki, page 22) In 1848, after a war with Mexico, the United States obtained a region known as California. Finding Californina to be a commercial and agricultural center, it became America's gateway to Asia. (Takaki, page 20) With the large fertile lands of California, workers were needed to help reap the profits that would flow in. Aaron H. Palmer, a government official, stated, "No people in all the East are so well adapted for the clearing wild lands and raising every species of agricultural product as the Chinese." (Takaki, page 21) In 1833, the British Empire abolished the practice of slavery. Plantation owners desperate for field labor made use of coolies. Coolies were basically Chinese that signed labor contracts and were held in virtual slavery. They were ensnared by brokers into this system by debts, clan war prisoners, or kidnapping. (Melendy, page 13) Like the African slave trade, this method flourished over Asia and had high mortality rates due to cramped quarters and malnourishment. It was referred to as the "buying and selling of pigs." (Melendy, page 13) Hawaii made use of this practice in order to fulfill the great demand of the booming sugar industry. In 1962, the United States congress prohibited American citizens in American vessels from engaging in such activities. However, the laws were easily evaded, and not strictly enforced. American Business man knew they needed a labor force. This gave way to the "unnumbered millions" of workers in Asia. (Takaki, page 28) In an 1869 magazine article called "Our Manufacturing Era," a writer named Henry Robinson described California's enormous economic potential. He stated that, "If Chinese labor could be used to develop the industries of California, it would be the height of folly to forbid its entrance to the Golden Gate." (Takaki, page 28) There was a constant demand for Asian labor all across the Pacific Coast, because they were cheaper, and generally harder working. Robinson claims that, "...even a lowly job in America would be a step up for an Asian, who would do work that whites had "out grown." Factories owners, bankers, investors, and other leaders of American industry used the Chinese workers to keep wages down. (Takaki, page 30) Chinese workers would work for cheaper wages, and would prevent strikes for higher wages from white workers. This naturally led to a build up of animosity among the groups which then led to Racial antagonism. Toward the end of the 19th century, many whites felt that there were too many Chinese in the United States. Congress acted by passing the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 which banned the immigration of Chinese into America. As the number of Chinese immigrants increased, the anti-Chinese forces began to arise. The Chinese provided a cheap form of labor. Frank M. Pixley, editor of the San Fransisco Argonaut, said that "... the Chinese are so successful as workers that they were driving away white labor." (Melendy, page 18) Racism built up due to cultural and economic fears. The Chinese did not try to amalgamate with the dominant culture. Frank Pixley sums up the Pacific Coast prejudice, a view still held in the mid twentieth century: "The burden of our accusation against them is that they come in conflict with our labor interests; that they can never assimilate with usl that they are a perpetual, unchanging, and unchangeable alien element that can never be homogeneous; that their civilization is demoralizing and degrading to out people; that they degrade and dishonor labor class, without the desire of citizenship, without education, and without intereset in the country it inhabits, is an element both demoralizing and dangerous to the community within which it exists." (Melendy, page 28) The Chinese were discriminated in many ways, from forming laws that specifically targeted them, to disallowing citizenship of the Chinese. In late 1860's, violence started to arise from the hate. Whites rioted and killed many Chinese in towns all over California. In May, 1876 some whites burned a Chinese house in Truckee and then shot the Chinese as they tried to escape. Although the town claimed to be outraged, those arrested were acquitted at the trial. (Melendy, page 38) Examples like this show the inequalities of the legal system at that time period. Dennis Kearney, leader of the Workingman's Party in California, said in a speech, "We will drive out the Chinese if we have to destroy the whole state of California." Anti-Chinese riots broke out all across the West, driving out the Chinese by all means. In the 1885-86 riots, the Chinese had suffered a loss of more than 50 lives, and $250,000,000. (Melendy, page 40) What has all this accomplished? Well, Asian Americans belong to the fastest growing ethnic group in the United States. Kept out by immigration laws in the 19th and early 20th centuries, Asians have recently been coming again. In the early 1990's, half of all immigrants entering annually are Asian. In 1960, Asians compromised a mere 0.5% of the population. By the year 2000, Asian Americans will make up 4% of the total population of the United States. In California already, Asian Americans represent 10% of the states total population. (Takaki, page 9) Through the backbreaking labor of the Asian ancestors, the success of America was goaded. The Asians have made many cultural contributions to America. Chinese food is common place throughout the nation, it can even be purchased at any local supermarket. Chinese art, such as chinaware or "china", is revered by many Americans. Even the name of the represents Americas debt. In addition, many Chinese trinkets and artwork are prized possessions among the American society. The immigration of the Chinese into the United States has greatly supplemented the cultural heritage of the nation. (Melendy, page i) "Asians with their capacity for hard work in the face of economic and social adversity and to advance economically, have created cultural microcosms form which their children venture to become Americans." (Melendy, page i) Unlike most European immigrants, Asians tend to disprove the original Melting Pot theory of America. The Asians, "... did not wish to amalgamate with the dominant society and most certainly white Americans of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries made it abundantly clear that they were opposed to Asian immigration and settlement." (Melendy, page i) The United States is a nation of immigrants. "All groups have left their mark upon the country's fabric. Their physical stamina and intellectual abilities have enabled them to make their mark and to add measurably to the American heritage." (Melendy, page 182) f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\asyerians.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The Assyrians There are different periods of the Assyrian empire. The first was called the Old Assyrian period which lasted from 2000-1550 BC. Then there was the Middle Assyrian period which lasted from 1550-1200 BC. The last was the Neo-Assyrian period which lasted from 1200-600 BC. The final phase of the Neo-Assyrian period is called the Assyrian Empire. The Old and Middle Assyrian periods ( 2000 - 1200 BC ) The name Ashur was used by the Assyrians to designate not only their country, but also their most ancient city and their national god. The cities of Ashur (near modern al-Sharqat), Nineveh, and Irbil formed a triangle that defined the original territory of Assyria. Assyria's early history was marked by frequent episodes of foreign rule. Assyria finally gained its independence around 2000 BC. About this time the Assyrians established a number of trading colonies in Cappadocia (central Anatolia), protected by treaties with local Hattic rulers. The most important of these was at Kultepe (Kanesh), north of present-day Kayseri, Turkey. Political developments Brought this enterprise to an end in 1750 BC. Assyria lost its independence to a dynasty of Amorite. Then Hammurabi of Babylon took over and established himself ruler of Assyria. The collapse of Hammurabi's Old Babylonian dynasty gave Assyria only temporary relief. It soon fell under the control of the Mitanni, until that state was destroyed by the Hittites c.1350 BC. The Early Neo-Assyrian Period (c.1200-600 BC) After the collapse of Mittanni, Assyria regained its independence and was able to hold it thanks to the weakness of its neighbors. The most important event in Assyrian history during the 13 century BC, was the capture of Babylon by King Tukulti-Ninurta (r.1244-1208 BC). Although the conquest was short-lived the memory of it remained strong. In the following centuries the chief adversaries of the Assyrians were the Aramaeans, who settled in Syria and along the upper Tigris and the Euphrates rivers, where they founded a number of states. In the 9th century BC, under Ashurnasirpal II (r.883-859 BC) and Shalmaneser III (859-824 BC), the Assyrians finally managed to conquer Bit-Adini (Beth-Eden), the most powerful Aramaen state on the upper Euphrates. Shalmaneser then tried to invade the Syrian heartland, where he met with serious resistance from a coalition of kings that included Ahab of Israel. They successfully opposed him at the battle karkar in 853 BC. Internal disagreements marked the end of Shalmaneser's reign, and many of his conquests were lost. Assyrian power began with Tiglath-Peleser III (r. 745-727 BC) taking over the throne. He began on administrative reforms aimed at strengthening royal authority over the provinces. Districts were reduced in size and placed under governors directly responsible to the king. Outside Assyria, slave states were taken over and made into Assyrian provinces. In Syria, Tiglath-Pileser fought and defeated a number of anti-Assyrian alliances. In 732 BC he ruined Damascus, deporting its population and that of northern Israel to Assyria. In 729 he captured Babylon to guard against a Chaldean-led rebellion there and was proclaimed king of Babylon under the name Pulu (Biblical Pul). His administrative reforms and military victories laid the foundation of the Assyrian Empire. Tiglath-Peleser's son, Shalmaneser V, is remembered for his siege of Samaria, the capital of Israel (recorded in 2 Kings: 17-18). H died during the siege and was succeeded by Sargon II, who took credit for the destruction of Samaria and the exile of its people in 722 BC. The end of the Assyrian Empire The Assyrian Empire was faced with many challenges, Babylon successfully resisted Assyrian attempts to remove a Chaldean tribal chief who allied with Elam for over 10 years, a crusade against the northern state of Urartu, which resulted in their defeat and battling with rebellious coastal cities. The war against his Elamite ally continued for several years with indecisive results. Finally, after another revolt in Babylon, Sennacherib conquered the city and destroyed in 689 BC. He was assassinated by members of his own family in 681 BC. Esarhaddon (r.608-669 BC), son of Sennacherib, rebuilt Babylon and tried to appease the Babylonian's. During his reign, incursions by the Cimmerians and Scythians posed serious threats to Assyrian possessions in Anatolia and Media (northwest Iran), the latter of which was a major source of horses for the Assyrian army. Esarhaddon's principle accomplishment was the conquest of Egypt, begun by him in 675 BC, but completed by his son Ashurbanipal (r.668-627 BC). Ashurbanipal, was the last great king of Assyria and had to deal with many revolts. He led an expedition against Elam and captured Susa, its capital city. After his death, however, the empire gradually disintegrated. In 626 BC, Nabopalassar, a Chaldean nobleman, proclaimed Babylonian independence and, allied with the Medes, set out to challenge Assyria. In the years 614-609, Ashur and Nieveh were captured by the Medes, and the Assyrian king fled to Harran on the northwest frontier. In 605 BC, Nabopolassar's son, Nebuchadnezzar, defeated an Egyptian army that had come to the aid of the Assyrians, thus completing the destruction of the Assyrian state. Assyrian Society and Culture Before the development of modern archaeology, the Bible was the chief source of information about Assyria. The image of Assyria by the biblical accounts is one of irresistible military might. It was seen as an instrument of God's wrath against a sinful people. Archaeological excavations, have unearthed the monuments and written records of the Assyrians kings, confirming this picture of military prowess and terrible brutality. They maimed, burned, speared and denounced harshly their captives. They wanted to instill terror and discourage rebellion. They also deported to cities and farmlands the enemy populations. Assyria dominated Babylonia politically, however, culturally was dependent on the south. The first major collection of cuneiform tablets discovered by 19th-century excavators--the library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh--consists of myths, epics, rituals, lexical texts, wisdom literature, and prophetic and magical texts, providing a representative sample of Babylonian scholastic literature. Assyrian art is usually associated with the colossal winged bulls and lions that guarded the entrances of their palaces, but even finer are the bas-reliefs on the palace walls and the carved ivories used to decorate their furniture. The bas-reliefs portray the Assyrian kings hunting, kneeling before their gods, or conquering foreign cities. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\atticus.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Courage of Atticus Finch In the story To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, Atticus is a very courageous character. In the novel Atticus tried every way to help others, who were in the need of it. First of all it is courageous of Atticus to take the Tom Robinson case. Even his own family disagreed of taking the case. The reason was because of the bias. He risks in many was when taking the Tom Robinson case. He risks the chance of critization by the people that live in the Maycomb county. Mrs. Dubouse criticizes him when she said, "Atticus is a Niger lover!" (100). With many prejudice people living in Maycomb county Atticus also risks the chance of not being re-elected for legislature. Secondly it is courageous of Atticus when he shoots the mad, rabid dog. At this scene he also takes many risks. Atticus risks the chance of missing, and the dog running up, and attacking them. He also risks the chance of shooting a non rabid dog. Atticus could miss the dog, and cause damage to a living, and or a non-living thing. Thirdly it is courageous of Atticus to be willing to charge Jem with Bob Ewell's death. He risked the loss of Jem in the process. He also risked the chance of Jem getting mad at Atticus, and never talking to him. Also It was courageous of Atticus to teach his children not prejudge others until they really know what they are really going through. There is a quotation that Atticus said "Never judge anyone, until you have been in their shoes, and walked around in them." (86). When saying that to Jem, and Scout he risked the chance of them not listening to him. Lastly it is courageous of him standing up to the individuals at the jail house. Atticus risked the chance of the individuals getting him, and Tom, and killing, or hurting them physically. Through all these examples, of courage, and risk we can see how extremely courageous Atticus was during this novel. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Auto Biography.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ My name is Christopher Ray Lathrop. And this is my Auto biography. I was born at Saint Peters Hospital right here in Olympia WA. Where my other two brothers Jarred 15, and Ryley 20 months, were born as well. I traveled to Michigan with my family, when I was around seven or six. Where my Aunt lives with her six kids and a small Korean family. I remember my mother gave my brother and I ,what she refereed too as a Care Package, Right before the trip. It was filled with weapons, nipple clamps, blow up dolls, bulling pins and other inatimate objects. What a trip; four days on the road with my brother and parents. Stopping at places like the worlds largest ball Of string. We ended up going to the air port where my mom sent me too India. Where I lived with a Monk monastery. While I was there, I was beaten repeatedly with tree limbs. The only toys I had to play with were the contents of the care package. I also received for some monk holiday a pet snow monkey. But brother Haanz stole him from me; for his own entertainment.(If you know what I mean?) Anyway; a few years later when I became a shambala monk. (many degrees above a standard monk.) I ran away to America and joined circus Vargus as the head clown. When the Circus came too my hometown of Olympia My mother witnessed my performance, and decided too let me move back home. Living at home was worse than I had hoped. I decided to venture, as I called it; on a long and hopefully successful quest to find an answer to one of mans most pondered questions. "If a cow laughs, does milk come out of his nose?" So I took what was left of the care package, most of it though, was broken during my stay in the Turkish prison. That's a whole different story though. Well anyway; I took what was left of the care package, and left. Then at the age of fourteen I moved to Cat-mon-du-Abudabi-allowishis-debris 90210. and out of pure coincidence, became a porno star. Then I built my own nudist colony. Which unfortunately became impregnated by four Dutch scientists with a golden retriever. So I was forced by sixteen Jewish scientists with a Great Dane to have an abortion. They claimed it to be immoral or something along those lines. My memory is a bit hazy, when It comes to those times. After the abortion I moved to New York, and began raising venomous hamsters. I was bitten 420,007,211,187 times in the buttox. Which didn't help the large cell growth in that area; being that it had already produced a rash there anyways. So I joined the marines and fought in the Veit Nam war 42 regiment. I was a mechanical engineer and after years of study I developed a high intensity materializing lazer death ray beam gun. they did not put the weapon into use though. There was a glitch in it. You see, it took fourteen pounds of crack, in order for it to produce enough energy for the flux capacitor. without it the lazer was unable too reach eighty eight miles per hour. So after the war I was shipped back home where I was forced to go to detoxification classes. After I was discharged from rehab I went and inrolled for a class called secondary options. After I was signed up and officially in the class I started my plans to take over the entire world!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THE END f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Autobiography A FIGHT!.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ A fight! People are different, everyone thinks differently, has different characteristics people act differently, no one is the same in this world. This is good, but some of the time young people do things they regret later, sometimes they cant control what they do, other times they do things to get respect from other people. One of these things I am talking about is fighting between other fellow peoples. When I was at the age of 9, I saw my first fight between two of my best friends. It all started approximately 3 weeks before the actual fight with a silly name calling game which turned very bad. One day both of these very close friends were in a classroom together with a group of other students in the same room, one person started to call another a name to get recognised by other students as being 'big' and win respect from them. The two friends were the same age, and strength and didn't want to look bad in front of the other students, so the two friends said a comment back to each other in defence. It started of as a small game, but by the end of the class, it was getting serious. This continued for about 3 weeks, then one day they were in the same class as each other, again throwing comments at each other when one said to the other; "lets take this out side" Everyone around them urged them to fight so after the class that's exactly what they did. Arms were flying everywhere, the other students were shouting anger at them to hurt each other more, and more. I remember standing there helplessly wanting to stop them, but new if I got involved I would most probably be suspended for interfering. This made me sad, for I didn't have any control of any of my good friends. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Black Friday.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ BLACK FRIDAY "The roof was caving in and I thought I was going to die. It was like your worst nightmare!" said Mary Grandish. Most people think they will die when they see,or hear of a tornado heading their way. Although all the details of the formation of a tornado are not yet understood, it is known that tornados are the result of great instability in the atmosphere and often appear during severe thunderstorms (see appendix #1 for a scientific explaination on how it really starts). Strong updrafts present in severe thunderstorms result in a rotational momentum. Falling rain and/or snow probably drags air from aloft when it comes falling down. The combination of severe thunderstorms and sweltering heat are the breeding grounds for a tornados' formation. The first sign of a tornado is a strong dust whirlwind along with a funnel growing from the storm cloud. A more organized funnel descends farther from the cloud, sometimes even touching the ground. Funnel winds generally move counterclockwise and the funnel can move slowly or at about 100/ft per second. Eventually the tornado becomes fragmented and dissipates causing the end of the tornado. Tornados are the cause of great destruction and devistation in the area in which they occur. For example the Tri-State Tornado of 1925 occured in the Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas States. This tornado was one of the largest tornados recorded in history. It killed nearly 625 people. However, the tornado which strikes closest to home has occured on what Canadians have come to know as "BLACK FRIDAY". The tornado of "Black Friday" touched down on July 31st, 1987 at 2:59 pm. (See appendix #2 for the torndo path). (See appendix #'s 4&5 for maps locating the disaster sights). 27 people were killed; 25 people died during the tornado and 2 died later in the hospital. Hundreds of other people were injured and thousands were left homeless. Edmontonians faced a horrible natural phenomenon which destroyed homes, farms, and businesses. (See appendix #3 for a picture of what it looked like after the tornado struck up the street). More than 25 auto dealers faced a loss of more than $100,000 worth of cars, which were struck by hail measurihg at up to 10 inches in circumference. Not only were auto dealers' cars affected, but many other privately owned cars were damaged to varying degrees. The Kennedale storm sewer overloaded and outfall collapsed, which caused many people to call in complaining of flooded basements. Damage estimites were listed at between $150-$300 million dollars. $20 million dollars damage was done to Evergreen Mobile Home Trailer Park; $50-$70 million dollars damage to residential areas across the Millwoods and Clareview areas; $6-$8 million dollars damage to the Transalta Utilities power equipment consisted of: 49 - 240,000 volt double circuit steel towers 17 - 138,000 volt double circuit steel towers 134 - 138,000 volt single circuit wooden structures Although there is no way to stop a tornado, there is a way to prevent death and limit personal loss. People should get into the lowest level in their home, apartment, or trailer. The reason for this is that if you go into your basement when the tornado hits you will have less of a chance of getting sucked up into it. People should tune into all radio, T.V. and other forms of communication to recieve warnings of the tornado and its movements so people can be prepared and take cover until it passes. We should ensure that all the schools and community buildings are open for people to seek shelter if they are caught out of doors when the tornado threatens. Tornados affect tens of thousands of people and cause wide spread destruction to any thing they come in contact with. "Black Friday" will be remembered in the hearts and minds of most Edmontonians as the greatest, tragic event ever to occur locally. The power of nature continues to astound us and makes us aware of how fragile mankinds existance really is. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\BLESS ME ULTIMA THE CULTURAL DISTRESS OF A YOUNG SOCIETY.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ BIBLIOGRAPHY Anaya, R. (1972). Bless Me, Ultima. California: Quinto Sol Publications, Inc. Calderon, H. & Saldivar, J. (1991). Criticism in the Borderlands. Durham & London: Duke University Press. Creel, J. (1986). The People Next Door, an Interpretative History of Mexico and Mexicans. New York: John Day. Diaz-Guerrero, R. (1991). Understanding Mexicans and Americans. New York: Plenum Press. Di-Bella, J. (1989). Literatura de la Frontera. California: Binational Press. Frost, E. (1972). Las Categorias de la Cultura Mexicana. Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico. Herrera-Sobek, M. (1992). Toward a promised land: La frontera as a myth and reality in ballad and song. Aztlan 21 no 1-2:227-62 '92 '96 Jimenez, F. (1979). The Identification and Analysis of Chicano Literature. New York: Bilingual Press. Miller, T. (1981). On the Border. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers. Salado Alvarez, V. (1968). De como escapo Mexico de ser Yankee. Mexico: Editorial Jus. Saldivar, R. (1990). Chicano Narrative. Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press. Shirley C. & Shirley P. (1988). Understanding Chicano Literature. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press. Universidad Autonoma de Baja California. (1983). Estudios Fronterizos. Revista del Instituto de investigaciones sociales. Mexicali: Universidad Autonoma de Baja California. Bless Me, Ultima: The Cultural Distress of a Young Society Luis Rafael Villafane Fernandez Latin American Studies Elizabeth Mahan December 3, 1996 An answer to the discussion question of whether or not there is a defined border culture would need a great number of years in field research, but we can also observe a few of the characteristics of such border culture just by looking at scholastic essays and books related to the topic. Within the research that I did, I found a number of scholars who, while defining the border, mention all the specific or special characteristics of this new emerging society, but who also very few times defined it as such. In the book that I researched, Bless Me Ultima, by Rudolfo A. Anaya, we find many of those characteristics. There is already much work on this piece of literature, therefore, I decided to present my research and study in two ways. First, I will give a personal analysis of the work, in which I will discuss the different topics and parallelisms that I believe are related to an emerging border culture, and second, I will discuss and complete analysis made by Roberto Cantu, published in The Identification and Analysis of Chicano Literature. The novel by Rudolfo Anaya Bless Me, Ultima, was printed in June 1972, but won the first price in the Second Annual Premio Quinto Sol Literary Award in 1971. The main characters of the novel are Antonio, his father, mother, two sisters, three brothers, Tenorio and his three daughters, and Ultima. The argument presents how a child, (Antonio), matures in one year, thanks to the different episodes that he goes through. Antonio, a seven year old child, narrates in first person, and describes the events that changed his life from the moment that Ultima arrived at his house. During the beginning of the book, his thoughts and actions are typical of such age, but as the events take place, Antonio changes and matures incredible fast through the text. It is even hard to find where the changes in his behavior take place, due to Rudolfo's smooth literary transitions. Carl and Paula Shirley condense their presentation of Bless Me, Ultima by simply mentioning the story line of the book: She (Ultima) is present from the boy's earliest experiences growing up, family conflict, school, religion, evil and death... Much good in this novel, beauty, magic, New Mexico landscape, legends... (Shirley and Shirley, 105). All of this is true, but there is more that they did not mention. The novel is full of inner conflicts. Each of the story lines of thought of Antonio represents not only a personal conflict, but also a social one. An old society vs. a new one, Spanish vs. English, good vs. evil, Catholics vs. Protestants vs. legends, the town vs. the llano and so on. In each one of them we can see the formation or foundation of a new society ruled by Antonio's generation. A new society not yet aware of itself, but new nevertheless. For a better understanding of my analysis I have defined several different components that present essential keys in the underlined development of a border culture. The development if the Mexican border culture is called to be a mixture of two worlds. Tom Miller says that: Ironies and contradictions thrive on the border between the US and Mexico, a region that does not adhere to the economic, ethical, political, or cultural standards of either country (...) It is a third country of its own, its own food, its language, its music (...) It is a colony onto itself, long and narrow, ruled by two faraway powers. (Tom Miller, xii) In the same way, Anaya's description of Antonio's life represents ironies and contradictions, first in a main cultural collision of Mexican and Anglo culture, family structure and language; and then, in more deep levels of religion, and basic understanding of oneself. Inner fights and double realities are present through out Antonio's development. Ramon Saldivar does an extensive study of Anaya's Bless Me, Ultima, and as well as Shirley and Shirley, he seems to be afraid of calling or recognizing a representation of a border culture. Saldivar says: Bless Me, Ultima thus can be said to capture in the form of romance critical and complex transition period in literary-cultural history of the South west: the simultaneous existence within Chicano communities of pre-Columbian myths, beliefs, legends and superstitions, and mid-twentieth century technological, literate mass media culture. (Saldivar, 108). As I mention before, Bless Me Ultima presents the struggle between two different life styles and cultures. On one hand, we have the Mexican traditional life style: Antonio's father was a men of the llano, a vaquero; his mother is from a family of free farmers. On the other hand, we find a very strong influence of American individualism. We see this influence in Antonio's three brothers: after they returned from W.W.II, their parents are hoping that they would become part of their family again, but the three brothers decide to have a life of their own: not as farmers, not as vaqueros, not as highway workers, not even in the same town, but an independent life in the states. Only one of them decides to stay, but not for long. Due to these series of facts, Antonio lives a struggle in his mind. Should he become a farmer or a priest as his mother wanted? Should he decide his own future no matter what the consequences are? Talking about his families Antonio says: "I love them both, and yet I am of neither (Anaya, 38). At he same time, Antonio is going to school across the bridge, to an American school. This is one of the most important aspects of his cultural development as well as our main point in identifying a border culture. There is a two level explanation for this chapter: first, we have to remember that Antonio's father Gabriel was a men of the llano, a vaquero who thought that freedom is the most important thing in anyone's life. Gabriel blames the Texans, (Americans), over and over again for putting fences across his llano, across his freedom. Gabriel never gets accustomed to the life in the city. Furthermore, he drinks more and more, and looks forward to the visitors of the llano who come to his house once in a while to remember old stories. His Mexican culture is too strong. There will be no possible adaptation for him. In the same way, Antonio goes to school, He does not understand English, and therefore does not understand the kids in the school. He knows that the kids are laughing at him because of the way he speaks, the way he behaves, the way he looks and the things he eats. In a way, his freedom , his culture and understanding of life do not make sense anymore. Now, the difference between Antonio and his father culture collision is that Antonio gets accustomed to it. In a while it does not bother him anymore. Why? The reason is simple: there were other kids like him in school. A sense of mutual bondage, due to cultural differences makes this group of kids to stick together and question life on their own. Language and relationships are also another important part on Antonio's culture construction. Soon after Antonio's family moved to New Mexico, Tono and Antonio became Tony and Anthony. Furthermore, we see how the kids in school used a mixed Spanish and English, especially to swear: "Ay Dios! " , "La verga!", "La Chingada!", "se chingo!", "Ay Diablo!", "Ah la veca!", "The hot beans flavored with chicos and green chile were muy sabrosos". Also, Antonio's friends are also different. It was shocking to Antonio that his friends were no longer dark skinned with dark eyes and hair. He mentions that some of them were tall with clear eyes and blond hair. Furthermore, it was even more shocking that those new light kids were speaking in Spanish. The fact is that he was no longer in the land of Mexico. He was no longer in a protective environment. Antonio comes from an strict catholic environment. There is nothing else but Catholicism. His mother wants him to become a priest as one of her ancestors was, but Antonio is battling a struggle of his own. He is now going to school with Protestant kids. Also, one of his best friends tells him the legend of the Carpa, a God who decided to become a fish to save his people, but who will let the town sink on their own sins. Antonio is afraid of loosing his faith. Different episodes of the book make him question his traditional faith. He believes that God is just and omnipotent, but he also sees how innocent men die, and their murderers get free. His is also witness of the impotence of a priest to save his uncles life, when then Ultima cured him with her magic. Antonio is confused and afraid of God's justice. I the same way, we find a parallelism or personification of the three people in God in his family. God, as the powerful father makes the decisions. The Virgin Mary represented by the mother who intercedes to the father for the abolition of punishments for the sons. Then, we have the holy spirit, represented by Ultima and the owl. The pure women who has never sin, whose power and magic is the power of truth and good. When the holy ghost came to the apostles, they knew what to do. Words are never mention. In the same way, Ultima never told Antonio what to do. She would simply bless him and suddenly he would feel a power through him that would make him almost faint. Moreover, not only his faith is the question but also his background. His mother is a Luna, family of farmers. His father is a Marez, family of the Llano, wanderers and vaqueros who come from the conquistadores, men of the sea. Antonio's inner conflict represents yet another parallelism. The sea and the moon are interconnected. The sea is a brave and powerful element, yet, the moon moves it every day. In other words, the sea is controlled by the attraction of the moon who moves it back and forth. In the same way, we may say that Antonio's passion, blood, or impulse are like the sea, but his thoughts, his common sense comes from his mother's part of the family, from the Lunas. In other words, where he comes from, what he is, and how he is supposed to behave is the conflict that it is going on inside him. Each person on the novel plays and important part on Antonio's life and struggle to find the true meaning of life and himself. Moreover, the most important person in Antonio during these years, and probably for the future is La Grande. Ultima represents the old, the tradition. The contact that they have with each other is more on the spiritual level: the old and the new creating a new form of relationship. Antonio does not look for this bondage with Ultima. It is Ultima who lets Antonio get close to her, and therefore, meaning that she, the old and traditional, gives permission to the new to bond with her. This is to live and learn from the past to better adapt it to the future. In conclusion, we find that Antonio is living a continuous struggle by questioning all he ever knew. His culture, language, religion, his family and his background. The answers to this continuous questioning will be the development of a new culture which will be an unconscious forced mixture of two worlds colliding, which resulted from the alienation that Mexico and US cultures subjugated each other. Roberto Cantu does an great job in analyzing the book by Anaya. The reason of my study is because Cantu divides the novel in three underlined worlds of "Universe, world, and Antonio" which he explains by looking at the past, present and future actions in the book. On the other hand, Cantu does not mention or recognize the new society as such. As we will see in the next pages, the three levels of time are directly involved with the development of a new subculture which calls "Regeneration, New Life and New Universe". Past Present Future Universe Legend of Carpa Imminent Flood New Universe World Greatness of Past Degradation Regeneration Antonio Ancestral Heritage Crisis New Life (Jimenez, 376) The Universe and the three time periods are obiously related to the context of the old testament. The legend of the Carpa nad the imminent Flood are the garden of Eden and the destruction of such. What is very related to ou topic is that Cico, (the friend who tells Antonio the legend), and a group of friends trully believe that their city will sink under the lake in which now lays upon. Only the good citizens, the ones who do not sin will be able to save themselves. Then, they are waiting for the end, for the imminent folld in which they, the group of comrades who have everything in common will only be saved. The rest of the world who allietes them will be destroyed. Then, the Universe will be ready for a New Universe, in other words for a new culture: their culture. Roberto Cantu divides his analysis of the World in three parts: "language, religion and family" (Jimenez 378). While talking about the language sued in Bless me Ultima, Cantu mentions the use of Spanish words, the different fluctuations of the language, the poetic tone, the energy and narrative tone of the writer, and probably every single aspect of the text that he thought pertinent. But Cantu also says: Uno de los principales deberes de la escuela es, obviamente, el de ensenar al Chicano el idioma ingles, facilitando de esta manera una sana adaptacion al medio ambiente. (Jimenez 380) The relationship between language and a border identity is right under his nose, but he does not want to mention anything about it: Ahora bien, en vez de mejorar su situacion, o por lo menos de ampliar las facultades comunicativas del mismo, "incomunica" al chicano, separandole de su familia y de su cultura (lengua, historia), a la par que mantiene cierta distancia de la cultura sajona. En otras palabras: que no asimila facilmente. (Jimenez, 380) Yes. He is right. The Chicano gets further from its own culture but never assimilates the Anglo system. That is what makes it a sub-culture! As Cantu and myself mentioned before, language is the first signs of the border culture. Shirley and Shirley agree by identifying the following: Many Chicanos, especially in urban areas, speak and understand a third language called Calo, or Poncho, or Pachuco. This mixes English and Spanish grammars, structures and vocabulary to form a hybrid language; it combines both languages while adding new words and structures. (Shirley & Shirley, XV) What other prove do we want. In page 39, 51 and 162, we find the following constructions: "The hot beans flavored with chicos and green chile were muy sabrosos". "Only ricos could afford school". "Muchacho (...) I need confession". There is no much else that I can say about proving that there is a significant border culture embodied in the language. The quotes and the writers speak by themselves, even though they do not call it anything. At nay rate, Cantu goes ahead with the second part of his world analysis, religion. He presents good ideas when he says: "Church is degraded" ((Jimenez, 382). Moreover, he quotes Bless Me, Ultima: "los dioses estan muriendo, if the old religion could no longer answer the questions of the children then perhaps it was time to change it" (Anaya, 233). Of course. It was time to change it. Let's just simply ask and answer some questions: Who what's to change it? The children. Why? Because it does not answer their questions. What questions? Well, the questions about themselves and their new environment. The children are still to young to understand that they are in a new culture. They are between the ages of 7 and 11 and already feel that they do not belong in their surroundings. What else should we look for? The children are lost in a world that is not theirs, therefore, they have to create their own, a personal world that answers their questions, an new culture, an new border culture. In the third part of the world analysis Cantu is very clear. The greatness of Antonio's ancestors. His mother's family, founders of "El Pastoral" , rich farmers freed to work for anyone but themselves. His father's ancestors, who came to be conquistadores. Then, degradation. His father and his mother, two completely different people who never communicated. Antonio's brothers who leave the family tradition to work on their own in the states. Antonio is his parent's only hope for regeneration: Se sugiere el advenimiento de una familia en al que campeara la armonia y la comunion de objetivos vitales (...) se nos revelara la solucion de este conflicto historico en un cabal mestizaje - ideologico, cultural- que supera el meramente sanguineo. (Jimenez 384-385) Cantu cannot get any closer to say that there is a representation of a new evolving border culture in the text. In his last part, Cantu explains Antonio's inner conflict. His ancestral and different heritage of the Lunas and the Marez, the degradation of his family and his religious and cultural ideas, and finally the "regeneration onto a new life" (Jimenez 385). Now, what exactly does Cantu mean by a new life? As we have seen along this paper, I have proved that there is a new border culture being born during each one of the episodes of the story. Furthermore, through all the research that I have done, no one has even mention the possibility of an emerging new culture within the book. Does Cantu recognize this culture? I believe that he does, but as well as all the other writers, he does not want to acknowledge it. Why? That is another paper topic. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Book Review of Six Years In Hell by Lt Colonel J R Jenson.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Brandon Emerson AP American History Period five Due 10/21/96 The book I have chosen to read for this review is one entitled "SIX YEARS IN HELL." It is a book written by one Lt. Colonel Jay R. Jensen in a first person manor. He was a military pilot who flew over Vietnam and was captured and taken as a POW. This book covers his time in the military before hand describing the daily procedures etc. of his military life. The author graduated from Jordan High School in Sandy, Utah in 1949. He then joined The Utah Air National Guard during the Korean war. Mr. Jensen was on active duty for 20 months, after which he attended Brigham Young University. He graduated with a B.S. degree in Accounting and majors in Banking and Finance. After college he obtained the rank of cadet Colonel in the Air Force ROTC. Lt. Colonel Jensen was well decorated after his retirement in 1978 that concluded 28 years of service. His decorations included: Two Silver Stars, Legion of Merit, Bronze Star with V for Valor, Air Medal, two Purple Hearts, Presidential Unit Citation, Air Force Outstanding Unit Award with two Oak Leaf Clusters, POW Medal, Good Conduct Medal, National Defense Service Medal with Oak Leaf Cluster, Vietnam Service Medal with 14 Bronze Campaign Medals, Air Force Longevity Award (for over 24 years), Armed Forces Reserve Medal with Hour Glass Device (for 20 years), Small Arms Expert Marksmanship Ribbon, Vietnam Cross for Gallantry with Device, and Republic of Vietnam Campaign Medal. All these decorations and the time spent in the military I believe more than present his qualifications for writing this book. This book that he was so qualified to write I must bend to say was rather well written. The author took time to explain everything individually and even those things that seem quite trivial were given careful explanation. If there was something that the author felt was not apparent or was not to be taken at face value he footnoted it at the bottom of the page. These footnotes were especially helpful for those of us readers who may not be that "militarily inclined." I particularly enjoyed the story of Roscoe the base's mascot which was probably one of the longest examples of footnoting throughout the book. The book is written from the perspective of the author at the time he experienced it. The descriptions are so well written that one can almost see or relate to what is being described, but as time progresses you can tell the author's moods change as the mode of descriptions differs. The point of this book was obviously to show the reader a day-by-day look at the life of a military citizen while serving, during capture, and at the end of captivity. Through his accurate descriptions the author conquers this point quite well. The descriptions of the people are so well written that the reader actually "gets to know" that person. Although physical features are scarcely covered just by the details given of the type and speech of a person one can easily relate that person to somebody they know which makes the reading much smoother as the story progresses. Lt. Colonel Jensen was stationed for attack in Vietnam and as the superstition goes the 13th mission was to be his unlucky one. As they suited up and took off on their 13th mission the only thoughts in their minds were reaching their 100th mission so that they could leave and go home. During his flight he was hit by an SAM (Surface to Air Missile) and taken down only a short distance from the coastline. He was immediately captured by some locals and beaten and battered. After his immediate reception, he was taken by some people he describes as, "Quasi-Military Men" and put in a hut. He was often tortured and after a refusal to say anything more than his Name, Rank, and Serial Number he tortured again and when it became apparent that he was not going to say any more they took him on a long journey to Hanoi where he would stay at the "Hanoi Hilton" which was an old French prison. The "V" (Viet Cong) referred to it as Hoa Loa meaning "Hell Hole." He was later moved from Hoa Loa and into a place called the ZOO, a more comfortable and welcoming camp than the last, and was taken through many more moves after that. The rest of the story is told describing his tribulations at the "Hanoi Hilton" and is summed up at the end of the book talking about his return home and his hopes for the future including finding a new wife because his current wife had divorced him after his 5th year of captivity. While reading this book you actually get to feel what the pilot's feeling and the pain from the tortures are quite evident and during the story about the tourniquet torture I almost lost feeling in my arms, that is how strong the descriptions were. This book had no index but the table of contents was very thorough and one while having the ability to read straight through, could also use the book as a reference looking at the table of contents that pointed to each chapter and sub-chapter which were descriptively named. So for instance in you wished to know about the different forms of torture you could look under chapters three and four. I believe the author has done this on purpose because in each chapter there is much redundancy from previous chapters which would help you to understand what you are reading if you chose to read it as a reference rather than as a piece of literary work. The author is a very religious man, he was quite devout before the capture but afterwards he was more so. One can see why quite easily. When in solitary confinement what more does one have than faith? Well the author became quite faithful during this time and that brought him through. Once and often he thought about superstition. Here is an excerpt from early in his captivity recalling how the number thirteen had affected his life. 1. I had been married for 13 years 2. I had completed 13 years of active duty in the Air Force 3. We had moved 13 times 4. I had received news of my assignment on November 13, 1966 5. Thirteen days later I went TDY (temporary duty) to Nellis AFB, Nevada, to check out in the F-105F 6. At Nellis AFB I lived in room 13 7. I flew 13 training missions in the F-105F at Nellis AFB 8. Then I went on leave for 13 days 9. I left the states on January 4 and arrived at Korat AFB, Thailand, 13 days later 10. I lived in room 13 in the quarters at Korat 11. I was assigned to the 13th Fighter Squadron 12. This Squadron was part of the 13th Air Force, our head-quarters 13. I was shot down on our 13th mission Now whether this is all coincidence or not this is another of the parts of the book that makes you really look at life and think. I sat and pondered for quite a while on whether superstition was valid or not just because of this. The author's style of presentation is one that will make the reader think about the story being told, but also think about their own life and how it relates to the story the author is telling. Morals become a big thing throughout and would make even the most pious person think about their own life. Description was probably the key factor of this entire work and because of that, I was able to read this book almost straight through and was disappointed when I had to put it down to eat, sleep, or do any of those other things that day to day life brings to us. The thing that really grabbed me about this reading was that when I was not reading, but doing all of those things that life brings for us to do, I began to sympathize with Jensen because he was not able to do these things through his SIX YEARS IN HELL. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Born On The Fourth Of July.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Born On The Fourth Of July This was an extremely powerful book. Ron Kovic is very able to get his point accross to the reader. He brings you throughout his life showing you, no. . . showing cannot describe the feeling adequately enough. He puts you into his life, when he goes through the trenches, you go with him. When he hits a home run for little league you can experience, not the joy it brought him at the time, but the pain in remembering that joy now that he can no longer do those things. When he makes love with a woman in mexico you can completely understand how stirring, meaningful and frightening the experience is for him. This is a book about self discovery. From beginning to end, you see him struggling to survive life. He is constantly trying to be the best at everything. From the very start he was working out his arms trying to make himself bigger that way to make up for being to short. He joined the cub scouts with his friends and marched in the memorial day parade. He hit a home run his first time at bat in little league. When he grew he joined the wrestling team and constantly won first place in competition. When he lost, it was so emotional that he would cry. He would do anything to be first, even if it meant incredible agony. The coaches made us do sit-ups, push-ups, and spinning drills until sweat poured down our faces and we were sure we?d pass out. ?Wanting to win and wanting to be first, that?s whatÔs important,Ó the coaches told us. ?Play fair, but play to win,Ó they said. They worked us harder and harder until we thought we couldn?t take it anymore and then they would yell and shout for us to keep going and drive past all the physical pain and discomfort. ?More! More!Ó they screamed. ?If you want to win, then you[Ôre going to have to work! You?re going to have to drive your bodies far beyond what you think you can do. You?ve got to pay the price for victory! You can always go further than you think you can.Ó Kovic wanted so much to be a hero, to be all of his heroes rolled up in one. He would do anything to achieve that goal. The way that Kovic writes this book makes it even more incredible. He jumps around in his life, telling you things in, what I believe is, their order of importance to him. He begins by describing to you the feeling of being shot and what is going on around him. You follow him through the sequence of being carried off the field, moved to a hospital, moved to another hospital. You can see him winning a medal of honor. He describes to you the other wounded soldiers around him, and while you feel for him, by taking a look around the room through his eyes you get a fuller picture of just how terrible this war was. He then skip[s around through his childhood, his birthday on the fourth of July, playing with his friends. You can see just how good his life was. It was perfect, what most kids would dream of, but he never felt that he was good enough. He always thought he could do more and he could never talk to girls. So on his graduation from high school, still trying to be the big hero he joined the marines because they were the best. You are in my platoon and if you people wanna be marines, y?all gonna hafta work harder than you have ever worked before in your lives and you are gonna have to listen to me and you are gonna do everything I tell you to do if you want to get your asses off this island alive and become marines you better listen to me. You can see the comparison with drill camp and the wrestling coach. He gives a whole chapter to the drill sergeant yelling at them. It is an incredible chapter, filled with do this and do that and grow up, be a man, mixed thoughts, confused feelings and fear. It?s one of the most moving chapters in the book. In everything he is confused about what to do next. While in the marines he could never decide if he wanted to go back home or stay. He could never decide whether or not he should go speak up about Vietnam. He could not decide whether or not he wanted to get married. He is constantly trying to become whatever it is he is to become. He knows he was kept alive for some reason and he is continually trying to figure out what that reason is. Which brings me to another point in the book. Even when he came back from Vietnam as a cripple, he did not speak out against it, he still believed in what was happening over there, he still believed in what he had been fighting for. Yes he had seen a lot of horrible things but he despised the college students and hippies who burned their draft cards and protested against it, and were not willing to fight for their country. He even marched in the memorial day parade again, which was also one of the worst days of his life, being driven around in that cadallac having everyone staring at him because they couldn?t, or wouldn?t, understand. It wasn?t until the Kent State shootings that he began to question his beliefs. He began to listen to what the other side had to say. To speak up about what was really happening in Vietnam. The story feels like it is taking place over years, he does so many things that you cannot possibly see where all this time is coming from, but it only takes a couple of years to do. He went to high schools and told the kids his story, almost the same way the marine recruiters had come to his school a few years before to tell them how wonderful life in the marines could be. He become one of the most active speakers in the anti-war demonstrations. He was even at Nixon?s acceptance speech in 1972 to yell at him from the center aisle to stop the war several times and being interviewed during a life broadcast, before he was pulled out of the tent backwards by security with republicans booing and hissing al around him. Towards the end of the book he describes what happened to him in Vietnam, how each new mission was supposed to make up for the last one that had gone extremely wrong. He began to realize, after he had shot his corporal and a hut full of young, unarmed children, that everything was different out here and winning medals and being first wasn?t important anymore. But now it all seemed different. All the hopes about being the best marine, winning all those medals. They all seemed crushed now, they were gone forever. Like the man he had just killed with one shot, all these things had disappeared and he knew, he was very certain, they would never come back again. The book ends with him describing memories from his childhood. Making plans in the backyard for his future. His mother using the hula hoop. His sister teaching him how to do the twist. Playing basketball with the girls watching. How wonderful the whole scene is compared to the gruesome descriptions from the chapters before. How easy everything was. He ends the book with these few simple words. There was a song called ?RunawayÓ by a guy named Dell Shannon playing one Saturday at the baseball field. I remember it was a beautiful spring day and we were young back then and really alive and the air smelled fresh. This song was playing and I really got into it and was hitting baseballs and feeling like I could live forever. It was all sort of easy. It had all come and gone. Through this book and through the eyes of Ron Kovic you are able to see just how intense and difficult this period of time was. Children were brought up to be extremely patriotic and democratic. Some rebelled and some like Kovic remained patriotic and went to war voluntarily. It took this life changing event for Kovic to change how he thought of his country. It took many deaths and many years of trying to understand himself before he could see with open eyes how unjust America had been to him and his fellow veterans. I loved this book, it is so incredibly moving and you want to cry and hope that he will be able to walk again, but he just leaves you there with the memory of that old song. You want to turn the page and find another chapter, but there is none to be found. You want to know that everything will be all right, but it won?t be. This is not one of those stories that you can read and then disconnect yourself from it, saying it could never happen to you. I think about Kovic?s story a lot. It sticks with you in your mind very clearly reminding you of it?s existence. This is not a fictional character that you can write off, this is not just a story. This man exists and he let?s you know he it. This is one of the best written books I have ever read and, were it not so unsettling, I would read it again and again. But it is definitely one of those books that everyone should read at least once in their life time. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Campus PartyLife Stereotypes.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ [Error] - File could not be written... f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Can schools change society or must they reflect society .TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ In today's information society people often think that characters from TV-shows or talkshow guests reflect our society. Although that opinion is rather based on the disability of people to use information than on any logical thoughts, there is something every talkshow reminds us of: people are not perfect. So, I say, society can not be perfect either. I believe that society works by that society doesn't work. People are too different to put them all into one melting pot, but you have to, because otherwise society would end in destruction and hate (as seen in the Third Reich). I believe that schools have an obligation to prepare children for life in society. Therefore they don't necessarily have the ability to change society but I think today's situation in Germany is not nearly as bad as the situation in "Dead poet's society", a movie based on a true story. In the movie a teacher tries to let his students be creative and critical towards everything they see and hear while neglecting values like punctuality and obedience. At first he is successful, but as soon as the school board notices his ambitions, he gets suspended for some odd reason. If a teacher in Germany tries to influence students in the way that they are more creative that is generally seen as positive, but what almost makes this impossible is the number of students in a class and the time frame of just 45 minutes, which is short if you are going to hear all the different opinions of all the students. If we accept that there do exist problems in society that need to get fixed, we also have to see that it is not school's job to do this alone. Schools just cannot make decisions for society, but they should work on "producing" individual, critical and creative thinkers with a strong social conscience. However other institutions need to support schools in doing that and I think it should specifically be pointed out that the current decrease of teachers while numbers of students are increasing, can have fatal consequences for the next generations of citizens. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Canadas Immigration From 18521990.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Canada's Immigration From 1852-1990 In 1852 many of Canada's immigrants were from Europe countries but many of these were being lost to the United states. This meant that the province of Canada was mostly French Canadians, this began the immigration promotion program in 1850s. In the 1840s the main problem was lack of control over the immigrants now the problem was getting immigrant particularly British ones to start small farms. Over the next 30 years John A. MacDonald did little to attract new immigrants to Canada. In about 1879 a new immigration law was passed that was designed to keep out paupers and destitutes. This would be the start to "weed out" the people that would live in Canada, and eventually become the laws we have today. In 1885 an act was passed that would restrict Chinese males from immigrating. This was done because of the large amount of young Chinese men that were coming to Canada to work building the CRP ( an estimated 15,701). Without these men most of whom lost their lives from injury or disease. During the 1890s a depression because of the very short growing season and very high cost of shipping the grains. This lack of rain caused many Canadians to immigrate to the U.S. for a better life. Not very attractive to immigrants to Canada. Around the beginning of the 1900s the economy was boosted by the increasing need for Canadian food products. Europe had a large population explosion and tax increase caused more and more to move to Canada. With the construction of the CPR it was much easier to go west and settle the land which was cheap or free. The Canadian government was promoting it's self every where with it's fur and grains to encourage new comers and settlers that moved to the U.S. back to Canada. With the out break of World War I tension was high. This was the lowest amount of people in years (although the amount of Americans was increasing with year of the war). Once desired immigrants were now "enemy aliens". Also people from Germany, Hungry, Poland, Romania, and many others become the objects of hostility. After the war there was a huge boom in immigrants because of Canada's growing economy. But after all booms there is always the come down by 1930 Canada was in a bad depression people were also tense because word of another war. During World War II no Canadians had it worse than the Japanese Canadians. After the booming of Pearl Harbour all Japanese-Canadians were stripped of their homes and property. The Canadian government showed great sympathy for European refugees and homeless. The government donated allot of money to agencies involved in post war rehabilitation and the United Nations Children's Emergency Fund. There was a also a change in the immigration barriers to allow war refugees into Canada. A pro-immigration lobby from the people of Canada lowered the restrictions more even though the government was against this. Without warning in 1959 the government made the laws much more strict to immigrants families coming into the country thus making residents of Canada unable to sponsor family members. The point system was introduced. This new type of system eliminated discrimination of race or nationality. It also reduced the amount of sponsorship immigrating. Robert Adras became a cabinet minister. He rapidly changed the rules of immigration. His new form of ruling lowered the immigration rates through out the 1970s. The 1980s Gave way to another increase in immigrants dew to many refugees, manly indochinese. Canada's current laws are fair and reasonable. Canada could not have been made if not for brave immigrants. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Cant we all just get along.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Can't We All Just Get Along? In our country, everything is run by competition. From basic family roles, to sporting events, to economic well-being. It is this competitive nature that makes us able to better ourselves, and others. Competition is the driving force that pushes one forward. However, assume our nation were cooperative in nature. What would that be like? Would it be a better place than the competitive world of today? First there must be a clear understanding of just how this competitive nature affects our everyday lives. Nearly every aspect of our day has competitive under tones. Some of this competitive nature is unknowing to the person at the time. For instance, a school is one of the best demonstrations of competitive nature at play. Why do some students work so hard in school? To be better than the rest, to be successful. For one to become better than others, and consciously be doing it, there are definite competitive acts going on. Tests are competitions, sporting events are competitions. In the work force, everyone is striving to become the "head honcho". To do this these workers must compete with each other ( although not a conventional "direct competition" ) to gain the praise of their supervisor; thus increasing their chances of moving forward. Next, look at the way a cooperative nation would operate. The entire system of employment, money, education, etc. would have to be completely revamped. Instead of trying to surpass someone at something, you would help that person come to your level. Everyone would have an equal opportunity to education, a job, land, food, etc. This is called communism. Communism looks brilliant on paper, but does it really work? History suggests that communism doesn't work. This is thoroughly backed by the fact that the inventor of communism, the Soviet Union, have fallen out of its government, and demanded. Without competition there is no drive to become smarter, or better at a skill. You are guaranteed a job, and despite the job, an equal salary. In a communist world, doctors receive the same pay and respect ( as a far as the government goes ) as a farmer. Why should someone subject themselves to such a difficult occupation when others simply throw seeds on dirt? The answer is that they are forced to by the government. Therefore communism is equal but unequal. Overall, communism is a very difficult subject. It seems like it would be the best thing for everyone, yet it has never been efficient. Therefore, capitalism, or a competitive nation, is far superior to one of communism. Although capitalism does not work perfectly, it has been far more successful ( historically ). Also, it is human nature ( actually, animal nature ) to be competitive; from the sperm's race to the egg, to the old man's last breath, we as a race cannot live without competition. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Capital Punishment.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ [Error] - File could not be written... f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Captain Edward J Smith.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The entire world is preoccupied with the fact that Captain Edward J. Smith is going to court in New York City. Captain Edward J. Smith is being accused of negligence in the sinking of the Titanic. At this trial there will be lots of media coverage. Most of the news stations across the world are preparing to film this case, so they can bring it right to you on your television screens at home. The word is going around that at least 65 news stations are scheduled to be in New York City covering this major case. Another big issue is who the jury members will be for this very important case. Statistics show that the average number of days to select a complete jury for a case of this importance should be about 2 1/2 weeks. The judge must be sure that a variety of people are serving on the jury. Most likely, there will be lots of confusion in the selection of these jury members. The lawyers representing both Captain Smith and the people have not yet been chosen. Captain Smith is in contact with the same group of lawyers that represented O.J. Simpson. At this moment, we are not sure if they will take the case. This trial appears to have more attention given to it than even the Simpson trial. We have a new trial of the century, Captain Edward J. Smith vs. the people. There is a rumor circulating that this trial could last about 1 1/2 years! Not only is this the biggest trial of the century, but it might be the longest one yet! STAY TUNED! f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\CAPTIN EDWARD J SMITH.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The entire world is preoccupied with the fact that Captain Edward J. Smith is going to court in New York City. Captain Edward J. Smith is being accused of negligence in the sinking of the Titanic. At this trial there will be lots of media coverage. Most of the news stations across the world are preparing to film this case, so they can bring it right to you on your television screens at home. The word is going around that at least 65 news stations are scheduled to be in New York City covering this major case. Another big issue is who the jury members will be for this very important case. Statistics show that the average number of days to select a complete jury for a case of this importance should be about 2 1/2 weeks. The judge must be sure that a variety of people are serving on the jury. Most likely, there will be lots of confusion in the selection of these jury members. The lawyers representing both Captain Smith and the people have not yet been chosen. Captain Smith is in contact with the same group of lawyers that represented O.J. Simpson. At this moment, we are not sure if they will take the case. This trial appears to have more attention given to it than even the Simpson trial. We have a new trial of the century, Captain Edward J. Smith vs. the people. There is a rumor circulating that this trial could last about 1 1/2 years! Not only is this the biggest trial of the century, but it might be the longest one yet! STAY TUNED! f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Charles Darwin & Herbert Spencer Charles Darwin, a British naturalist, revolutionized biology with his theory of evolution through the process of natural selection. Herbert Spencer was the major philosopher of biological and social evolution. Spencer's work significantly influenced 19th century developments in biology, psychology, sociology and anthropology. While Darwin was influential in the fields of natural history and geology, his theory of evolution created great controversy. He changed the way people thought about the role of humans in the natural world. Although these two men made advancement in the theory of evolution they had contrasting views regarding anthropological study. Charles Darwin was an English naturalist who first solidly established the theory of organic evolution, in his work, The Origin of Species. Darwin was born in Shresbury, Shropshire on February 12, 1809. His grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, was a famous English scientist and poet. In 1825 the young Darwin went to Edinburgh University to become a doctor. The same year, however, he transferred to Christ's College in Cambridge in order to become a clergyman. During this time he befriended a man of science, John Steven Henslow. It was Henslow who recommended him for the unpaid position of naturalist on the H.M.S. Beagle. Darwin set sail on December 27, 1831 to study the Pacific coast of South America and the Pacific Islands. His other duty was to set up navigation stations in the area. He also studied the geology and biology of these areas. Upon his return in 1839, Darwin married his cousin, Emma Wedgewood, and was admitted to the Royal Society. He moved to Downe, Kent in 1842, and was plagued by ill health until his death. He apparently transmitted Trypanosomiastis from frequent bug bites in the Pacific. Darwin died on April 19, 1882 and was buried in Westminster Abbey. In The Origin of Species, Darwin presented his idea that species evolve from more primitive species through the process of natural selection, which occurs spontaneously in nature. In his theory of how natural selection occurs, known as Darwinism, he pointed out that not all individuals of a species are exactly the same. But, rather that individuals have variations and that some of these variations make their bearers better adapted to particular ecological conditions. He pointed out that most species have more chances of surviving and producing young than do less adapted, and that over the passage of time, are slowly weeded out. The accumulation of adaptations to a particular ecological system leads into the development of separate species, each adapted to its own ecolgoical area. In 1837, Darwin began work on the concept that evolution is essentially brought about by three principles. The first being variation which is present in all life forms. However, he did not attempt to define it. The second principle is heredity, " the conservative force which transmits similar organic forms from one generation to another (2:57)." Lastly, the struggle for existence "determines which variations will survive in a given environment, thus altering life through a selective death rate (2:57-58)." He concluded that with all three factors combined that life will alter slowly and unnoticeably. Herbert Spencer lived from 1820-1903. An English philosopher who advocated the importance of the individual over society and science over religion. He was born in Derby on April 27, 1820. He declined an offer to attend Cambridge, and his higher education was a result of reading, especially about the natural sciences. In 1848, he became subeditor of the Economist. In 1851, he published Social Statistics, in which he argues in favor of an extreme form of economic and social laissez faire and proceeded to call progress a necessity. In 1860 Spencer went to work on The Synthetic Philosophy, a combination work including psychology, biology, sociology, and morality. Spencer began writing a series of works called Descriptive Sociology in 1873 about the social institutions of various societies. However, he died before he could see this work published (it was later published posthumously). One of the results of Darwin's work is that he demonstrated that the evolution of plants and animals provides no evidence of divine creation. He began to apply evolution to morality and it evolved from improved social standards (3:101). As he grew older he abandoned his Christian views and became agnostic. Unlike Darwin, Spencer's work and views revolved around people and societies. On the other hand, Darwin dealt more with plants and animals. Spencer's work tried to combine sociology and social philosophy, however, Darwin's work was more biological. Spencer also used metaphysics to prove some beliefs. He believed that acquired characteristics can be passed on to descendants. He did not think that acquired characteristics or survival of the fittest were the ultimate principles of evolution. He felt being able to create a heterogeneous society was the most fundamental principle. Spencer combined a belief in the reality of time with a belief in the eventual actualization of every possible variety of being. Believing in this gave religious support to the liberal principle of variety. He also believed in the reality of time with a belief in the eventual actualization of every possible variety. Spencer was one of the first to affirm that human society may be studied scientifically. He did so from an evolutionary point of view based on the assumption that human behavior is socially determined. His evolutionary theories were conceived before those of Darwin (1:15). Spencer, however, applied his general evolutionary scheme to human society. He believed that social evolution would be governed by a process of increasing individuation. Human societies evolved from similar hordes by means of increased divisions of labor, into complex civilizations. Primitive men were smaller, less intelligent and more emotional than civilized men. According to Spencer they became more intelligent by studying children in civilized societies. Religion is the result of ghost souls in dreams and worship was directed toward the souls of dead ancestors. This led Spencer to believe that civilized religions were more or less elaborate variations on this primitive idea. The major social distinction was between military societies and industrial societies. In military societies, co-operation was gained through forced measures. Whereas in industrial societies, cooperation was optional and spontaneous. Spencer also made a comparison between animal organisms and human societies. There is a regulative system or the central nervous system in an organism and government to societies. A sustaining system found in one, industry in the other, and both shared distributing systems: veins and arteries and roads and telegraphs. The major difference between the two is that everything happens for one thing. while in society everyone acts as an individual and nothing goes back to the whole. Spencer's attempt to combine the sciences has never been repeated. His sociology, based on society, was taken over by social anthropology and is more concerned with providing a rationale for his social ideals. For example, primitive men were not childlike emotional animals as he thought them to be. Darwin and Spencer made great advancements in the study of evolution. They became forerunners in their fields and the two most revered scientists in the study of evolution. Their theories are still in existence today and have not been discounted. Spencer mostly dealing with society and Darwin with nature. They both are famous for their theories of evolution, but their theories differ. Darwin felt that evolution was gained through natural selection. However, Spencer believed in survival of the fittest in order to create a heterogeneous society. Both men's writings and theories became greatly controversial, but greatly influenced future scientists. Works Cited 1. Hudson, William Henry. An Introduction to the Philosophy of Herbert Spencer. Haskell House Publishers: New York, 1974. 2. Huxley, Julian. Charles Darwin and His World. Viking Press: New York, 1965. 3. Skelton, Renee. Charles Darwin and the Theory of Natural Selection. Children's Press Choice: Chicago, 1987. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Charles Darwin and Imperialism.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Charles Darwin And Imperialism England went through dramatic changes in the 19th century. English culture, socio-economic structure and politics where largely influenced by the principles of science. Many social expressions occurred due to these changes. Transformations which categorized this time period could be observed in social institutions; for instance: the switch from popular Evangelicalism to atheism, emergence of feminism and the creation of new political ideologies (Liberalism, Conservatism and Radicalism). These are just a few of the changes that took place. All of this social alteration can be attributed to the importance of science. The English people began to trust more in empiricism and logical thought than in faith and glory of the empire . One who contributed greatly to this transformation was Charles Darwin. In his two most famous works, The Origin of Species and The Decent of Man, Darwin introduces the concept of "the survival of the fittest" and "natural selection". The Darwinian ideas introduced into English society justified a great number of political policies and social movements. England at the turn of the century was still a largest power in the international system. The English perceived, through the justification of Darwinism, they were fit to be the imperial hegemon in the world. The issue this essay will deal with is Imperialism and how Darwinism justified its practice. Darwin argued in his work, The Decent of Man, "When civilised nations come into contact with barbarians the struggle is short except where a deadly climate gives its aid to the native race. . . the grade of civilisation seems to be a most important element in success in competing nations."(Darwin, Decent of Man, p. 297). In this observation, Darwin connotated superiority to civilized nations. In this same work, he referred to the indigenous people as "savages, barbarians and tribal men". This immediately transfers a condescending attitude toward the "uncivilised people". Darwin classified them as tribes while the English and other Aryan cultures were a race. These claims of basic inequality gave the English the "jurisdiction" philosophically, to exploit the colonies to a greater level than previously attained. The drive to "Christianize" the colonies was abandoned, politically. The view shifted from "owing the primitive world" education and Christianity, to a more self-interested "we English are naturally better". Therefore, the we should be exploiting you, because, that is why you are here. Charles Darwin had a tremendous amount of influence on the scientific community and the English population. It can be seen that Darwinism played a large part in justifying the imperial behavior of England. Darwin's studies on nature and the behavior of animals had unlocked "Pandora's Box" in a manner of speaking. He studies reveal how close to nature humanity really is. The English empire quickly saw themselves as a dominant predatorial species of the world. In conclusion, the English empire used Darwinian concept to justify the on-going process of imperialism. Charles Darwin's ideas elevated the ego's of the English people to over-estimate themselves socially and globally. The affects of Darwinism can be seen throughout the spectrum of social interaction both in the animal kingdom and human society. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Charles Manson.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Charles M. Manson Allen Azar Mrs. Kardos Term Paper 3/13/95 In this world there are cults everywhere. Whether they're in the US, China, or maybe next-door there is always one common factor, control. Charles Manson was a cult leader in southern California during the sixties. Like all cult leaders Manson had his own small band of followers. His influence was so great that his followers were willing to kill for him at his smallest whim. Charles Manson was very paranoid and was under the influnce that there was to be an upcoming race war. He called this race war "Helter Skelter". Page 1 Charles M. Manson was born in Cincinnati on November 11, 1934. His mother Kathleen Maddox, a teenage prostitute, his father was a man remembered as "Colonel Scott." In order to give her bastard son a name she married William Manson. He quickly abandoned the both of them. In 1939 Kathleen Maddox was arrested for robbery and Charles was sent to live with his aunt and grandmother. Charles remembered his aunt as a harsh disciplinarian and favored is uncle because he gave him money for the movies and took him on frequent fishing trips. Only when his uncle became ill did his unfit mother come and reclaim her unwanted son and moved to Indianapolis. When Mrs. Manson reclaimed her son she promised that she would take care of him and provide for his every need. Unfortunately, all these promises were soon shattered by liquor and men. She frequently neglected Charles by telling him she would be back in an hour and then not show up for the rest of the night. Sometimes when her guilt took her over she would give him fifty cents and another promise; and at other times she just abused him. When Mrs. Manson got fed up with taking care of Charles she arranged to have Charles put in a foster home, but arrangements fell through. As a last resort she sent Charles to Gibault School in Terre Haute. Mrs. Manson couldn't keep up the payments and once again Charles was sent back to his mother's abuse. At only fourteen Manson rented himself a room and supported himself with odd jobs and petty theft. His mother turned him into the juvenile authorities. Once there Manson met Rev. George Powers who had him sent to Boys Town near Omaha, Nebraska. Charles spent a total of three days in Boys Town before running away with his new friend Blackie Neilson. They were arrested in Peoria, Illinois for robbing a grocery store and returned back to Indianapolis. Charles was then sent to the Indiana Boys School in Plainfield where he ran away another eighteen times before he was caught and sent to the National Training School for Boys in Washington D.C. After his release in 1954 he went to West Virginia and not before long married Rosalie Jean Willis. She became pregnant and Charles started stealing cars. By the time the baby was born he was in a Los Angeles jail. Rosalie moved to California to be near Charles. Her mother-in-law had a seldom streak of maternal sympathy and came to help care for her grandchild. In 1958 Charles got out of Prison his wife, child, and mother had left him alone again. Several arrests for car theft and pimping followed; in 1960, Charles was given ten years for forging government checks. While he was serving his ten year sentence at McNeil Island Penitentiary he studied philosophy, took up guitar, and taught himself sing and compose songs. He was constant probation violator and was not eligible for parole. He served seven years until his release in March, 1967. This long stretch had left its mark. "If Charlie has any roots in the penal system," Said one acquaintance (New York Times Magazine January 4, 1970). "Inside, you have to be aware of everything, and when he came out, Charlie was like a cat. Nothing got by Charlie if something happened within a hundred miles of him, he made sure he knew about it. Every time he came into a room, he cased it, like an animal. Where were the windows? What was the quickest way out? He never sat with his back to the door." Soon after his release, Manson went off to Haight Ashbury, where the hippie movement was coming about. At the time the true hippies, the gentle ones who believed in peace, love, and sharing with others, were like a primitive tribe suddenly exposed to civilization. As the media spread their story, the hippies became overwhelmed with teenyboppers, motorcycle gangs, and a wide variety of the mentally deranged. Manson's probation officer remembers he was "shaken" by the friendliness of the hippies, but before long Manson learned how to exploit it. A slim man, about five feet seven inches tall, brown hair and eyes, Manson started to collect a harem of impressionable girls searching for community of love as advertised by the media. With a guitar, a pleasant voice, boyish smile, sinuous mannerisms, and being a smooth talker were Manson's traits that appealed to his followers. Whenever Manson succeeded in making a new recruit the first thing he did was to deprogram both their ego and their "hang ups," about conventional society. By "hang ups," he meant anything he did not like. "It wasn't a very difficult process. He was dealing with lonely insecure people in need of a father figure, people who didn't have much ego to begin with. What he did, in effect, was to tear down that ego and substitute himself, thus gaining enormous control over his followers."(Roberts pg.31) Susan Atkins remembers bleakly, "I never questioned what Charlie said. I just did it." To his girls Charles Manson was a "beautiful man" who "loved us all totally." Many outsiders found him to be a relentless recruiter who came on strong with every girl he met, a cynic who treated his harem like possessions and seldom showed any real affection to them. A close friend explained, "In away he was very frank and truthful, but in away he was very treacherous with words, but there was no meaning behind them." Dr. David Smith founder and director of the free clinic in Haight Ashbury, thought that these two sides of Charles Manson were not contradictory: To take an example, if you get to know any paranoid schizophrenics it won't puzzle you at all. The schizophrenic usually believes in a mystical system in which he is right, and he can plan in the most calculating and cunning way possible. He himself does not really know he is a con man, or whether he really does love the girls. He vacillates between one emotion and the other, one of the characteristics of a schizoid personality is the inability to sustain one emotion. It doesn't confuse me that he would be able to convey sincere emotion and carry on in a very plotting way. Of course, he would hide the cunning side as much as possible from those he wanted to involve in his system. When the girls came into the group their biggest conflict was the idea of sex on demand. Charles could be very brutal when necessary, any girl that stayed with him accepted the idea of having sex with him or anyone else on demand. He preached that women should be submissive to men; this idea was put into one of the Beach Boys songs. Charles titled it "Cease and Resist," and although the Beach Boys changed it to "Never Learn Not To Love," they kept the lyric "Submission is a gift, give it to your lover." As Haight Ashbury was being taken over by drug pushers, psychotics, and rapists, Charles packed his crew in to an old converted school bus and headed south in the spring of 1968. The group of fourteen consisting of nine girls and five boys were arrested near Oxnard for sleeping nude in a field; the mother of a newborn infant was arrested and charged with child endangerment. But the charges were dropped when they agreed with authorities to leave Ventura county. Once in Los Angeles the crew stayed in Topanga Canyon, which, originally was a haven for hippies, which, like Haight Ashbury, had been overrun with panhandlers. For a while they stayed with Gary Hinman, a musician. Then one of the girls met Dennis Wilson, a member of the Beach Boys singing group. He invited the entire family to stay in his luxurious home in Pacific Palisades. Manson attempted several times to pursued Wilson to join with the family. Wilson never gave in and after several attempts Manson and his family left the house. They finally settled at Spahn Ranch in the Santa Susana Mountains. Spahn Ranch was an old movie set, just north of the San Fernando Valley. The owner of the Ranch, eighty five year old George Spahn, was blind and feeble and allowed the family to stay with him. George Spahn soon grew desperately afraid of Manson, he only allowed them to stay because he enjoyed the attention he got from the girls who cooked and cleaned for him. The Family stayed at the Ranch for an entire year before they left because the deputy sheriffs had staged several raids looking for stolen vehicles. It was then that the family headed off to the dessert where they made their last home until their arrests. While living in the desert Manson's fears of the Black race grew substantially. Manson was an avid believer in the law of karma, an eastern religious idea that all events come in cycles and have previous causes. Manson was convinced that the black man would revolt and oppress the white man in the way that the whites had previously oppressed the blacks. He believed that this revolt would lead into an all out race war that he called Helter Skelter. Manson was under the impression that after the race war happened that only he, his family, and anyone else that escaped to the desert would survive. Believing this, Manson turned his home in the desert into a fortress. Guns appeared at the ranch, and the men would frequently take target practice. Guards were posted. Escape routes to the desert were plotted. Caches of gasoline and other necessities were buried all over the Death Valley area. Manson was pro-race war. So much so that he preached it and attempted several times to provoked it. Manson tried to provoke Helter Skelter by having his family carry out several murders and then make it look as if people of the Black race had committed the crime. The people he killed ranged in the upper-class and some famous. His most famous victims were Sharon Tate, a movie star, and her husband Roman Polanski. Other victims included Leno and Rosemary LaBianca, Abigail Folger and her fiancé Voytek Frykowski, Jay Sebring, Gary Hinman, Steven Parent, and Donald Shea. Manson's victims were savagely mudered. The killers used guns, knives, forks, and blunt objects. With their victim's blood they wrote on the walls, "Death to pigs." When the police found Abigail Folger, her white dress appeared red after being stabbed twenty-three times. And when they found Leno LaBianca a fork was sticking out of his chest. On August 16, 1969, during a police raid, Charles Manson and his family were arrested for murder. The trial soon followed. Leading the prosecution was Babitz, Eve. "The Manson Murders." Esquire. August 1994. Bugliosi,Vincent. Helter Skelter: The True Story of The Manson Murders. W.W. Norton & Company Inc. New York. C.1974. Roberts, Steven V. "Charlie Manson: One Man's Family." New York Times Magazine, January 4, 1970. Sanders, Ed. The Family: The Story of Charles Manson's Dune Buggy Attack Battalion. E.P. Dutton and Co., Inc. New York. 1971. "The Manson Women: Inside the Murders." Turning Point. Interviewer Diane Sawyer.ABC, New York. November 9, 1994. Unknown. "The Power of a Cult." Glamour. January, 1995: 160-183. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Che Guevara.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Ernesto Guevara Ernesto Guevara was born in l928. When he was two, he moved to Cordoba, Spain, because of asthma. As a young child, Guevara became interested in reading Marx, Engels, and Freud found in his father's library. As he grew up, he watched the Spanish refugees from the Spanish Civil War fight against the fascist dictator, Francisco Franco. Mr. Guevara was influenced by the war and refugees. He began to hate military politicians, the U.S. dollar, and parliamentary democracy. Ernesto's parents were both anti Franco activists. In Buenos Aires, Mr. Guevara went to medical school. He graduated in l953. After several years, Ernesto went to Guatemala writing articles on the Inca and Myan ruins. During his stay in Guatemala, he had the chance to become a government medical personnel. He refused this chance because he did not want to join the Communist party. Therefore, he was penniless for a number of years. Shortly thereafter, Guevara met one of Fidel Castro's lieutenants with whom he fled to Mexico City. In Mexico City, he also met Fidel Castro, and his brother Raul. In Fidel Castro, he saw a great Marxist leader that he was seeking. Guevara joined Castro followers at a farm where they were training for guerrilla war tactics. The tactics were those first used by Mao Tse-Tung. At this time, Ernesto Guevara first was nick named "Che", which is Italian for pal. The group invaded Cuba, where Che was commander of the revolutionary army. From then on, he was known as the most aggressive, clever and successful guerrilla officer. He also got the reputation for cold- blooded cruelty. One reason for this reputation was because of his orders to mass execute followers of the former Cuban president Batista. There after, Che Guevara was second only to Castro in the government of Cuba. As the years went on, Guevara ran the department of industry for Cuba. The government they formed was communist but very different from the then Russian government. Ernesto attacked the Russian style of Communism and said "It was tacit accomplice of imperialism." The Russians were not trading only with communists and they were not giving under developed countries aid. After April of l965, Guevara disappeared from the public eye. Castro dropped his association with Guevara because of Che's criticism. Che's plan at that time was to bring about Marxism by starting a world-wide revolution. He went around the world with forces (120 Cubans). In Congo, they attempted to accomplish one of these revolutions. It fell short when Belgian aid arrived to help the current government. Che had little help from the rebels of Congo and eventually failed. His final days were spent in Bolivia where he used bad judgment by trying to start a revolution. His troops were crushed, and he was captured by the Bolivian Army. Che was shot the next day. Ernesto "Che" Guevara is known even today in Vollegrande, Bolivia as a hero to many citizens. He is a symbol of power for the oppressed people. Guevara is thought of by many as a saint. Pictures of Che remain in many windows. To the youth of America in the l960's and l970's Che was thought of as an idol. He was viewed as a revolutionary martyr that supported the ideal classless society. In many ways, his thoughts and ideas are important for us today. Now our "democratic" government is only run by rich Caucasian males. The door for the equality in our government has not been open to the rest of society. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Cheap Labour.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ CHEAP LABOUR!!! Canada, the so-called land of opportunities. This statement is a known fact due to the large amount of people immigrating to our country. It all started back in the 50's and is still occurring in the 90's. I will be discussing the different working mentalities between French Canadians and immigrants coming from various parts of the world. I will compare "Voiceless People" by Marco Micone, and White Niggers of America by Pierre Vallieres. White Niggers emphasizes on the mentality of French Canadian working class and Voiceless People emphasizes on immigrant's mentality towards working, which in this case is the Italian community. After reading "Rivalry Over the Ethnic Minorities", it was like reading my own family's past when they immigrated in Quebec back in the early 70's. Many Greek immigrants who immigrated from their native country followed the same pattern towards finding happiness. Like most of the French, they worked long hard hours in bad working conditions and not so great pay. These sweatshops represent the first act of action to climb up the social ladder. But for the immigrants, it meant much more: they have these jobs in order to save up some money for the future, by a nice house and reach the next step in social ladder. Most of the time, the immigrants would buy their home in other neighborhoods; they would change community because it reflected their new social situation. Because they have more money, they can move to an area where people of the same nationality live. They will leave the French back in the city where they will keep on working long hours because they never saved up or invested their money. The main point I'm trying to show is that the immigrants have a stronger ambition and desire to become more successful than the French do, maybe because they are not at home and threatened by others. This is the world view almost all immigrants have and this concept has a major effect on their lives. Voiceless People is exactly the same scenario for Antonio and his family. Antonio came here very poor and unable to speak a word of French. He started working in factories with very bad pay and even worse working conditions. Just like the typical immigrant, he never gave up, didn't let anyone put him down, continued to work because he had an ambition to become successful and buy a house knowing that he earned it with his own sweat. As a newcomer to this country, he seemed to succeed with great facility, unlike many French Canadians who seem somehow jealous of the immigrants who tend to succeed with such bad circumstances. This cycle seemed very effective for many immigrants and still is. Many don't have a choice, they must work like slaves for several years and save almost all their earnings in order to hopefully go up the corporate ladder. Many do this very rapidly, often in only one generation from practically slavery to a professional job and respected positions. The ratio of immigrants going through the cycle described above is much higher than the ratio of French Canadian going through the same thing. Like the Rossis and many other Italians, they show more desire to achieve wealth. Now, the mentality issued in White Niggers illustrates the French working class. It represents the Vallieres family and the hardship they were living the 40's. Vallieres' father was still working long dreadful hours when he was only 13. This means that he hadn't saved up enough money to be able to decrease his working hours; therefore he couldn't even spend more time with his family. Also, education was not similar when comparing the two stories. For example, education plays a big role according to Antonio; he thinks that it is very important for Mario to go to school. He wants him to attend university and get a incredible job that will make him look good as well. But Mario doesn't seem to have an interest in pursuing a career in school. But in White Niggers of America, young Vallieres had a thirst for knowledge, he wanted to go to university to become a writer, but like many other French Canadian parents, they wanted him to go to a special school, Brothers of Christian, for only two years and get a job at a bank which would provide immediate income unlike going to university and waiting many years before getting a steady job. But Vallieres wanted more because he knew he was bright and he really wanted to attend university. However, before frequenting to school, he would have to go to the College Classique ...but he didn't have enough money. Why is it that the French Canadian father could not afford to send his child to go to college and the immigrant Italian seems to have? Luck? I don't think so. It must be the desire to be successful. It seems that the immigrants feel more threatened if their children don't get an education because they come from immigrated families. On the other hand, French Canadians feel less pressured because they assume they are superior and are bound to get a job in their society, but they're wrong. For example, many of the well respected jobs in Montreal are held by people who's families have immigrated here only a half a century ago. For instance, the Jewish, Italian and Greek communities are prime examples of what I'm trying to illustrate. An other point is that the ethic community in Montreal is very strong and practically controlling the economy. Another element that I would like to give my point of view on is the hatred and jealousy coming from the French Quebecers. For example, in Voiceless People, there was an extract that had Antonio's neighbor insulting and calling him bad names just because he was an immigrant . I can't really blame his neighbor because he sort of had a reason to get angry due to the fact that many newcomers took away jobs; these foreigners were willing to work for less money than the French Canadians. But many natives would rather go on social security which Antonio would never consider. This situation is presently happening in Montreal where people are emigrating from Bangladesh and Pakistan. Many residents of Canada are criticizing these individuals, just as it was happening thirty years ago. Primarily, the point of this essay was to illustrate the world views and mentality between working class French Quebecers and working class immigrants. These settlers from abroad have a very different approach towards life when they came here. Many of them chose Antonio's world view rather than seeing the world view through the eyes of the Quebecers. Outside this world of economy, the French Canadians still run the risk of being "extinct" by the overflow of thirsty immigrants looking for jobs which our employers will gladly hire. But then again, there will always be a Jacques Parizeau who will always find a flaw in all the ethnic communities who seem to work hard and want to become a success in order to make this country a better place to live in. 0 word count 1,190. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\child abuse.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Maltreatment of children is not a new phenomenon. It dates back far into history, as far as the colonial times and even back to biblical times. During the recent years child maltreatment has had an increase in the publics eye. There are many factors to child maltreatment. There are four general categories of child maltreatment now recognized. They are physical abuse, sexual abuse, neglect and emotional maltreatment. Each category, in turn, covers a range of behavior. The maltreatment of children not only affects the children themselves, but also affects the family intern making it dysfunctional. Physical Abuse Physical abuse may be best defined as any non-accidental physical injury by a person who has care, custody, or control of a child. The definition contains two key aspects, the act is intentional or willful, and/or the act resulted in physical injury. Accidental does not qualify as child abuse. (Wallace,29) Physical abused children do not fit any type of stereotype. Abuse occurs in all neighborhoods. Also, abusers come in all shapes, sizes, colors, and sexes. There are many signs of physical abuse. First the location and types of injuries, many time the parent or care takers will deny any wrong doing or the child has suffered any physical injury. There are always those injuries that consist of a normal childhood upbringing, such as falling of their bike or bumping their head. Then, there are those which they cannot be explained. When caretakers deny any injuries or have no knowledge of an injury, there is a very strong likely hood that physical abuse exists. Here are some of the signs of physical abuse. Bruises happen for various of accidental reasons. There are also bruises that are tell tale signs of abuse. Bruises have a time clock that can tell when it happened. Also, the location of the bruise can tell a story. Bruises on the front part of the body are often signs of normal bruises from just falling ECT. Bruises found on the back of the arm, leg, lower back, the butt and genital are suspicious bruises and often questioned bruises. Patterned bruising is also a sign of abuse. Normal bruises are in various shapes and sizes. While some bruises that are a patterned show strong signs of abuse. These are bruises that have definite boundaries and sharp and curved edges. For example rope, rulers, hand prints and so on. (wallace,38) Burns are also a sign of abuse. Burns are patterned like bruises. These burns would have sharp edges and spots that were spared from flexation. Water immersion burns are common signs of child abuse usually caused by a caretaker holding the child in the water. Also patterned burns which are burns caused by pressing hot objects on the child bodies.(wallace,42) Another sign of abuse is fractures. These types of fractures are signs of abuse. Spiral fractures are usually breaks in the humerus or femur resulting from twisting of the limb. Head and internal injuries are often signs of abuse. Such as occasion, whiplash or shaken baby syndrome are examples of head injuries. Chest and abdominal injuries are common in abuse. This is caused by hitting or grasping a child.(Wallace,43) Sexual Abuse Sexual abuse is defined as the sexual exploitation or sexual activities of children. A child under these circumstances will indicate that the child's health or welfare is harmed or threatened. Intra familial sexual abuse includes incest and refers any type of exploitative sexual contact between relatives. There are many physical indicators of sexual abuse. Here are some examples of physical indicators: difficulty in walking or sitting, torn, stained or bloody underwear, bleeding, bruising and itching around the genitals and anal. Frequent urinary tract or yeast infections. Pain on urination and so on. There are no pattern or causes of conduct that leads to sexual abusers.(wallace,58 and 63) Child Neglect The definition of child neglect is the treatment or maltreatment of a child by a parent or caretaker under circumstances indicating harm or threatened harm to the child's health or welfare. There are many theories of child neglect from poverty to non-fit parents. There are also many indications to child neglect.(Wallace,82) Some of the physical indicators are poor growth, constant hunger and malnutrition. Poor body odor and hygiene, lice and inappropriate clothing. Constant fatigue. Constant lack of supervision and unexplained bruises or injuries as result of poor supervision. Unattended physical problems or medical needs, such as lack of proper immunizations, gross dental problems, need glasses or hearing aids. Emotional neglect Emotional neglect is the constant act or omission which is judged by the community standers and professional expertise to be psychologically damaging to the child. Rejecting the child is one form of child neglect. This is when caretakers refuse to acknowledge the children's worth or emotional need. For example, a parent treats the child differently than his or her other siblings. Isolating a child is when a caretaker does not allow the child to interact with others. An example of this is when a child caretaker does not let them out of the house or even out of their room. Another type of emotional abuse is terrorizing the child, in which the caretaker establishes extreme fear and fright into the child.(wallace,88) Corrupting the child is another form of emotional abuse. This when the care takers engage in anti social behavior with the child. Denying the child emotional responses, also the caretaker fails to provide emotional resources necessary for the child's health psychological development. Other types of child neglect are dirty or unfit homes. These are houses that are dirty and health hazards to the child or any other person in the home. Drugs and alcohol abuse are considered neglect to the child. This happens when a caretaker uses drugs and alcohol to an excess, this would make the caretaker is emotionally in unavailable to the child. Also, if the child comes in contact with the substances, they can cause serious harm. For example, if the child ingests the substance. When a caretaker refuses to obtain acceptable medical services for a child, it is considered medical neglect. Abandonment is also a form of neglect. This is when some caretakers conduct indicates that conscious rejection of the obligations of parenthood. Consequences of Child Abuse and Neglect Consequences of child maltreatment can be devastating. Researchers have found that the effects of child maltreatment can affect the child's life and also the family itself. They have also found that not only the physical effect of the abuse, but also the long term effect that will occur later on in life. Physically abused children were found to be less attentive in school and more inclined to have hostile attributes. They are also less likely to manage personal problems and stress. Abused and neglected children from poor social skills that will affect not only them, but the others around them. Also, this will affect the child's self-esteem and performance in their world. Abused children can also lead to development delays and attention deficits. The psychological and behavioral effects of physical abuse are sometimes over looked. These are some psychological and behavioral symptoms of physical abuse. The child might be easily frightened or fearful of adults and parents. The child might be destructive to themselves and other people around them. Also, extreme behaviors from aggressiveness to withdrawn. A child could attain poor social relations and learning problems and problems with school. They could run away or have delinquent behavior. Physical aggression and antisocial behavior are among the most common outcomes of physical abuse. Some studies have shown that physically abused children show more aggression than maltreated children. Consequences of physical child abuse have included deficiencies in development of stable attachments to an adult caretaker or parent. Poorly attached children are in risk of diminished self-esteem and thus views themselves negatively. (National Research Council,212) Sexual abuse may affect each of the victims differently. Some of the victims were affected more than others. It depends on a wide range of factors, such as age of the victim, how much force was used and the duration of the molestation. Also, the type of abuse will affect the child. The identity of the offender will affect of the child, if the child knew or did not know the molester. The age of the abused also has an effect of how much the child remembers. One of the biggest factors is the personality of the child. This will have the biggest determination of the effect of the child. The behavioral effects of sexual abuse. The child also will have fear and inability not to trust adults. They might also have anger and aggression toward people. The child may exhibit inappropriate sexual behavior. A child might suffer from depression, guilt and shame. More than likely, they will have problems in school and social skills. Also, the child may have phobic or avoidant behavior and regressive behavior.(National Research Council,215) Consciences of neglectful behavior can be severe and powerful in early childhood development. Also, lack of attachment may harm the development of bonding between child and parent. Inter this could affect problem solving, social relationships, and coping with stressful situations. It has been found that in the long run, parents that were neglected during their childhood often neglected their children. Also, the children that have psychological damage from maltreatment are more likely to indulge in suicide and self mutilation. Nonphysically abused children are more likely to have depression and hopelessness. Children with inappropriate sexual behavior, such as frequent and overt self stimulation are a direct constituency of sexual abuse. Non-sexually abused children later on in life also sometimes show sexual overtones. Sexually abused children may show high levels of dissociation, a process in a product a disturbance in normal integrative functions of memory and identity. Many abused children are able to self hypnotize themselves or space out. It has been found that abuse as a child has affected their stages of life. Studies have found that abused children have lower intellectual functioning and reduced cognitive functioning. Others have found language skills and verbal ability to be affected by abuse. Also, studies have suggested that today's abused and neglected children are tomorrow's problem adult. You can see in the media a lot of killers in the world tod f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Child Labour.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Child labour is one of the topic that presents strong emotions, beliefs and opinions. Most people are opposed to the involvement of children in labour force activities when they are at an age when other activities, such as education and play, should be the central role in development. However, child labour represents an extremely difficult and complex issue which often extends beyond emotions, beliefs and opinions. Much of this has to do with the understanding that a wide variety of factors, such as economic, cultural, social, political and legal concerns, are part of any child labour problems as well as the solution to these problems. With this in mind, the purpose of this paper will be to discuss the issue of child labour on a national and an international scale. This will not only include an evaluation of it prominence and any problems that are associated with the use of child labour, but also an examination of the efforts that are being made to discourage national and foreign markets who employ children. In many respects, the issue of child labour on a national scale, at least from a Canadian perspective, is one that is quite limited. Much of this has to do with the fact that a significant amount of powerful legislation and enforcement of this legislation is available. For example, the Ontario Employment Standards Act states that individuals under the age of 18 must be paid a minimum of $6.40 per hour1. Furthermore, through the Ontario Occupational Health and Safety Act, regulations have been created which allow for a minimum age of 16 for logging activities, 15 for factory activities other than logging, and 14 for activities other than factory work2. Unfortunately, an examination of child labour on an international scale reveals the extent to which this situation exists, as well as the degree to which problems can arise. "A systematic estimate, undertaken in 1985, calculated around 31 million street children worldwide, of whom 71 percent were child workers living at home, 23 percent kept occasional family contact, and 8 percent were entirely separated"3. While the number of child workers is significant, it is equally apparent that the reasons why they are involved in employment can attributed to a number of specific causal factors. "It is almost universally accepted that poverty is the main cause of child work in developing countries"4 . However, while poverty is an important causal factor, it is often the case that it is not the only factor. For example, some studies have indicated that some child workers "...are from relatively affluent families, and engage in the business for excitement and pocket money"5. This would seem to suggest that "...cultural and economic factors here interact in complex ways to encourage child work and need to be understood together"6. An examination of existing trends regarding child labour often reveals contradictory and even disturbing developments. More specifically, official data from most countries have shown "...a gradual, long-term decline in child labour, but many experts assert that recent economic crisis in the developing countries has led to an upsurge in juvenile workers"7. Even though child labour is primarily found in developing countries, and that this can be largely attributed to the economic, social and cultural environment, there is some indication of a resurgence in this activity in industrialized countries. Much of this activity also happens to be everywhere and familiar, such as a child who shines shoes for a living, who is at home tending younger children or who is helping in a family farm and business working such long hours that it is impossible to play or even attend school. If anything, this emphasizes that much of the attention that has been focused on child labour has dealt with the problems that can arise. Here we find that "...the potential for gross exploitation and loss of childhood is considerable. Economic exploitation leaves the young worker in an extremely vulnerable situation"8. Given the problems that can occur as a result of the use of child labour, this immediately focuses attention on what is being done to discourage national and foreign markets who employ children. In light of the prominence of economic factors in the cause of the problems associated with child labour, it is not unusual to find that solutions are often directed this way as well. This refers to the fact that "...some have claimed that the best way to deal with child labour is to stimulate rapid and broad-reaching economic expansion that will create ample adult employment, rendering child work superfluous"9. Attempts to implement change in this way involve instruments such as economic policies and regulations, especially wage and price policies. But the examination of the issue of child labour also reveals that a wide variety of factors, beyond those that are economic, can contribute the development of such a situation. Most experts accept that economic progress is the most fundamental cure for child labour problems, but additional interventions are also required until acceptable levels of economic level and income equality have been achieved. One of these is education, "...which is considered a more important and appropriate activity for children, and which is often made compulsory up to a certain level or age"10. Another is the development of social security and assistance policy. This reflects the fact that "...child protection - including the reduction of child labour - was an important reason in various countries for establishment of social security and other welfare programs11. An examination of what is being done to discourage national and foreign markets who employ children workers also reveals that a strong, broad-based international commitment to the elimination of child labour. More specifically, most countries in the world, even those with large numbers of working children, are involved in one or more international agreements that enforce a commitment to reducing child labour. Examples of these include the International Labour Organization's Minimum Age Convention (1973), the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) as well as the World declaration on the Survival, Protection and Development of Children (1990)12. In conclusion, an examination of the issue of child labour on a national and an international scale reveals a number of important points. First, while the issue is generally one that is associated with economic difficulties and especially with developing countries, it is equally apparent that child labour can be found in industrialized countries and can be the result of a wide variety of factors, such as social and cultural influences. Second, problems that can arise from an environment in which child labour is used include the potential for gross exploitation as well as the loss of childhood, which are considerable implications of such a situation. Third, efforts to discourage national and foreign markets who employ children workers tends to reflect the development of such a solution. More specifically, economic progress is important, however, it is equally apparent that a great deal of significance can be attached to improvements in education and social security or assistance policies as well as the development of international agreements that deal with this issue. Bibliography Bequele, A. and Myers, W. E. First things first in child labour. Geneva: International Labour Organization, 1995. Black, Maggie. In the twilight zone: Child workers in the hotel, tourism and catering industry. Geneva: International Labour Organization, 1995. Government of Ontario. Information for Students Working in Ontario. Toronto: 1995. Government of Ontario. Regulations for Industrial Establishments. Toronto: 1990. Myers, William E., ed. Protecting Working Children. London: Zed Books Ltd., 1991. 1 Government of Ontario, 1995, p. 1. 2 Government of Ontario, 1990, Section 4. 3 Black, 1995, p. 9. 4 Myers, 1991, p. 9. 5 Myers, 1991, p. 9. 6 Myers, 1991, p. 9. 7 Myers, 1991, p. 9. 8 Black, 1995, p. 43. 9 Bequele and Myers, 1995, p. 33. 10 Bequele and Myers, 1995, p. 35. 11 Bequele and Myers, 1995, p. 34. 12 Bequele and Myers, 1995, p. 88. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\China.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The Rise of the Manchus Although the Manchus were not Han Chinese and were strongly resisted, especially in the south, they had assimilated a great deal of Chinese culture before conquering China Proper. Realizing that to dominate the empire they would have to do things the Chinese way, the Manchus retained many institutions of Ming and earlier Chinese derivation. They continued the Confucian court practices and temple rituals, over which the emperors had traditionally presided. The Manchus continued the Confucian civil service system. Although Chinese were barred from the highest offices, Chinese officials predominated over Manchu officeholders outside the capital, except in military positions. The Neo-Confucian philosophy, emphasizing the obedience of subject to ruler, was enforced as the state creed. The Manchu emperors also supported Chinese literary and historical projects of enormous scope; the survival of much of China's ancient literature is attributed to these projects. Ever suspicious of Han Chinese, the Qing rulers put into effect measures aimed at preventing the absorption of the Manchus into the dominant Han Chinese population. Han Chinese were prohibited from migrating into the Manchu homeland, and Manchus were forbidden to engage in trade or manual labor. Intermarriage between the two groups was forbidden. In many government positions a system of dual appointments was used--the Chinese appointee was required to do the substantive work and the Manchu to ensure Han loyalty to Qing rule. The Qing regime was determined to protect itself not only from internal rebellion but also from foreign invasion. After China Proper had been subdued, the Manchus conquered Outer Mongolia (now the Mongolian People's Republic) in the late seventeenth century. In the eighteenth century they gained control of Central Asia as far as the Pamir Mountains and established a protectorate over the area the Chinese call Xizang () but commonly known in the West as Tibet. The Qing thus became the first dynasty to eliminate successfully all danger to China Proper from across its land borders. Under Manchu rule the empire grew to include a larger area than before or since; Taiwan, the last outpost of anti-Manchu resistance, was also incorporated into China for the first time. In addition, Qing emperors received tribute from the various border states. The chief threat to China's integrity did not come overland, as it had so often in the past, but by sea, reaching the southern coastal area first. Western traders, missionaries, and soldiers of fortune began to arrive in large numbers even before the Qing, in the sixteenth century. The empire's inability to evaluate correctly the nature of the new challenge or to respond flexibly to it resulted in the demise of the Qing and the collapse of the entire millennia-old framework of dynastic rule. Emergence Of Modern China The success of the Qing dynasty in maintaining the old order proved a liability when the empire was confronted with growing challenges from seafaring Western powers. The centuries of peace and self-satisfaction dating back to Ming times had encouraged little change in the attitudes of the ruling elite. The imperial Neo-Confucian scholars accepted as axiomatic the cultural superiority of Chinese civilization and the position of the empire at the hub of their perceived world. To question this assumption, to suggest innovation, or to promote the adoption of foreign ideas was viewed as tantamount to heresy. Imperial purges dealt severely with those who deviated from orthodoxy. By the nineteenth century, China was experiencing growing internal pressures of economic origin. By the start of the century, there were over 300 million Chinese, but there was no industry or trade of sufficient scope to absorb the surplus labor. Moreover, the scarcity of land led to widespread rural discontent and a breakdown in law and order. The weakening through corruption of the bureaucratic and military systems and mounting urban pauperism also contributed to these disturbances. Localized revolts erupted in various parts of the empire in the early nineteenth century. Secret societies, such as the White Lotus sect () in the north and the Triad Society () in the south, gained ground, combining anti-Manchu subversion with banditry. The Western Powers Arrive As elsewhere in Asia, in China the Portuguese were the pioneers, establishing a foothold at Macao ( or Aomen in pinyin), from which they monopolized foreign trade at the Chinese port of Guangzhou ( or Canton). Soon the Spanish arrived, followed by the British and the French. Trade between China and the West was carried on in the guise of tribute: foreigners were obliged to follow the elaborate, centuries-old ritual imposed on envoys from China's tributary states. There was no conception at the imperial court that the Europeans would expect or deserve to be treated as cultural or political equals. The sole exception was Russia, the most powerful inland neighbor. The Manchus were sensitive to the need for security along the northern land frontier and therefore were prepared to be realistic in dealing with Russia. The Treaty of Nerchinsk (1689) with the Russians, drafted to bring to an end a series of border incidents and to establish a border between Siberia and Manchuria (northeast China) along the Heilong Jiang ( or Amur River), was China's first bilateral agreement with a European power. In 1727 the Treaty of Kiakhta delimited the remainder of the eastern portion of the Sino-Russian border. Western diplomatic efforts to expand trade on equal terms were rebuffed, the official Chinese assumption being that the empire was not in need of foreign--and thus inferior--products. Despite this attitude, trade flourished, even though after 1760 all foreign trade was confined to Guangzhou, where the foreign traders had to limit their dealings to a dozen officially licensed Chinese merchant firms. Trade was not the sole basis of contact with the West. Since the thirteenth century, Roman Catholic missionaries had been attempting to establish their church in China. Although by 1800 only a few hundred thousand Chinese had been converted, the missionaries--mostly Jesuits--contributed greatly to Chinese knowledge in such fields as cannon casting, calendar making, geography, mathematics, cartography, music, art, and architecture. The Jesuits were especially adept at fitting Christianity into a Chinese framework and were condemned by a papal decision in 1704 for having tolerated the continuance of Confucian ancestor rites among Christian converts. The papal decision quickly weakened the Christian movement, which it proscribed as heterodox and disloyal. The Opium War, 1839-42 During the eighteenth century, the market in Europe and America for tea, a new drink in the West, expanded greatly. Additionally, there was a continuing demand for Chinese silk and porcelain. But China, still in its preindustrial stage, wanted little that the West had to offer, causing the Westerners, mostly British, to incur an unfavorable balance of trade. To remedy the situation, the foreigners developed a third-party trade, exchanging their merchandise in India and Southeast Asia for raw materials and semiprocessed goods, which found a ready market in Guangzhou. By the early nineteenth century, raw cotton and opium () from India had become the staple British imports into China, in spite of the fact that opium was prohibited entry by imperial decree. The opium traffic was made possible through the connivance of profit-seeking merchants and a corrupt bureaucracy. In 1839 the Qing government, after a decade of unsuccessful anti-opium campaigns, adopted drastic prohibitory laws against the opium trade. The emperor dispatched a commissioner, Lin Zexu ( 1785-1850), to Guangzhou to suppress illicit opium traffic. Lin seized illegal stocks of opium owned by Chinese dealers and then detained the entire foreign community and confiscated and destroyed some 20,000 chests of illicit British opium. The British retaliated with a punitive expedition, thus initiating the first Anglo-Chinese war, better known as the Opium War (1839-42). Unprepared for war and grossly underestimating the capabilities of the enemy, the Chinese were disastrously defeated, and their image of their own imperial power was tarnished beyond repair. The Treaty of Nanjing (1842), signed on board a British warship by two Manchu imperial commissioners and the British plenipotentiary, was the first of a series of agreements with the Western trading nations later called by the Chinese the "unequal treaties." Under the Treaty of Nanjing, China ceded the island of Hong Kong ( or Xianggang in pinyin) to the British; abolished the licensed monopoly system of trade; opened 5 ports to British residence and foreign trade; limited the tariff on trade to 5 percent ad valorem; granted British nationals extraterritoriality (exemption from Chinese laws); and paid a large indemnity. In addition, Britain was to have most-favored-nation treatment, that is, it would receive whatever trading concessions the Chinese granted other powers then or later. The Treaty of Nanjing set the scope and character of an unequal relationship for the ensuing century of what the Chinese would call "national humiliations." The treaty was followed by other incursions, wars, and treaties that granted new concessions and added new privileges for the foreigners. For people interested in knowing more about the history of opium in China and its effect on the opium user, please check out Cliff Schaffer's Opiates page which includes a brief history of the Opium Wars. You might also be interested in a Brief History of Hong Kong. The Self-Strengthening Movement The rude realities of the Opium War, the unequal treaties, and the mid-century mass uprisings caused Qing courtiers and officials to recognize the need to strengthen China. Chinese scholars and officials had been examining and translating "Western learning" since the 1840s. Under the direction of modern-thinking Han officials, Western science and languages were studied, special schools were opened in the larger cities, and arsenals, factories, and shipyards were established according to Western models. Western diplomatic practices were adopted by the Qing, and students were sent abroad by the government and on individual or community initiative in the hope that national regeneration could be achieved through the application of Western practical methods. Amid these activities came an attempt to arrest the dynastic decline by restoring the traditional order. The effort was known as the Tongzhi Restoration, named for the Tongzhi ()Emperor (1862-74), and was engineered by the young emperor's mother, the Empress Dowager Ci Xi ( 1835-1908). The restoration, however, which applied "practical knowledge" while reaffirming the old mentality, was not a genuine program of modernization. The effort to graft Western technology onto Chinese institutions became known as the Self-Strengthening Movement ( ). The movement was championed by scholar-generals like Li Hongzhang ( 1823-1901) and Zuo Zongtang ( 1812-85), who had fought with the government forces in the Taiping Rebellion. From 1861 to 1894, leaders such as these, now turned scholar-administrators, were responsible for establishing modern institutions, developing basic industries, communications, and transportation, and modernizing the military. But despite its leaders' accomplishments, the Self-Strengthening Movement did not recognize the significance of the political institutions and social theories that had fostered Western advances and innovations. This weakness led to the movement's failure. Modernization during this period would have been difficult under the best of circumstances. The bureaucracy was still deeply influenced by Neo-Confucian orthodoxy. Chinese society was still reeling from the ravages of the Taiping and other rebellions, and foreign encroachments continued to threaten the integrity of China. The first step in the foreign powers' effort to carve up the empire was taken by Russia, which had been expanding into Central Asia. By the 1850s, tsarist troops also had invaded the Heilong Jiang watershed of Manchuria, from which their countrymen had been ejected under the Treaty of Nerchinsk. The Russians used the superior knowledge of China they had acquired through their century-long residence in Beijing to further their aggrandizement. In 1860 Russian diplomats secured the secession of all of Manchuria north of the Heilong Jiang and east of the Wusuli Jiang (Ussuri River). Foreign encroachments increased after 1860 by means of a series of treaties imposed on China on one pretext or another. The foreign stranglehold on the vital sectors of the Chinese economy was reinforced through a lengthening list of concessions. Foreign settlements in the treaty ports became extraterritorial--sovereign pockets of territories over which China had no jurisdiction. The safety of these foreign settlements was ensured by the menacing presence of warships and gunboats. At this time the foreign powers also took over the peripheral states that had acknowledged Chinese suzerainty and given tribute to the emperor. France colonized Cochin China, as southern Vietnam was then called, and by 1864 established a protectorate over Cambodia. Following a victorious war against China in 1884-85, France also took Annam. Britain gained control over Burma. Russia penetrated into Chinese Turkestan (the modern-day Xinjiang-Uyghur Autonomous Region). Japan, having emerged from its century-and-a-half-long seclusion and having gone through its own modernization movement, defeated China in the war of 1894-95. The Treaty of Shimonoseki forced China to cede Taiwan and the Penghu Islands to Japan, pay a huge indemnity, permit the establishment of Japanese industries in four treaty ports, and recognize Japanese hegemony over Korea. In 1898 the British acquired a ninety-nine-year lease over the so-called New Territories of Kowloon ( or Jiulong in pinyin), which increased the size of their Hong Kong colony. Britain, Japan, Russia, Germany, France, and Belgium each gained spheres of influence in China. The United States, which had not acquired any territorial cessions, proposed in 1899 that there be an "open door" policy in China, whereby all foreign countries would have equal duties and privileges in all treaty ports within and outside the various spheres of influence. All but Russia agreed to the United States overture. Emergence Of Modern China: III The Hundred Days' Reform and the Aftermath In the 103 days from June 11 to September 21, 1898, the Qing emperor, Guangxu ( 1875-1908), ordered a series of reforms aimed at making sweeping social and institutional changes. This effort reflected the thinking of a group of progressive scholar-reformers who had impressed the court with the urgency of making innovations for the nation's survival. Influenced by the Japanese success with modernization, the reformers declared that China needed more than "self-strengthening" and that innovation must be accompanied by institutional and ideological change. The imperial edicts for reform covered a broad range of subjects, including stamping out corruption and remaking, among other things, the academic and civil-service examination systems, legal system, governmental structure, defense establishment, and postal services. The edicts attempted to modernize agriculture, medicine, and mining and to promote practical studies instead of Neo-Confucian orthodoxy. The court also planned to send students abroad for firsthand observation and technical studies. All these changes were to be brought about under a de facto constitutional monarchy. Opposition to the reform was intense among the conservative ruling elite, especially the Manchus, who, in condemning the announced reform as too radical, proposed instead a more moderate and gradualist course of change. Supported by ultraconservatives and with the tacit support of the political opportunist Yuan Shikai ( 1859-1916), Empress Dowager Ci Xi () engineered a coup d'tat on September 21, 1898, forcing the young reform-minded Guangxu into seclusion. Ci Xi took over the government as regent. The Hundred Days' Reform () ended with the rescindment of the new edicts and the execution of six of the reform's chief advocates. The two principal leaders, Kang Youwei ( 1858-1927) and Liang Qichao ( 1873-1929), fled abroad to found the Baohuang Hui ( or Protect the Emperor Society) and to work, unsuccessfully, for a constitutional monarchy in China. The conservatives then gave clandestine backing to the antiforeign and anti-Christian movement of secret societies known as Yihetuan ( or Society of Righteousness and Harmony). The movement has been better known in the West as the Boxers (from an earlier name--Yihequan, or Righteousness and Harmony Boxers). In 1900 Boxer bands spread over the north China countryside, burning missionary facilities and killing Chinese Christians. Finally, in June 1900, the Boxers besieged the foreign concessions in Beijing and Tianjin, an action that provoked an allied relief expedition by the offended nations. The Qing declared war against the invaders, who easily crushed their opposition and occupied north China. Under the Protocol of 1901, the court was made to consent to the execution of ten high officials and the punishment of hundreds of others, expansion of the Legation Quarter, payment of war reparations, stationing of foreign troops in China, and razing of some Chinese fortifications. In the decade that followed, the court belatedly put into effect some reform measures. These included the abolition of the moribund Confucian-based examination, educational and military modernization patterned after the model of Japan, and an experiment, if half-hearted, in constitutional and parliamentary government. The suddenness and ambitiousness of the reform effort actually hindered its success. One effect, to be felt for decades to come, was the establishment of new armies, which, in turn, gave rise to warlordism. The Republican Revolution of 1911 Failure of reform from the top and the fiasco of the Boxer Uprising convinced many Chinese that the only real solution lay in outright revolution, in sweeping away the old order and erecting a new one patterned preferably after the example of Japan. The revolutionary leader was Sun Yat-sen ( or Sun Yixian in pinyin, 1866-1925), a republican and anti-Qing activist who became increasingly popular among the overseas Chinese and Chinese students abroad, especially in Japan. In 1905 Sun founded the Tongmeng Hui ( or United League) in Tokyo with Huang Xing ( 1874-1916), a popular leader of the Chinese revolutionary movement in Japan, as his deputy. This movement, generously supported by overseas Chinese funds, also gained political support with regional military officers and some of the reformers who had fled China after the Hundred Days' Reform. Sun's political philosophy was conceptualized in 1897, first enunciated in Tokyo in 1905, and modified through the early 1920s. It centered on the Three Principles of the People ( or san min zhuyi): "nationalism, democracy, and people's livelihood." The principle of nationalism called for overthrowing the Manchus and ending foreign hegemony over China. The second principle, democracy, was used to describe Sun's goal of a popularly elected republican form of government. People's livelihood, often referred to as socialism, was aimed at helping the common people through regulation of the ownership of the means of production and land. The republican revolution broke out on October 10, 1911, in Wuchang (), the capital of Hubei () Province, among discontented modernized army units whose anti-Qing plot had been uncovered. It had been preceded by numerous abortive uprisings and organized protests inside China. The revolt quickly spread to neighboring cities, and Tongmeng Hui members throughout the country rose in immediate support of the Wuchang revolutionary forces. By late November, fifteen of the twenty-four provinces had declared their independence of the Qing empire. A month later, Sun Yat-sen returned to China from the United States, where he had been raising funds among overseas Chinese and American sympathizers. On January 1, 1912, Sun was inaugurated in Nanjing as the provisional president of the new Chinese republic. But power in Beijing already had passed to the commander-in-chief of the imperial army, Yuan Shikai, the strongest regional military leader at the time. To prevent civil war and possible foreign intervention from undermining the infant republic, Sun agreed to Yuan's demand that China be united under a Beijing government headed by Yuan. On February 12, 1912, the last Manchu emperor, the child Puyi (), abdicated. On March 10, in Beijing, Yuan Shikai was sworn in as provisional president of the Republic of China. Republican China The republic that Sun Yat-sen () and his associates envisioned evolved slowly. The revolutionists lacked an army, and the power of Yuan Shikai () began to outstrip that of parliament. Yuan revised the constitution at will and became dictatorial. In August 1912 a new political party was founded by Song Jiaoren ( 1882-1913), one of Sun's associates. The party, the Guomindang ( Kuomintang or KMT--the National People's Party, frequently referred to as the Nationalist Party), was an amalgamation of small political groups, including Sun's Tongmeng Hui (). In the national elections held in February 1913 for the new bicameral parliament, Song campaigned against the Yuan administration, and his party won a majority of seats. Yuan had Song assassinated in March; he had already arranged the assassination of several pro-revolutionist generals. Animosity toward Yuan grew. In the summer of 1913 seven southern provinces rebelled against Yuan. When the rebellion was suppressed, Sun and other instigators fled to Japan. In October 1913 an intimidated parliament formally elected Yuan president of the Republic of China, and the major powers extended recognition to his government. To achieve international recognition, Yuan Shikai had to agree to autonomy for Outer Mongolia and Xizang ( ). China was still to be suzerain, but it would have to allow Russia a free hand in Outer Mongolia and Britain continuance of its influence in Xizang. In November Yuan Shikai, legally president, ordered the Guomindang dissolved and its members removed from parliament. Within a few months, he suspended parliament and the provincial assemblies and forced the promulgation of a new constitution, which, in effect, made him president for life. Yuan's ambitions still were not satisfied, and, by the end of 1915, it was announced that he would reestablish the monarchy. Widespread rebellions ensued, and numerous provinces declared independence. With opposition at every quarter and the nation breaking up into warlord factions, Yuan Shikai died of natural causes in June 1916, deserted by his lieutenants. Nationalism and Communism After Yuan Shikai's death, shifting alliances of regional warlords fought for control of the Beijing government. The nation also was threatened from without by the Japanese. When World War I broke out in 1914, Japan fought on the Allied side and seized German holdings in Shandong () Province. In 1915 the Japanese set before the warlord government in Beijing the so-called Twenty-One Demands, which would have made China a Japanese protectorate. The Beijing government rejected some of these demands but yielded to the Japanese insistence on keeping the Shandong territory already in its possession. Beijing also recognized Tokyo's authority over southern Manchuria and eastern Inner Mongolia. In 1917, in secret communiques, Britain, France, and Italy assented to the Japanese claim in exchange for the Japan's naval action against Germany. In 1917 China declared war on Germany in the hope of recovering its lost province, then under Japanese control. But in 1918 the Beijing government signed a secret deal with Japan accepting the latter's claim to Shandong. When the Paris peace conference of 1919 confirmed the Japanese claim to Shandong and Beijing's sellout became public, internal reaction was shattering. On May 4, 1919, there were massive student demonstrations against the Beijing government and Japan. The political fervor, student activism, and iconoclastic and reformist intellectual currents set in motion by the patriotic student protest developed into a national awakening known as the May Fourth Movement (). The intellectual milieu in which the May Fourth Movement developed was known as the New Culture Movement and occupied the period from 1917 to 1923. The student demonstrations of May 4, 1919 were the high point of the New Culture Movement, and the terms are often used synonymously. Students returned from abroad advocating social and political theories ranging from complete Westernization of China to the socialism that one day would be adopted by China's communist rulers. Opposing the Warlords The May Fourth Movement helped to rekindle the then-fading cause of republican revolution. In 1917 Sun Yat-sen had become commander-in-chief of a rival military government in Guangzhou () in collaboration with southern warlords. In October 1919 Sun reestablished the Guomindang to counter the government in Beijing. The latter, under a succession of warlords, still maintained its facade of legitimacy and its relations with the West. By 1921 Sun had become president of the southern government. He spent his remaining years trying to consolidate his regime and achieve unity with the north. His efforts to obtain aid from the Western democracies were ignored, however, and in 1921 he turned to the Soviet Union, which had recently achieved its own revolution. The Soviets sought to befriend the Chinese revolutionists by offering scathing attacks on "Western imperialism." But for political expediency, the Soviet leadership initiated a dual policy of support for both Sun and the newly established Chinese Communist Party ( CCP). The Soviets hoped for consolidation but were prepared for either side to emerge victorious. In this way the struggle for power in China began between the Nationalists and the Communists. In 1922 the Guomindang-warlord alliance in Guangzhou was ruptured, and Sun fled to Shanghai (). By then Sun saw the need to seek Soviet support for his cause. In 1923 a joint statement by Sun and a Soviet representative in Shanghai pledged Soviet assistance for China's national unification. Soviet advisers--the most prominent of whom was an agent of the Comintern, Mikhail Borodin--began to arrive in China in 1923 to aid in the reorganization and consolidation of the Guomindang along the lines of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The CCP was under Comintern instructions to cooperate with the Guomindang, and its members were encouraged to join while maintaining their party identities. The CCP was still small at the time, having a membership of 300 in 1922 and only 1,500 by 1925. The Guomindang in 1922 already had 150,000 members. Soviet advisers also helped the Nationalists set up a political institute to train propagandists in mass mobilization techniques and in 1923 sent Chiang Kai-shek ( Jiang Jieshi in pinyin), one of Sun's lieutenants from Tongmeng Hui days, for several months' military and political study in Moscow. After Chiang's return in late 1923, he participated in the establishment of the Whampoa ( Huangpu in pinyin) Military Academy outside Guangzhou, which was the seat of government under the Guomindang-CCP alliance. In 1924 Chiang became head of the academy and began the rise to prominence that would make him Sun's successor as head of the Guomindang and the unifier of all China under the right-wing nationalist government. Sun Yat-sen died of cancer in Beijing in March 1925, but the Nationalist movement he had helped to initiate was gaining momentum. During the summer of 1925, Chiang, as commander-in-chief of the National Revolutionary Army, set out on the long-delayed Northern Expedition against the northern warlords. Within nine months, half of China had been conquered. By 1926, however, the Guomindang had divided into left- and right-wing factions, and the Communist bloc within it was also growing. In March 1926, after thwarting a kidnapping attempt against him, Chiang abruptly dismissed his Soviet advisers, imposed restrictions on CCP members' participation in the top leadership, and emerged as the preeminent Guomindang leader. The Soviet Union, still hoping to prevent a split between Chiang and the CCP, ordered Communist underground activities to facilitate the Northern Expedition, which was finally launched by Chiang from Guangzhou in July 1926. In early 1927 the Guomindang-CCP rivalry led to a split in the revolutionary ranks. The CCP and the left wing of the Guomindang had decided to move the seat of the Nationalist government from Guangzhou to Wuhan. But Chiang, whose Northern Expedition was proving successful, set his forces to destroying the Shanghai CCP apparatus and established an anti-Communist government at Nanjing in April 1927. There now were three capitals in China: the internationally recognized warlord regime in Beijing; the Communist and left-wing Guomindang regime at Wuhan (); and the right-wing civilian-military regime at Nanjing, which would remain f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Circadian Rhythms.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Circadian Rhythms are the times of day that you get either hungry, tired, or energetic. This paper is to describe an experiment that I have thought up that will test to see if circadian rhythms differ from people who perceive themselves as night-time people and people who perceive themselves as morning people. What is your hypothesis? My hypothesis is that night-time people's circadian rhythms are extremely different than morning people's circadian rhythms. What population are you going to study? How will you sample this population? Participants for my experiment will be ninety-nine undergraduate female students from Iowa State University. Prior to the experiment all participants will have to fill out a questionnaire. This questionnaire will primarily determine if they feel themselves as being either morning or night types of people. Subjects for my experiment will be randomly chosen from these questionnaires. I will select three night-time people and three morning-time people. I will then give each of them a journal. In this journal each subject will write in it the time that they become hungry, or the time that they became tired. They will do this for three days. At the end of the three days they will come back to my laboratory. They will then be put in an isolation booths. In one of the booths there will be a clock that doesn't have the right time on it. In another one there will be a window so that they can see where the sun is. In the third one there will be no windows and no clocks. All they would have is a light bulb in the ceiling. All the booths will have a bed and a bright red button on the far wall. The button will be for ringing. They will ring when they are tired, hungry, or need to use the facilities. My assistants and I will record when they become hungry and when they become tired. They will be in this room for three days. At the end of the three days my assistants and I will make sure that they are all right and can return to the world unharmed. What is your independent variable(s)? What is your dependent variable? How will you measure the dependent variable? My independent variable will be one of the three that I give a clock and another one that I give a view of where the sun is. The dependent variable will be the one that will be completely isolated. Without sunlight they will not know what time it is and therefore not know when to become tired or hungry. They will be relying on their circadian rhythms alone. I will measure them all by time. What time they eat, what time they become sleepy, etc. How will you assign your subject to the experimental and control groups? The first three days they will all be the control groups. They will live their lives just as they would normally do it. The next three days they will all become the experimental group because they will all be missing something that they normally have in every day to day life. What extraneous variables will you need to consider? One extraneous variable would be that the person that has a window will be able to see people outside and will be able to tell what time it is. For example when people are getting up and starting to go to class they will be able to tell approximately what time it is. Or if people are coming home from work they will know an approximate time then also. What ethical issues will you need to consider? A very big ethical issue would be that you can't lock someone up in a booth for three days. It is unethical to lock someone up against their will and so I would have to let them leave early if they wish to. If all of them wanted to leave then my experiment would be uncompleted. I would have to start over from the beginning. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Civil Rights.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The civil rights movement was a period of time when blacks attempted to gain their constitutional rights of which they were being deprived. The movement has occurred from the 1950's to the present, with programs like Affirmative Action. Many were upset with the way the civil rights movement was being carried out in the 1960's. As a result, someone assassinated the leader of the movement, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Many blacks were infuriated at this death so there were serious riots in almost 100 cities. President Johnson then appointed a committee called The Kerner Commission to study the civil rights movement. They concluded the following: "We are moving toward two societies-one white and one black, separate and unequal." There is some truth to the Kerner Commission report, but on the whole the civil rights movement has been a success because blacks are better off now than they were before it began. The Kerner Commission report has some truth when it comes to blacks and politics, but overall the movement was a success because blacks have achieved more politically than before they began. Before the movement, blacks had almost no political power due to laws designed to prevent blacks from voting, like poll taxes, literacy tests and the Grandfather Clause. Also when some blacks went to vote, people simply wouldn't let them register. Due to lack of voting ability, no blacks were elected into office and therefore, blacks had no say in the government. Also, blacks were not allowed to serve on juries, yet they were almost always found guilty in court, even if the evidence was clearly against them. For example, years ago a boy in Georgia broke into a school to steal an ice cream. While he should have gotten a few hours of community service, he got three years in jail just because he was black. A truth to the Kerner Commission report that occurs today is that blacks are not being represented in Congress proportionally. While 12% of U.S. citizens are black, there is only one black in the Senate out of a hundred seats. This is a failure because blacks should be proportionally represented because it is their right to have a sufficient say in government. However, the civil rights movement was more of a success because blacks got the vote. The 24th amendment outlawed the Poll tax, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects the rights of all citizens to vote, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 ended literacy tests and let the Federal government register voters to make sure that they aren't discriminated again. Because of this new political power they have obtained, blacks have the ability to elect other blacks to represent them. There are over four times as many blacks in office today, than before the movement. This helped the blacks because they could have a representative to speak for them. A few years ago, a black named David Dinkins was elected mayor of one of the largest cities in America, New York. In 1968, Chrisam became the first black woman in the House of Representatives and in 1984, a popular black leader, Jesse Jackson ran for president. All this is a success because one of their goals was to have political power and equal opportunity. A second reason why the civil rights movement was politically more of a success than a failure is due to the fact that blacks are better off in the courts than they were. Now, blacks are allowed to serve on juries, and they are hardly ever discriminated in court as opposed to when the boy was over-sentenced for stealing an ice cream. For example, O.J. Simpson, who was accused of killing his wife, received a fair trial and was let off not-guilty. In the 60's in the south, he would have been found guilty very quickly. In the economic sense, the Kerner report has some truth today, but overall the civil rights movement was a huge success in this area because blacks are much better off today than they were before the movement. Before the civil rights movement, almost every black was very poor and they weren't able to get good jobs because of their skin color. There was no middle class for blacks, just a lower class. They didn't have equal opportunity. An economic failure of the movement is the amount of poor blacks that still exist. The children which are products of this particular type of segregation live in a poor neighborhood, go to a poor school, receive an inadequate education or drop-out so they then can only receive a bad job or no job at all. These people have children and the process starts all over again. This is a failure because it prevents blacks from advancing themselves in society. However, the civil rights movement in this area is more of a success than a failure because of what can be achieved by blacks, their ability to obtain much more money than before the movement and not all blacks are in the cycle of poverty. For example, there is now a middle class of blacks which is a huge success because it shows that blacks are able to achieve the same things as whites, it sets a goal for poorer blacks and eventually more will grow into this class. Another example of an economic success is Affirmative Action. This was a program made by the Federal Government which had to be used by companies with a past record of discrimination or companies who sought to do business with the Federal government. These two types of companies had to hire a certain percent of minorities. It was made to help minorities catch up with the whites in the business world. It is an attribute to the civil rights movement because it gave blacks jobs and opportunities. Socially, the Kerner Commission report is partly true today, but overall the civil rights movement was a success because blacks are much better off socially than they were before the movement began. Before the movement blacks and whites were segregated in every public place imaginable such as restaurants, buses and theaters. Blacks were also forced to go to separate schools, and theirs were quite often the worse ones. The schools didn't receive as much money, and the education they received was often inferior to that of the whites. One social failure of the civil rights movement that still exists today is Defacto segregation. That is segregation that exists, but is not required by law. It was originally caused when poor blacks moved into the urban areas, and the whites fled to the suburbs, or richer part of the cities. It hurts the blacks in that it caused a non-stop cycle of poverty. It is a failure because despite the laws made to integrate everyone, segregation which can't be lawfully stopped still exists. Despite this, the social civil rights movement was more of a success than a failure, because blacks were integrated everywhere else, and Defacto segregation can't be prevented by law. In 1954, all nine Supreme Court justices declared having "Separate but equal" schools was unconstitutional. So after many years, public schools were integrated. This helped the blacks because it gave them equal opportunities, and it gave the blacks a chance to show that they were equal to whites. It is a success because blacks got a better education and didn't feel inferior. A second social success was integration in all public places. This came about from the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which was made after the government witnessed Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s silent protests. They also realized how unfair segregation by color was. Some examples of silent protests would be when blacks would "sit-in" at an all white restaurant, all day long just to protest segregation's injustice to blacks. They also boycotted and marched. The integration in public places helped the blacks and was a success because it got them equal rights which was one of their major goals. As stated above, there are a few truths to the Kerner Commission report today, but the successes of the civil rights movement outweigh the failures. Blacks are better off because they have achieved political power, received equal opportunity, better pay and better jobs in the workforce and have ended segregation. Things can only get better for the blacks now, and maybe they can turn some of the small failures of the civil rights movement into successes. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Civil War.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Jim Chen Pd: 6 1/12/96 Civil War Civil war was the greatest war in American history. It was waged in 10,000 places-from Valverde, New Mexico, and Fernandina on the Florida coast. More than three million Americans fought in it and more than 600,00 men died in it. It was not only the immensity of the fight but the new weapons, the new standards of generalship, and the strategies of destruction which made the Civil War an event present ever since in the American consciousness. Here are some of the crucial events of the war: the firing of the first shots at Fort Sumter; the battles of Shiloh, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg; Sherman's dramatic march to the sea; the surrender at Appomattox. In fact, Civil War wasn't simply the story of great battles and great generals, it was also an elaborate portrait of ourselves, American people- individuals and families, northerners and southerners, soldiers and civilians, slaves and slaveowners, rich and poor, urban and rural. Twenty years before Civil War started, South and North didn't have a good relationship already and there were many issues that they didn't agree on each other such as Clay's compromise, Fugitive slave act, Pottawatomie massacre, etc. The Southern states supported slavery because the slave population held more than 40 percent of the entire population and also they needed slavery for their industrialization. Therefore, if they freed all the slaves, someone would predict, many whites would have no jobs and many things would be up-side-down. As the result, controlling over slaves was very important for the Southern. But the Northern were opponent of slavery since the slavery population took less than 10 percent of the entire population and Southern states were already free. Then something really happened when Abraham Lincoln, a known opponent of slavery, was elected president. The Southern states then decided to secede, which meant that they were leaving the nation because they thought how could Lincoln be the president of the United States if most of the Southern didn't vote for him. Now, as we could see, our nation started to divide into two, the south and the north. During the year of 1861 to 1865, there were thousands of war between south and north and there were countless people died in it. The war immediately began when south and north fought for Fort Sumter. At Lincoln's inauguration in March 4, 186`, the new president said that he had no plans to tend slavery in those states where it already existed, but he also said that he would not accept secession. Lincoln hoped to resolve the national crisis without warfare. When president Lincoln planned to send supplies to Fort Sumter, where North only had in the South at the time, he alerted the state in advance, in an attempt to avoid hostilities. South Carolina, however, feared a trick; the commander of the fort, Robert Anderson, was asked to surrender immediately. Anderson offered to surrender, but only after he had exhausted his supplies. His offer was rejected, and in April 12, the Civil War began with shots fired on the fort. Fort Sumter eventually was surrendered to South Carolina. Attack on Fort Sumter prompted four more states ,Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina, to join the Confederacy (South). Eventually, the residents of the western counties of Virginia didn't wish to secede along with the rest of the state. This section of Virginia was admitted into the Union as the states of West Virginia in June 20, 1863. On June 1861, public demand pushed General-in-Chief Winfield Scott to advance on the South before adequately training his untried troops. Scott ordered General Irvin McDowell to advance on Confederate troops stationed at Manassas Junction, Virginia, where near the Capital of South, Richmond. Then McDowell attacked in July 21, and was initially successful, but the introduction of Confederate reinforcements resulted in a Southern victory and a retreat toward Washington by the strong federal troops. From this battle, First Battle of Bull Run, everyone finally realized that the war would last much longer than what they thought. After the Battle of Bull Run, each side began to train its troops and to plan strategy for the war. There were differences between both side's strategies. Much of the North's strategy depended on geography and they wanted to control over Mississippi River because it would enable the North to penetrate deep into the South and keep the Confederacy from resupplying its western forces. The South planned to capture Washington, D.C., capital of the North and won the European aid. In April, 1862, General McClellan's troops left northern Virginia to begin the Peninsular Campaign. By May 4, they occupied Yorktown, Virginia. At Williamsburg, Confederate forces prevented McClellan from meeting the main part of the Confederated army, and McClellan halted his troops, awaiting reinforcement. Then on may 31, the Confederate army attacked federal forces in the Seven Days' Campaign, almost defeating them; last-minute reinforcements saved the Union from a serious defeat. Confederate commander Joseph E. Johnston was severely wounded, and command of the Army of Northern Virginia fell to Robert E. Lee. Next battle came on September 17, Confederate forces under General Lee were caught by General McClellan near Sharpsburg, Maryland. This battle, Battle of Antietam, proved to be the bloodiest day of the war because more than 13,000 Confederates and 12,000 Union soldiers were killed in this battle. The battle had no clear winner, but because General Lee withdrew to Virginia, McClellan was considered the victor. As the result, North build up its confidence toward the South and dashed Confederate hopes of winning European support. General McClellan's slow movements and hesitation, combined with General Lee's escape, and continued raiding by Confederate cavalry, dismayed many in the North. On November 7, 1862, Lincoln replaced McClellan with General Ambrose E. Burnside. In the Battle of Fredericksbury, Burnside's forces were defeated somehow in a series of attacks against entrenched Confederate forces at Fredericksburg, Virginia, and Burnside was replaced with General Joseph Hooker. Still, president Lincoln didn't find his right general yet at this time. On April 27, came to the Battle of Chancellorsville with new Northern general, Hooker, but somehow, the luck didn't come to North side. He crossed the Rappahannock River to attack General Lee's forces. Lee split his army, attacking a surprised Union army in three places and almost completely defeating them. Hooker then withdrew across the Rappahannock River for escape, giving the South a victory, but it was the Confederates' most costly victory in terms of casualties. After a few months the next battle began again when General Lee decided to take the war to the enemy. Lee defeated Union forces at Winchester, Virginia, and continued north to Pennsylvania. General Hooker, who had been planning to attack Richmond, was instead forced to follow Lee. Hooker, never comfortable with his commander, General Halleck, resigned on June 28, and General George Meade replaced him as commander of the North army. On July 1, a chance encounter between Union and Confederate forces began the Battle of Gettysburb. in the fighting that followed, General Meade had greater numbers and better defensive positions. Eventually he won the battle, but failed to follow and kill Lee as he retreated back to Virginia. Everything changed when Lincoln found a general named, Ulysses S. Grant. He was smart and knew how to use strategy over the enemy. He understood that the North had advantages over the South in terms of soldiers and supplies. Therefore, he was suggesting a war of attrition which meant to continue fighting until the South ran out of men, supplies, and will. Union didn't only have General Grant but they also had, General William Tecumseh Sherman, who was moody, ambitious, and brilliant. He believed in what was called the Total War, defeating the enemy both militarily and economically. The Civil War was over when General Lee surrendered to Grant, Johnston surrendered to Sherman, and North took Richmond over. Transportation problems and successful blockades caused severe shortages of food and supplies in the South. Starving soldiers began to desert Lee's forces. Lee surrendered to Grant on April, 1865 and they met in a house in the tiny village of Appomattox Courthouse. Before the real business, both of them were talking about other things rather than the Civil War and they seemed like good friends. Lee signed the paper at that house. Johnston surrendered to Sherman under similar terms at Durham, North Carolina. The great war was over, but that didn't mean any good because millions of free slaves and white people found themselves without any money or homes, and much of the South lay in ruins due to the war. Therefore, reconstruction was definitely needed for the whole nation. Vice President Andrew Johnson became president after Lincoln's assassination. Johnson was ill-suited to the challenges of Reconstruction and of defining African Americans' rights. Therefore, many Moderate Republican, who made up the majority of the Republican party, angry because his failure to protect African American's rights. After congress took over the reconstruction from Johnson, they quickly passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which declared that everyone who was born in the land of United States was a citizen with full civil right, (not guarantee for voting rights). Then Fourteenth Amendment was also passed in June 1866. It required states to extend equal citizenship to African Americans and all people were born naturalized in the United States.) Then Fifteenth Amendment was passed at the following year, it pointed out that everyone should have rights of vote no matter what color the people were. Many African American children started to go to school and being educated just like everyone else. Many African Americans involves politics and protect their own rights. As we knew, countless people didn't have jobs and started die from hunger, therefore, Industrialization was needed so that those people could have jobs. Many Southern landowners turned into factory owners. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Classical and Operant Conditioning.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ There are two main explanations of how organisms learn. The first explanation is known as classical conditioning. The second explanation is known as operant conditioning. These two types of learning are exhibited in our everyday lives through our home, school, and school. Classical conditioning was discovered by Iran Petrovich Pavlov. He was originally a physiologist whose main focus was the digestive system (Gazzaniga 230). His discovery was made during a study on the salivation of dogs when given food. Pavlov observed that the dogs began salivating at the sound of the scientists footsteps and at their appearance into the room (231). This led Pavlov to study the phenomenon further. The experiments that Pavlov was originally observing were based on the set of unconditioned stimulus and its unconditioned response. What is meant by conditioned is that the response is automatic and based on instinct. To compliment this name the stimulus is known as the unconditioned stimulus (Myers 260). With Pavlov's new observations a new set of stimulus and response was found. This new set is known as the conditioned stimulus and the conditioned response. What is meant by conditioned response here is that the response was learned. The stimulus begins as neutral and causes no conditioned response. However, if the neutral stimulus can be associated with another stimulus, then it becomes a conditioned stimulus. Classical conditioning can be exemplified in the home, school, and school. In the home a child could smell brownies baking in the kitchen which makes her mouth water. The brownies are the unconditioned stimulus, the smell is the conditioned stimulus, and the watering of the mouth is the conditioned response (Myers 267-68). In work a man may be waiting to be fired. When he sees his boss he begins to sweat. The unconditioned stimulus is getting fired, the conditioned stimulus is the sight of the boss, the conditioned response is the sweating. In school a boy may be in class when suddenly the fire alarm goes off at which time the boy walks to exit the building. The unconditioned stimulus is fear of a fire, the conditioned stimulus is the sound of the alarm, and the conditioned response is the exiting of the building. Operant conditioning is an organism's learning an association between how it behaves and what happens as a result of that behavior (Gazzaniga 244). There are some differences between classical and operant conditioning. First, the operant response has to occur completely spontaneously. In classical conditioning the conditioned response is drawn from an organism. In operant conditioning the response is delivered by the organism which then awaits the consequences. Second, in classical conditioning the conditioned response is usually a "very well- defined muscular movement or glandular response" (244). In operant conditioning the response is a set of actions that bring about an essentially equal result. Third, in classical conditioning reinforcement is dictated by the scientist or instructor. In operant conditioning reinforcement is dictated by the organism (245). Edward L. Thorndike was the first person to formally address the affects of reward and punishment in learning. He came up with the positive law of effect which stated that when a behavior is rewarded that behavior will be more likely to be repeated (Myers 269). F. B. Skinner later elaborated on this theory. Skinner observed there are different types of operant conditioning. There is punishment which decreases the probability of a behavior being repeated. There is positive reinforcement which the giving of a reward for a behavior (Myers 270). An example of this in the home would be the giving of a cookie to a child for picking up all his toys. There is negative reinforcement which is the taking away of something undesirable (Myers 270). An example of this in work would be a man at work who is allergic to flowers, but must sit near them since his boss likes them. The boss says that she will take away the flowers if he gets his report done early. This reinforcement can be divided into two categories; primary and secondary. Primary reinforcers are things that are required by an organism such as food, warmth, water, sleep, and sex (Gazzaniga 252). Secondary reinforcers are things that are associated with primary reinforcers and therefore have their own reinforcing properties. An excellent example of this today is money which can be used to obtain many primary reinforcers (252). Reinforcement fits into one of five main schedules. There is partial reinforcement or the irregularity of reinforcement. Continuous reinforcement is the repetitive reinforcement given after completing a task. Fixed ratio reinforcement is when a certain number of responses must be given to obtain a reward. Fixed interval reinforcement is when a response must be given for a certain amount of time to obtain a reward. Finally, variable ratio reinforcement is when a certain number of responses are required for the first reward, but different numbers of responses are required for different rewards. In closing, classical and operant conditioning are two explanations of an organisms learning. These two explanations are valid and existent. This can be seen through our experiences in the home, work, and school. Works Cited Gazzaniga, Michael S. Psychology. Philadelphia: Harper & Row Publishers, 1980. Myers, David G. Psychology. New York: Worth Publishers, 1995. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Cloning elements of individualism & collectivism.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ In many controversial topics around the world, such as abortion, gun control, legalized drugs, the death penalty, and cloning (to name a few), we can find differing positions, and opinions. Many of these arguments, can be narrowed down to two different views, or constructs: individualistic and communitarian (an image of collectivism). An individualistic viewpoint "stresses the rights of the individual as a unique being" (class review). A communitarian viewpoint is more concerned with the good for the greatest number, "even if an individual must suffer or sacrifice" (class review). These different elements do not necessarily label the people as opposed to, or in favor of the topic here. They just show where your motivations lie, is your involvement for self fulfillment or for the good of society? Within the contents of this paper, I will analyze the elements of individualism and collectivism that exist in the controversial topic of cloning. When Dr. Ian Wilmut, a 52-year-old embryologist at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh announced on that he had replaced the genetic material of sheep's egg with the DNA from an adult sheep, and created a lamb (Dolly), the topic of cloning "created" many new questions of its own. None were as controversial as: Will they apply this to humans as well? According to Dr. Wilmut, the answer was "there is no reason in principle why you couldn't do it"(clone humans), but he added, "All of us would find that offensive."(Wilmut as quoted by NYTimes, Daniel Callahan, 02/26/97). From an individualistic viewpoint, those in favor of cloning human beings, do not see it as morally, or ethically wrong. Many see it as an opportunity to have children, or possibly to "re-create" a child who is dying from a terminal illness. Using a deterministic argument, many infertile couples are worried that any "government restrictions on human cloning might hurt their chances some day for bearing children through new medical technology" ( Newsday, Thomas Maier, 03/14/1997). In a form of expressive individualism, Tom Buckowski, from Studio City, California said, "It's my body, my choice, right? But what if I want my body cloned and warehoused for spare parts? Upon what basis can government decide what I can or cannot do with my body?"(Los Angeles Times, 3/07/1997). In both examples, the predominant voice is that of the first language of individualism. The first language refers to the "individualistic mode that is the dominant American form of discourse about moral, social, and political matters" (Bellah et al, Habits of the Heart, pg.334). Anita Manning, a writer for USA TODAY revealed another individualistic argument in favor of cloning. In her article "Pressing a "right" to clone humans," Manning interviews a group of gay activists, who see "breakthroughs in animal cloning technology as a path toward same-sex reproduction." With their argument of genetic determinism, many individuals state that now that the technology is available, its use is inevitable. Randolfe Wicker, a New York businessperson, founded the Clone Rights United Front after reports of the successful cloning. He said "we're fighting for research . . . and we're defending people's reproductive rights." These examples show a very individualistic language use in favor of cloning, ironically many people who fight for the rights of individuals, form collectives to do so. In his Tuesday, February 25, 1997 article Should We Fear Dolly? James K. Glassman, a writer for the Washington post has more of a "republican" voice when discussing his favorable views on cloning. A republican voice, or second language is one that sees the benefits for society as a whole, over the consideration of the individual, though not exclusively. He points out "treatments to cure human diseases," and the ability to produce organs for transplanting as benefits for all of society. Also, with a deterministic voice, he points out that while cloning people is against the law in other countries, it is not in the United States. He said "I don't think it should be --certainly not at this stage . . . Trying to stop intellectual progress, in any form, is a terrible mistake." Furthermore, "the technology is not, in principle, policeable. In other words, you couldn't really stop research on human cloning if you wanted to." Glassman's language is distinctively more communitarian than my previous examples, though they all favor the technique of cloning. Most of the "scientific community" (a collective) favors the cloning of animals. Many, including Dr. Wilmut, argue that the potential for medical and scientific advances to be enormous. He said any rush to judgement could "lead to overly restrictive limits on related but less controversial areas of research" (The Washington Post, Technique's Use With Humans Is Feared, By Rick Weiss, Monday, February 24, 1997). With an appeal to higher authority Dr. Wilmut, and other supporting scientists argue that society as a whole can benefit from the techniques involving animal cloning. These include improved livestock herds, opportunities for research on disease, and production of protein enriched pharmaceuticals." When discussing the cloning of animals, the language of the "scientific community" is ultimately communitarian. Yet when the discussion shifts to the possibility of cloning humans, the water becomes a little "muddier." Through my readings I got the impression that the topic of cloning is a little too hot for scientists in favor of human cloning to say so (for now anyway). By contrast to favoring cloning (human or animal), those who oppose it, mainly have communitarian concerns. The most prominent collective opposition to cloning was from the religious community. Evoking biblical and republican themes (second language, Bellah et al), many said, "who has the right to play God by creating life, and what are the moral obligations of the creator?" (Albany Times Union, CLONING BOTH LAMB AND TYGER, by William Safire 02/27/97). Religious authorities, including Pope John Paul II have completely denounced human experiments. The Pope said "the temple merchants of our age who make the marketplace their religion, until they trample the dignity of the human person with abuses of every kind. We are thinking . . . about the lack of respect for life, which has become at times the object of dangerous experiments." (Pope John Paul II as quoted by Associated Press Monday, 03/03/1997). Moral theologian Gino Concetti, who is close to Pope John Paul II, said "the creation of human life outside marriage goes against God's plan . . . a person has the right to be born in a human way and not in the laboratory." (Associated Press Monday, 03/03/1997). "One may not, even for a single instant, even for a good purpose, use a technique that is morally flawed," declared the Rev. Albert Moraczewski, a theologian with the National Council of Catholic Bishops. "Cloning exceeds the limits of the delegated dominions given to the human race." By appealing to a higher authority and voicing the biblical language, the concerns of the religious community are clearly societal, and not individualistic in nature. They use paternalistic, degenerative and guilt by association arguments to condemn the possibility of human cloning. Although many religious collectives condemn human cloning, some favor it. An article on the TIME magazine web site stated, "the Jews and Muslims maintain that cloning of people was not only permissible, but might even be a moral obligation to help infertile couples have children." Another interesting quotation was from Rabbi Moses Tendler, a Talmudic scholar and biologist at New York's Yeshiva University. He argued with a quotation from Genesis. "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the Earth." Then he continues, "and master it." These arguments, come from religious groups, with emphasis on individual and communitarian gains. Both use a biblical voice, and an appeal to a higher authority, but the first example is more individualistic in nature and the ensuing more communitarian. In America, President Clinton has imposed a ban on federal funding for human cloning experiments. Using a biblical voice he argued that he was trying to stop "people from playing God." He said "there is much about cloning that we still do not know. But this much we do know: any discovery that touches upon human creation is not simply a matter of scientific inquiry, it is a matter of morality and spirituality as well." Everyone in government did not share President Clinton's communitarian concern over the cloning of humans. Sen.Tom Harkin expressed his deterministic views when he said that he opposed any limits on cloning. "What utter, utter nonsense to think that we can stop cloning . . . human cloning will take place in my lifetime and I welcome it" (USA TODAY ). Although president Clinton and Senator Harkin hold political positions (for the people), both use dissimilar language when discussing cloning. The president's concerns are communitarian. He uses biblical and republican languages (second language), when arguing his position. Senator Harkin is clearly more individualistic, and uses the first language of Americans. In a country where there is so much diversity, we learn quickly that personal, familial and social views will always differ. One benefit of living in a democracy is that we allow our different voices to be heard. The controversy over cloning humans or animals is no exception. Your voice may be individualistic, arguing for your right at the chance of having a child, or communitarian, claiming it is the hand of God that should create humans. The important thing to keep in mind is that we need to be willing to take responsibility for our decisions, no matter what they may be. Ultimately, what we need, is to figure out a way to balance our individualistic tendencies with our collective ones. If we can do that, we are being fair to ourselves, and society as well. <<< f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Cognitive Development in Chidren.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Cognitive Development in Children Piaget suggests that children prior to the age of seven develop an objective moral orientation. They tend to evaluate the good or bad actions on the basis of the consequences of the actions (good or bad). At about the age seven, children develop a subjective moral orientation which involves evaluation of behavior in terms of whether the intentions were good or bad. This investigational method is used to determine whether children under the age of seven have objective moral reasoning; along with, if children about the age of seven have subjective moral reasoning. Method Subjects: The subjects were children from 1990 to 1995 between the ages of three to 11. Apparatus: Some sets of three sample story pairs were used for this experiment, along with a rating sheet, to record the responses from the children. Story Pair One: A. A girl (boy) who is named Susan (Jim) is in her (his) room. She (he) is called to dinner. She (he) starts to go into the dining room, but behind the door there is a chair: On the chair is a tray with 15 cups on it. Susan (Jim) doesn't know that all of this is behind the door. She (he) pushes on the door, the door knocks against the tray, and bang, goes the 15 cups! They are all broken. B. A girl (boy) named Mary (Robert) wants to get some candies. But her (his) mother tells her (him) that she (he) can't have any more candies, and she (he) leaves. But Mary (Robert) wants a candy, so she (he) climbs up on a chair and reaches up to the shelf. But she (he) knocks over one cup and it falls on the floor and breaks! Story Pair Two: A. Sarah (Kenny) was playing on her (his) swing in the back yard. Her brother (his sister) was also playing in the back yard. He (she) decided to go over to the sandbox to play. As he (she) walked by the swing, Sarah (Kenny) tried to kick him (her) but misses. B. Pauline (Billy) was watching TV. Her brother (his sister) was playing nearby. She (he) hears her (his) friends playing outside and gets up to run outside and play with them. As she (he) is running she (he) bumps into her brother (his sister). He (she) falls down, his (her) nose begins to bleed, and he (she) begins to cry. Story Pair Three: A. Anne (Scott) is playing on the wall near her (his) house. She (he) is not supposed to play there because it is very dangerous to climb on the wall. But Anne (Scott) goes ahead and climbs to the top of the wall. She (he) slips and bruises her (his) knee. B. Barbara (Trevor) climbs up a very tall tree to help her (his) kitten get down. She (he) reaches the kitten and helps her get down. But as she (he) climbs down, a branch of the tree breaks and Barbara (Trevor) falls to the ground. She (he) breaks a leg. Procedure: You must arrange a time to meet with the child in the his/her environment with no other children present in the room. Set a rapport with the child for a few minutes, if you don't know the child. When the child has settled down and there is no distractions proceed with the investigation. Tell the child that you will be reading a pair of stories about children. As you read to the child change the name of each character in the story to correspond to the subjects gender. The child being read to must determine which child in the story was the naughtiest and why. This is then recorded in the observation record sheet. The data is collected for six years. Results The results of the children's responses are recorded on the Child Observation Project Frequency Histogram (FIG 1). The data formulated state that, the children between the ages of three & four, the score for the stories was relatively low. The children between the ages of nine to eleven the score was very high. These results indicated that the older children knew from right and wrong. Discussion "Piaget believed that all children pass through a series of distinct stages in intellectual development."(Coon 1996) By the graph in FIG 1 it holds true. The pattern of children knowing right from wrong increases dramatically as the children get older. This would prove Piaget's theory of cognitive development. My personal opinion on this is that children know right from wrong by the way their care givers teach them. If they were explained what was bad instead of just saying no the child would pick up on what was right and wrong faster. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Communcation style.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The concept of communication style has been defined by Rober Norton as "the way one verbally, nonverbally, and para verbally interacts to signal how literal meaning should be taken, interpreted, filtered, or understood"(1996.p.229) In this, Norton has identified nine communicator styles. A persons style may be dominant, dramatic, contentious, animated ,impression leaving, relaxed, open, or friendly. These dimensions measure how you interact in various situations. For example, if I speak frequently and try to control the converstaion, you might assume that I am dominant in my communicator style. In determining my own commuication style I had a questionnaire completed by both a friend, acquaintance , as well as completing one myself. The friend that I chose was my room mate Ryan Seslow. . Ryan and I have been friends since highschool so he knows me very well. The person that I chose to complete the acquaintance section was my friend Leslie Margasak. Leslie is my girlfriends roommate therefore our communication is somewhat limited. Through the following research and analysis I have created a table (Table:1) that shows the means for my friend aquaitance, and myself. The summaries and findings in which I calculated provided me with insight of my dominant yet friendly communication style. It also provided me with a different perspective as to how other people interpret my communication habits. For example, the mean for myself on the category "relaxed" scored a 1.3. However, my friends mean was 3.1 and my acquaintance was 5.1. Through the text of Interpersonal Communication, I was able to determine that this fluctuation has to do with the self concept theory. "Self -concept is defined as each person's own subjective view or image of him or herself as a person" (tremont p.213) In my opinion I do not see myself as relaxed(1.3), but my friend does as well as acquaintance. I do not see as relaxed as the others indicated in the table. Usually I feel rather more stressed and even a little nervous rather than relaxed when communicating. One calculation in which which I noticed to have simmialr realuts was based on the means for being dramtic. I scored high in this category on all three surveys.(see table:1) When a person is classified as dramatic it refers that the person "likes to act out the point physically and vocally. Tells jokes and stories and often eaggerates to make the point.Speech tends to be picturesque" .(willmont,p.230) In my opinion this is an acurate calculation. This is a characterisitic of my communication stly which is both dramatic and firendly. The dramtic side is often seen when I choose to tell a story or when I am in confilct. There were other noticeable simmilarities which were calculated about my communication style, For example, on "dominant" category the means were all relatively high marks. A dominant person means the person "tends to come on strong, take control of social situations, speak frequently, and otherwise control conversations" (Tremont,p.121) An example of this could be seen through my one-up messages. These are messages which " indicate a desire to take control or limit the action of others"(tremont,P.121). Through my verbal and nonverbal cues I seem to signal to people that I want to take control. This is evident in alll three scores. Other simmilarities of this analysis were also found in the sub category "perception" Tese simmilaritie were between my friend and aquaitance. The mean in this are all relatively high and although i scored high in this category myself I was surprised that my score was lower than that of Ryan and Leslie. Impression leaving can be explianed as "a person who repeatedly turns a clever phrase or states his/her observations in offbeat ways"(Willmont,p.229) Through this estimation i can see that my dramatic styles of communication are do leave a strong impact and effect on people. In contrast, there are also noticeable clusters of differences that i noticed. The most noticeable difference between means was on the category "relax" I scored myself relativel low and both Ryan and Leslie scored me low in this means. Relaxed is defined as "calm and collected durring interactin, especially under pressure. The rhythym and flow of speech is rarely affected by feelings of nrevousness"(ilmont,p.230) Through this analysis it is obvious that I see myself as nervous in contrast as to how my peers percieve me. This trend of fluctuaion of means sis also evident in the categoryopen. Here, I scored myself a low means while Ryan and Lesly gave me highe scores. Communication is one of the most intricate and under looked areas of human beings. By completing this assignment I learned a great deatil about my self and how other percieve me. Though I do feel that I am an a good communicator I now realize what aspects of my communications skill that I need to fix. The areas I would like to change are to tr7y to be more open with others. I will attempt to do so by staying relaxed. I scored a relatively low mean in the openess category and this is an area I would like to change. The means showed that I am not open nor am I percieved to be a very open person. Overall my communication style is very dominant, dramatic and friendly. Howvevr, despite this though Im not a very open person. I feel that my communication style does allow me to get people to listen to me closely becayse of my dramatics or ability to tell srotires in vivid detail and picturesqe. I am animated and expressive when I feel the need to emphasize a point or statement. This also helps my communication confidence since I know now that what I say often does an considerable impact on those who I am communicating with. In conclusion I am very pleased with the dataz which I recorded. I now understand my communciation style better yet at the same time have located areas in which I can begin to improve on. Through this assignment I learned a great deal about how I communcate as well as how others percieve my communication style. References 1.)Trenholm and Jensen, (1996). Intterpersonal Communication. Belmont, CA:Wadsworth Publishing Company. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Communism.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Communism is the belief that everyone in a society should be equal and share their wealth. It is an outgrowth of socialism and Anabaptism (Laski 45). It became a firmly rooted term after the Russian Revolution of 1917. According to the words of Karl Marx, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" (monkeywrench@iww.org). These theories were spread by Karl Marx. He believed that what a person made of himself reflected his effort (McLellan 1). He also believed that communism, or the state of equality was ones "final stage in life" (Leone 1). Communism basically started in 1847, with the formation of the London Communist League. This was an international association of worker, whose sole purpose was to write a "theoretical and practical program which would serve as the basis for uniting the working classes of Europe" (Leone 1). The London Communist League asked Marx for help in drafting a document to represent their standings. He composed the "Communist Manifesto" or "The Manifesto of the Communist Party" (Leone 1). The Russian Revolution helped foster communism. The Russian Revolution started with the with the assassination of Rasputin. In March of 1917, the Duma declares a prvisional government, including czars. During this period, there were also massive strikes by the workers. It was furthered by the abdication of Czar Nicholas. The Russian Revolution itself occured throughout 1917, with the start of the March Revolution. In April of 1917, Lenin return from exil in Switerland and denounced the established provisional government. The next general step was the gaining of the seats in the Petograd Soviet Parliment by the Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks picked Lenin to then head the government, just several days after the November Revolution. During this revolution the peasants storm the palace, taking total control of the government. At this point, the power was given to Lenin. Almost immediatly he issued the New Economic Plan, which instituted the one party system or communism. They basicaly supported the basic communist theories of Karl Marx, as interpreted by Lenin. He installed many of his beliefs and helped reorganize the people, and essentially emmancipatte the working class. He also is credited with the creation of the Soviet Union. Unlike many of the countries previous leaders, he had more of the peseants support. This was extrememly influential later in his career (McKay, et all 880). When he came into power, he gave land to the peseants (Laski 48). He even went as far to nationalize the banks of Russia. Lenin had help with the running of his government, especially from Joseph Stalin. Stalin helped to advise Lenin on almost all of his problems. He even went as far as to help lead the Red Army in the Civil War (Brzezinski 25). The theory of communism was developed by Karl Marx. He was born in Trier of the Rhineland Germany to Jewish parents and spent his life in an effort to improve the life of the average working man (Foreman 6). Marx is probably best known for his masterpiece, the Communist Manifesto. In the Communist Manifesto, Marx put forth his philosophy on society and the way it would change. In essence, he developed "a set of proportions about human society and the way it is supposed to behave over time" (Daniels 5). Communist's state that the "greatest freedom, freedom from want, can only be realized went he abuses of big business are eliminated" (Leone 6). This would require her citizens to give up everything they own, and trust completely in the stability of their government. The Marxist theory describes the cycle through which society revolves in six basic steps. First, economic development would lead to the formation of a class structure. This would occur because people would assume different roles in the production of process, such as worker or supervisor. Second, the before mentioned classes would struggle for dominance, and fight to gain power over the other classes. Third, the classes would form political organizations to further the cause of the class. Fourth, the economic conditions would change, causing new classes to arise. Fifth, the addition of more classes would intensify the struggle for dominance. And sixth, the lower class would rise up and overthrow the upper class. The cycle would then begin again with the new upper class bringing about economic prosperity (Daniels 6). Marx cannot be given the entire credit for his ideas. He collaborated with a fellow German, Fredrich Engles. Engles met Marx in 1844, at the tender age of 24. From then on, the two combined ideas and wrote not only the Communist Manifesto, but also the three-volume Das Kapital (Forman 138). Engles served his purpose as the "literacy executor" of Marx well (Ebenstein 13). Marx's genius was refined by Engles' brilliance. However, through the course of time, Marx's and Engles' theories did not remain as pure as they were penned. Marx himself declared "All I know is that I am not a Marxist" (Daniels 4). A great amount of credit for the corruption of true communism is due to Vladimir Illich Lenin. As the leader of the Russian Revolution (Foreman 139), he felt it necessary to develop his own communist theory, how appropriately named Leninism. Lenin's communism was very different from Marxism; the two terms cannot be considered identical or interchangeable (Daniels 18). Russian Marxism generally tends to lean towards "liberation of labor" (Laski 47). The roots of communism can be traced back to the All-Russian Social Democratic Party which split into the Bolshevik and Menshevik Parties. Bolshevik, meaning majority and Menshevik meaning minority in representation. The Bolshevik party had Lenin, who had just came back from Switzerland. In 1917, he announced his April Theses' to the public and changed the party's name to the All-Russian Communist Party. This party was modeled after the communist party of Germany (Laski 47). Lenin did agree with Marx on one principle; in a situation of devastation considerations, it would be necessary of the e lower class to rise up from their oppressing and overthrow the domination upper class. However, he was of the opinion that if left to themselves, the masses would not become revolutionaries (Daniels 20). Instead a very special elite group was necessary to overthrow the autocracy for the lower class (Daniels 19). The working class was involved in the struggle and would be inadequate to successfully revolt. What was needed was an outside, "neutral" group to initiate the revolution. Lenin stated that "class political consciousness can be brought to the workers only from without, that is only from the outside of the economic struggle, from the outside of the sphere of relations between workers and employers" (Daniels 20). Lenin also disagreed with Marx on another concept. Lenin did not thing that a revolution was a result of natural forces, as Marx did. His philosophy stated that the revolution was the result of the purposeful intervention of the elite group (Daniels 20). Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashivili, more commonly called Joseph Stalin, also rose as one of the most powerful men in the world, especially with his commuist backing (Brzezinski 27). He was exiled to Siberia early in his politiacl carrer, and returded to help support the Bolshevik party. He was extrememly influential in decison making with Lenin, and in 1922 he was raised to the Secretary-General of the Bolshevik party (Miller 68). Stalin became a primary leader at Lenins death. Stalin helped to create the Cold War Period. The cold war was essentially created as a result of the soviets wanting to keep itself secure and happy on their own. The Soviet Union also made demands from other countries to help to build up their economy once agian. However, several countires, including the United States and England, refused to grant these unreasonable sums for the fear of a giant communist sphere. The countries drew up agreements on boundries, of which the USSR also violated. This hate towards the United States climaxed during the presidency of John F. Kennedy. The Soviets shadowed the government of Cuba in 1959,creating a communist country under the dictatorship of Fidel Castro. Under this time period the Bay of Pigs took place. This was an ambushed attempt of the United States to help some rebel war groups in Cuba to overthrough their dictator. They failed miserably causing many deaths. The Cold War continued with the Cuban Missil Crisis. During this Crisis period the Soviets installed missiles on the shores of Cuba, aimed for major United States cities. This "problem" was eliminated with talks between the Kremlin and the White House, fortunaty a major disaster was prevented. The Cold War ended with the presidency of Ronald Regan. He had outspent the Soviets, thus putting them in a state of ruin, ending this period of hate. Communism also developed in China. Around the turn of the 20th Century, reformers began to voice their aspirations of a better China. By 1912 the Quing Dynasty had fallen, the emperor had abdicated, and China had been declared a republic, instituted by Sun Yat-Sen (Shanor 94). In 1921, the Chinese Communist Party had become the largest formed in the world. (Shanor 95). Unfortunately, the Chinese society was not ready for democracy. Those holding offices of power accepted bribes and participated in other forms of corruption. Warlords divided the country into unofficial petty kingdoms with armies of peasants. The economic state of China made it much more profitable for a peasant to work for the warlord that form the land (Shanor 95). Because of the poor conditions, small Communist groups began to form in China's cities. At first, they were allies with Sun Yat-Sen and his Nationalists. But the good feelings between the two parties deteriorated quickly after Chiang Kai-Shek, Sun's successor, ordered the Shanghai Massacre of the Communists. Chiang spent the following years alternating between negotiating with and fighting against the Communists. The situation became so drastic that the Communists eventually fled during the Long March of 1934-35 (Shanor 95). The United States, who was very Anti-Communist after WWII, supported Chiang Kai-Shek. Over a period of four years, the US gave $2.5 billion to support the Nationalist cause. Despite their efforts, the Communists eventually overthrew the Nationalist government, forcing Chiang and followers to flee to Taiwan. On October 1, 1949, Mao Zedong, the leader of the Communists, proclaimed the country as the People's Republic of China (Shanor 96). The Christian Anti-Communism Crusade in April of 1975, stated f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Community Srvice.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Luke Adovasio The Greenwich Association for Retarded Citizens (G.A.R.C.) of Greenwich High is a group of students interested in interacting with disabled students. These students go to the high school as well, and look forward to getting to know us. Each of the students have different disabilities but they each have the desire to make friends. This group is totally volunteer basis for all of it's members, no one has to attend. I have been a member of this group for the three years I have attended in Greenwich High. Spending a lot of time with these children I have learned to understand that they are just looking to make friends. I joined this group as a freshman because I had worked with children with Down Syndrome during the eighth grade at Central Middle School. My interest carried on through out the years because of the numerous fun times I have had, and have made friends with many of the girls. They are all very personable and pleasant to talk with. They each have special characteristics defining them from the others, making each of them special in different ways, just like the rest us. Aside from the meetings that we have every so often to discuss activities we can do, we usually do fun and interesting activities. We go out for pizza frequently because it seems to be the group consensus on what we would all like to eat. During the holidays we celebrate in interesting ways; on Halloween we have a party where every one gets dressed and brings candy. For the Christmas season we are going to celebrate with a party at a members house and listen to Christmas carols, and have dinner. We have had bake sales and have sold candy in order to raise money for the clubs activities. These are usually a success because every one participates and we all seem to function well as a group. When there are dances or football games at school we each take one of the girls and it's good for them because they get to interact with the rest of the school at a big function. This club is not only fun, but it's like going to a meeting with some of your friends. We are a small group and we all get along. Since we are a small group it is also difficult for us to do a lot of things. It is difficult to educate the larger part of the public who doesn't know what these kids are like. It is also hard to raise money to do many activities. It would be great if more kids would join each year, and it would be great if the ignorance level had lowered. Many students just don't want to know anything of these kids. I chose to discuss G.A.R.C. because it is a group that could use help from the community at Greenwich high, and I thought I could help by explaining exactly what we do. Why talk about something else, when I could tell of something I enjoy and that needs more attention. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Comparing China and the USA.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Skyler Ditchfield Per. 5 Comparing China and the United States World Cultures Religions are very different in both countries. In the US most people are Christian, but there is a freedom of religion so you have the right to practice any religion that you want to. In China they are against religion, because it brings people away from communism, they want communism to be the official religion of China. Status symbols of living in the US are things that you can buy, cars, houses, clothes ect. In China everyone is given an equal amount of money because of the communist society, so it is much harder to have these sort of things. US people value money, the next thing they are saving up for, a new boat, or something else of value. But in China their values are different, mostly because of their communist government. They want to do everything for the good of the group, or their country, the more they can help out the better. The government of China you probably already know, it's one of the last communist governments left in the world. In a communist government the government runs everything, the businesses and jobs, they pay everyone equally. This does though have problems. People have no incentive to work, no matter how good a job they do they still get the same pay. In the US we have a Democratic-Republic which means we elect who we want to run the government for us. People are free to sell anything for any price they want as long it has been approved and is not an illegal substance. The US has always been a Democratic-Republic, that was the reason why the United States was formed. China though has not always been communist. In 1949 Mao Se Dung started the Communist revolution and changed China to a Communist country and it has been Communist ever since then. There are no social classes in a Communist society everyone is equal and on the same level, because everyone is supposed to have the same amount of money. This didn't work quite exactly right though in China because leaders in the government become corrupt and take more money for them self. So realistically there are two social classes, the government and high ranking officials, and then everyone else below them. We have three classes in the US, upper, middle, and lower. They are determined by money, the rich are on the top and poor on the bottom. The largest class is the middle class. Because of the type of economy that we have in the US small families are preferred. Entertainment is a big part of the American culture. Television is the most common form of entertainment. Almost every single home in America has a television. Americans love sports, sporting events draw huge crowds and millions of people watch them on TV. During the super bowl one billion people watch it. The most popular American sports are Baseball, Basketball, Football, and Hockey. One of the biggest sports in China is ping pong. Not many people own their own ping pong tables, but they can play ping pong in local rec. centers. The geography of China is very diverse, China has the tallest mountain in the world, Mt. Everest. It also has several of the other tallest mountains around the world. There are over 1 billion people in China, and it is the largest country in the world. 72% of China is rural because of the many mountains people have less area to live. The US has 275million people and is the third largest country in the world. The United States is the richest country in the world, and has an average income of $14,000 per year. Problems in the US are solved mostly by the courts, if they are between people or businesses inside the United States. People that live here them self usually fight when they are mad about something. Everyone always says to, "talk it out" but it never really happens. In China when there is a problem it is crushed by the government. For example, Tienamen sq. Where thousands of people were killed by the government because they opposed the government. The United States of America and China are quite different in ways, mostly their government, but when it comes down to it, the people are pretty much the same. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Comparison Between African and American Cultures.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Comparison Between African and American cultures Our culture has advanced so far and fast in the last decade. The thing that has advanced our culture most is the technology we have. Our technology has produced us with many new products and entertainment that we really enjoy but don't actually necessarily need. The next few paragraphs will talk about comparison of our culture and Africa's culture. The culture in Kenya is only advancing in certain parts, mainly the bigger cities. There are also many very remote towns and villages that still have some of the native people left in them. Since there are so many different tribes they have lots of native languages. In America Spanish is one of the only other languages spoken. Some of the different tribes in Africa are the Sanburose, Omallose, and Turcanas. The people in these places use many of the old ways and follow most of the traditions their ancestors did because they haven't been introduced with very much of the modern technology we have. Instead of having an occupation like most of the people here in the United States they grow up learning how to become worriers, graze their animals, hunt for food, etc. The closest thing our society comes to hunting is using guns, and other powerful weapons mostly just to hunt for fun. Even though most of the native towns and villages are not very advanced there are still many big cities that are very much like ours. One of the things that really shocked me the most was how much the average worker made their. It was about 200 dollars. I don't think this applied to the city workers. 200 dollars is nothing to the average worker here in America. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Comparison of the Three Major Sociological Theories.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ SOCIOLOGY 303 CLASSICAL THEORY Comment on the three types of sociological theories, explain and argue, based on your library or Internet research, which type of theory is the most appropriate theory for sociology to adopt. The three general types of sociological theory are positivistic, interpretive and critical theory. In determining which theory is the most appropriate for sociology to adopt, a basic understanding of each theory's strengths and weaknesses is necessary. In defining each of these theories, it is important to determine the ontological basis or the theory's basis for determining what is knowable; the epistemological basis or the theory's relationship between the knower and the knowable; and, finally, the methodological basis or the theory's method for gathering data and obtaining knowledge. A. POSITIVISTIC 1. Ontology. The positivistic theory is based on an ontology of being a realist. The realistic slant of positivism is also known as determinism. The positivist knows that a reality is "out there" to be defined and categorized. The hard sciences from the time of Newton and Decartes have traditionally relied on the positivistic approach. The positivist hopes to be able to approximate "reality" in a detailed generalization or theory on how reality operates. The theories of a positivist generally take the form of cause and effect laws describing the outside reality. Robert Merton defined these theorems as "clear verifiable statements of the relationships between specified variables." 2. Epistemology. Positivism relies on an objective epistemology. The observer remains distant and does not interact with the observation or experiment. Values and any other factors that might lead to bias are to be carefully removed so that the cold, monological gaze of science can be used to analyze the data. The positivist is an objectivist. 3. Methodology. The methodology of positivism is experimental and manipulative. The approach is the same as propounded in most junior high science classes: begin with a hypothesis on how "reality" works, then gather data and test the data against the hypothesis. The question propounded initially is tested against empirical data gathered in the experiment under carefully controlled conditions. B. INTERPRETIVE 1. Ontology. The interpretivist ontology is relativism. The belief, unlike the positivist, is that knowledge is relative to the observor. Reality is not something that exists outside the observor, but rather is determined by the experiences, social background and other factors of the observor. Because of this view sociological law is not a constant, but a relationship between changing variables. 2. Epistemology. The epistemology of interpretivism is the subjective. The inquirer in interpretisim becomes part of an interaction or communication with the subject of the inquiry. The findings are the result of the interaction between the inquirer and the subject. Reality becomes a social construction. 3. Methodology. The methodology of interpretivism can best be described as hermenutic or dialectic. Hermenutics is the study of how to make interpretive inquiry. Dialectic is reflective of the dialogue imagined in the subjective approach and the need to test interpretive theory against human experience. Max Weber described the methodology as "a science which aims at the interpretative understanding of social conduct and thus at the explanation of its causes, its course, and its effects." Through hermenutics, the raw data consists of description. The description is made through the naturally symbolic use of language. The meaning of the language is derived in part by the society from which it arises. Interpretive theory is tested by referring back to human practice within the society. If the interaction produces the anticipated result then the theory is corroborated and vice versa. C. CRITICAL THEORY 1. Ontology. Critical realism is the ontology of critical theory. Critical realism believes that a reality exists "out there" and is not merely relative. However, reality can never be fully comprehended or understood. Natural laws still control and drive reality and to the extent possible should be understood. 2. Epistemology. Critical theory is value oriented. Therefore, the critical theorist is subjective to the extent that the inquiries are governed and conducted in the context of the values expounded by the theorist. 3. Methodology. Critical theory has a transformative methodology. The answers provided should be on how we should live. The status quo is critiqued and attacked. Actions are criticized because of the result they will bring. The transformation is brought about by making societal participants more aware of the language and the world in which they live. By rallying members of society around a common, clear and "true" point, societal injustice and exploitation can be eliminated. POSITIVISM VERSUS INTERPRETIVISM The positivistic approach is excellent for examining exterior data that can essentially be utilized in an objective fashion. The positivist is an excellent philosophy for viewing societal trends and changes. The monological or scientific gaze is limited in its perceptions and can best be used for determining when and to what extent groups in the society interact. The interpretivist, on the other hand, wants to know why things are happening in a particular society. The subjective approach allows communication with the cultural background of a society and an understanding of why things operate. An illustration of how the two approaches differ can be seen by examining something like the local Mormon baptism ritual for 8 year old children. The positivist would tell percentages of children who participated in comparison to the time the parents spent in church. The hypothesis may begin that a higher percentage of children would participate in the ritual if their parents were more active in the religion. Data would be gathered and tested against the hypothesis. The conclusion would be that the data confirmed the hypothesis and so the conclusion could be reached that the more active the parents , the more likely that the child would participate in the ritual. The interpretivist would survey and examine why the children were baptized and what the baptism meant to the participants. The final construct for the interpretivist would be that the baptism signified a religious cleansing and a new beginning and acted as a right of passage for the young children. Both conclusions are correct, the results are vastly different. The positivist looks at the exterior of society, while the interpretivist looks at the interior. It is the difference between examining the electrical synapses in the brain and knowing what someone is thinking. Both inquiries have there value, but in the end, they are looking at different aspects of the same subject. The positivist examines the exterior, while the interpretivist examines the interior. Critics of interpretivism and positivists attack interpretive theory for being subjective and therfore being unreliable. This is not an accurate critique. Just as there can be poor positivistic theories, there can be poor interpretive theories. Likewise, there can be good positivistic and interpretive theories. An analogy to literary critique is the best illustration. Literary critique is always interpretive. A positivistic critique of Hamlet would amount to nothing more than a catalog of the number of times each word is used, the amount of ink and the number of pages in the story. It would tell us nothing about the power and strength of the play. Interpretive approaches of Hamlet can be either good or bad. An interpretation that it is a play about "being happy" would be a bad interpretation, while a critique on revenge would be more accurate. The common experience of people who have seen or read the play helps determine the quality of an interpretation. While it is subjective, a reasonable determination can be made as to its value. Positivism also has some inherent difficulties in maintaing the objectivist view when doing sociological research. Unlike physical science which can measure equations like Force equals Mass times Acceleration, human institutions are replete with human subjectivity. Positivistic science is a tool which only works for external examinations. Biesta and Miedema describe the problem in this way: The point here is, that the scientific study of human subjectivity has aims that differ radically from the aims of physical science. Physical science aims at control of a (human) subject over a (non-human) object. The relationship between the two can be characterized as an external relationship, firstly because the object is controlled by the subject, and secondly becasue the knoweldge acquired by the subject in order to explain the behavings of the object does not influence the behavings of the object. While effective for the external analysis, positivism is lacking in explaining social behavior. Probably, the biggest problem in utilizing positivism in a sociological setting is the difficulty with language. Language, by its very nature, defies establishing empirical truth. Positivism relies on empirical facts derived from observation, yet "[t]here is no absolute way to isolate the analytic, necessary truths from the merely empirical." Because of the inherent problems positivism has been modified in the postpositivism movement. The ontology is that of the critical realist. The objectivity is modified to recognize that it can only be approximated. The methodology is a modified experimental which tries to conduct the research in more natural settings with more qualitative components. This postpositivism remains an ideal methodology for examining external components of the society. POSITIVISTIC AND INTERPRETIVE VERSUS CRITICAL THEORY The objective requirements of positivism are directly antagonistic to subjective critical theory. Critical theory approaches sociology as a means to facilitate societal change. A positivist would rather observe from behind a thick glass and stand removed from the observation. The stated purpose of critical theory is to transform society into a better reality. Positivism merely wants to define reality, not redefine. Positivism will be reductionsitic, while critical theory will tend to be holistic. The two theories could not be farther apart. The goals and objectives are antithetical. Balaban summarizes the conflict as follows: Positivism and Critical Theory offer us a positivistic account of a fetishistic society. The first accepts it (evaluates it positively); the second rejects it (evaluates it negatively). Positivism praises society, Critical Theory blames society. Meanwhile the human sciences await a true critical explanation of society. Likewise, interpretive theory and critical theory differ. Interpretive theory is looking at the inside to understand why. Critical theory is trying to change the society. The difference is between trying to understand and trying to change. Thomas R. Schwandt described the difference betweeen the two theories as follows: If constructivism [interpretivism] can be characterized by its concern with a hermeneutic consciousness -- capturing the lived experiences of participants -- then critical theory can by characterized by its critical consciousness -- systematically investigating the manner in which that lived experience may be distorted by false consciousness and ideology. . . . If the constructivist [interpretivist] methodologies are preoccupied with the restoration of the meaning of human experience, then critical science methodologies are preoccupied with reduction of illusions in the human experience. CONCLUSION All three methodological approaches involve safeguards to regulate objectivity. This is not the same as objectivism. Each has its own "norms for proceeding with a particular form of inquiry in a rational manner." However, because of the orientation of each theory, the end results will vary. Based upon these difference, critical theory does not seem to be a theory that should be adopted by sociologists. It belongs more in the realm of politics and legislation. Critical theory in that context could take advantage of scientific inquiry by both positivistic and interpretive sociologists to make determinations about social change. If indeed critical theorist are to be involved in sociological study, full disclosure of prejudices and objectives would be needed for any inquiry to be beneficial and trustworthy. Postpositivism remains the best approach for observing the exteriors of society. Coupled with the interpretivist's view of the interior culture, the two theories working hand in hand would be most beneficial for the sociologist in examining society. Utilizing a dual approach would be the most comprehensive and give the scientific inquiry both depth and span in evaluating our societies and creating a useable body of sociological research. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\computers in our lives.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ There is a dispute over computers and the knowledge which is requied to operate them. First of all, some people say that anyone who does not know how to use the computer is not preapered for the future. Second of all,without knowledge of computers anyone dont stand a chance on the job market. Because without education in this field there is no way to succed in life or to find ajob which would provide decant pay for an average person. However,other people have different opinion about this issue. In theit opinion knowledge of computers is not required in today's job market. They also thinks that people should not depend so much on computers but more on their own education and capibilities to make the right decisions. Even knowing for a fact that the computers are almost everywhere in use it's not appropriate for people to get addicted to them and to make them solve all of our problems for us. That is the only one of many reasons why so many people are divided about this topic on both sides. Altough from my own experience with a computer all I can say is that THe computers are one of the most important things which were discover since pencilin. That is why I wiil have to agree with people who support computers and education that is involve to operate them. the end. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Conflict between liberals of 1920s and the old guard.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The contrast between the new and changing attitudes and traditional values was unmistakably present during the 1920's. This clash between the old and the new had many roots and was inevitable. A new sense of awareness washed over minorities in our nation, especially blacks who began to realize that they were entitled to their own subculture, pursuit of success, and share of the American dream. This ideal was expressed by Langston Hughes in "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain." They were supported by the growing number of young, financially well-to-do liberals who formed the new intelligencia. Each group sought the use of logic and rational reasoning in their rethinking of reevaluation of society's current status. Still, they constituted a minority and their reformist views were not well-taken by the greater part of the population who had become accustomed to a certain way of thinking were not willing to budge, thus keeping the radicals silent. Individualism was also partially suppressed by the succession of three traditionalist Republican presidents whose partiality to the strong was displayed by their strong backing of big business while discouraging the Labor Union movement. Literature was one medium by which the new intelligencia could express their views on impracticality and injustice of the social system and government in the 1920's. Sinclair Lewis was one such author who used his writing to condemn the stale and outdated ways of thinking that were so widely popular in our nation during the 1920's. In addition to exposing the poor working conditions of most factory labor, particularly the meat-packing industry, he criticized the common man who could not think or act individually in his novel, Babbit, which was published in 1922. His description from the novel of the common man portrayed a person who acted in a manner that was socially acceptable who also strived for success based on society's definition of purchasing material goods. In essence he was a man defined by the society that he lived in. Religion was also a topic of controversy during the twenties. Traditionalists who were usually older and less intelligent than the rising young class of liberal intellectuals were primarily Christian and would only accept literal interpretations of the Bible. The liberals were not so quick to take the Bible at face value and came up their own interpretations. The tension between the old and the new regarding religion was perhaps most obviously prevalent at the Tennessee Evolution Court Case of 1925. In this time of where individual thinking was a rarity, public misconception and ignorance ran abound. People looked to scapegoats to account for society's problems. Often minorities such as black in addition to the young liberals were the source of such a scapegoat. For this reason, the Ku Klux Klan experienced widespread popularity during the 1920's. The KKK relieved the majority of white conservative America of any responsibility for the shortcomings of society. It also gave them a sense of security by forming a large alliance against minorities. The conflict between patrons of the KKK and the uprising group of intellectual liberals was quite flagrant. The young continued to take more liberties and adhered less to society's standards than the preceding generation. They sought self-satisfaction rather than living in harmony with the rest of society. As a result, many non-traditional trends began to appear in the lives of the young liberals in the 1920's. Women began to feel more sexually liberated and realized that they also had needs aside from only existing to accommodate their male counterparts. Many women also took up smoking, an activity previously delegated exclusively to men. In addition, more and more women pursued jobs outside of the home. The rate of divorce rose during these times as well. The young generation had stopped living their lives according to traditional society values and had inserted their own sets of desires, goals, and values by which to live instead. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\CORPORAL PUNISHMENT IS PHSICAL ABUSE.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Corporal Punishment is physical abuse Corporal punishment is the execution of a judicially imposed sentence that inflicts a manner of physical pain upon the offenders body without killing him. In the past corporal punishment included flogging, whipping, branding and facial or bodily mutilation of all types. Corporal punishment also refers to the discipline of children at home and in schools but it was made illegal for punishing schoolchildren in 1986. Historically, corporal punishment was used in the ancient law codes of Hammurabi and Moses, in laws of Sparta and other Greek city states, in early Christian church teachings and in Anglo-Saxon common laws. It is still used in many parts of the world and remains in the criminal codes of several European communities. In the twentieth century, corporal punishment has received severe criticism. Many people believe it is a barbaric relic of a bygone age, completely opposite with present day humanitarian ethics. With a rising crime rate many are favouring the reinstitution of physical punishment for very wicked crimes. It has been shown that many adults in England want the restoration of corporal punishment for certain crimes, hoping that it will effect the reaction against an ever increasing amount of crime. The use of corporal punishment on children has also dropped sharply. In many school systems of the United States, for example, corporal punishment has been outlawed, it is also illegal in countries such as Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Norway. Corporal punishment for certain offences is very effective, because it's done quickly and feared by all. Not only will it teach the offender not to repeat his violent actions but it will also discourage him. It teaches the school boy or convict that doing wrong will be followed by pain and suffering. When used justly and without anger the giver is not brutalised. In many independent schools where it still occurs it is thought of as a final punishment. It accustoms the pupils to the hardships of real life and no bitterness is left after it has been used for good reasons. It is always impossible to make the punishment fit the crime, with corporal punishment the amount can be adjusted to suit the offender. It is much better than other punishments which are deadening to the mind and the body. Schools which don't find corporal punishment essential, especially for young children, substitute it with other methods which are equivalent to terrorising. Detentions are also harmful because they increase the number of hours a boy is forced to spend indoors in physical inactivity. His restlessness is increased by the enforced restraint which leads to further offences against discipline. Corporal punishment is humiliating and harmful to the sensitive victim, while it is no discouragement to the hardened culprit who often boasts about it to his friends and girlfriends trying to impress them as though it were a battle of honour. It appeals to the strain of cruelty that exists somewhere in everyone. If it were true that corporal punishment accustoms children to life's hardships then every boy should receive it's benefits daily. Corporal punishment is an excuse for laziness in teachers. By using terror instead of discipline, a bad teacher can continue his work when otherwise the impatience of the students would force him to change his method. Detentions are more effective because they interfere with the boys leisure time , which worries him far more than physical pain, and may give him an opportunity for impression. In modern schools there are many opportunities for physical exercise and its nonsense to imply that depriving a boy of this is physically harmful. The infliction of corporal punishment on a person who regards violence as a means of achieving his ends is not likely to have any correct action; on the contrary, past experience has shown that it will lead to a deeper feeling of hatred towards authority and society. I believe that discipline is necessary in the raising and teaching of children so they can become social, productive and responsible adults. Punishment is a method of disciplining and corporal punishment is only one aspect of punishment. Parents and teachers who lower themselves to physical violence and aggression in order to control children are setting an example that children may try to follow (Bandura, 1967). This is the hypocrisy of "Do what I say, not what I do," but the actions are often louder than the words. By refusing to use physical punishment, perhaps we can refine and develop other techniques which may prove more beneficial than the easy and quick brutality. Punishment does nit have to be physical; it can be social, emotional or mental. "One form of punishment is the administering of an aversive stimulus contingent upon disapproved behaviour. The other is the removal of a reward or positive reinforcer" (Skinner, 1938). Bibliography : Beck, S, Alternatives to corporal punishment (internet) Danellan, C, Crime and punishment (1991) Great, B, Supervision and punishment in the community, HMSO, 1990 Pros and Cons, RGB, 1992 f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Corporate Culture The Key to Understanding Work Organisatio.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Corporate Culture : The Key to Understanding Work Organisations Organisational or corporate culture is widely held to refer to a system of shared meanings held by members that distinguishes the organisation from other organisations, that is a set of shared key characteristics or values. The culture that an organisation has will play an important part in its success in its market sector. Likewise an organisation's continued success will depend to a large extent on the ability of the leadership of the organisation to perpetuate that culture. A large, established organisation in a mature market is likely to have objectives of moderate growth and the maintenance of its position within the market. McDonald's is an example of such an organisation. You could walk in to a McDonald's restaurant in London, Tokyo or Moscow and expect to see staff dressed in the same uniform serving the same food from within restaurants that look remarkably similar. There are no risks to be taken here and rarely a snap decision to be made and certainly not by the staff. Contrast this with a small organisation, thirsty for success in an emergent market such as Steve Job's Apple Computers in the early eighties. Here was a company led by a very strong character who was highly motivated, possessed a highly practical imagination and was fanatical about detail. He built up a multinational company on the strength of his ability to promote free thinking coupled with the attention to detail that is required to produce a world class computer within the organisation that he ran. It is quite clear that if the cultures of these two organisations were transposed there would be internal chaos and the company's would lose their positions within their markets. A McDonald's restaurant that started to add flair to its menu would soon cut in to the company's tightly controlled profit margins whereas a company with tightly enforced rules and regulations could never lead the market in innovative technologies. It is not by chance that these two organisations have such different cultures. They are each the product of a clearly constructed and executed leadership policies reinforced by the organisation's founders and subsequently their top management. The processes of selection and socialisation are key tools in the maintenance of an organisation's culture. The selection process is typically employed within organisations not only to select individuals who have the technical skills and knowledge to perform their roles within the organisation but also to select people who will fit in with, and not undermine, the organisation's culture. The process of socialisation has as its key objective the moulding of the individual, who has already been selected partly for their apparent conformity with the organisation's core values, in to a true member of the organisation where their values and norms are synchronised with those of their work group A work organisation cannot be understood, however, by studying it's culture in isolation to the areas of group dynamics, leadership, power and influence. It is indeed not possible to understand organisational culture without putting it within the context of organisational behaviour as a whole. Leadership plays a key role in the establishment of organisational culture. As culture is principally the subjective perception of the organisation's and how it achieves those aims then leadership must play a central role in setting the values that underlie this perception. The founders of an organisation hold the responsibility for the establishment of an organisation's culture. In an embryonic company this does not necessarily have to be done with much thought. In this environment the organisation's founders generally have a lot to do with the day to day running of the organisation. The founders or their close associates will interview prospective employees and the successful candidates will be those who not only have the appropriate skills but those who also possess values and behaviours that are similar to those of the interviewer. As the organisation develops and grows a number of sub-cultures will develop and it is now more important that the organisation's values are communicated in an effective way. Now the interviewers are further removed from the founders and direct exposure to their values and behaviours. Now it is important that the founders develop an effective way of communicating their values and behaviours so that they are seen as the basis of the dominant culture within the organisation. Likewise the group dynamics within the organisation will have a direct relationship to the organisation's culture. In fact the norms that are established within the various groups that make up an organisation form a substantial part of the organisation's culture and it is in the establishment of these norms that leadership is so important for if dysfunctional norms are established within a group, for example a department of an organisation, then the effect on the organisation's culture would be potentially very damaging. We would see the norms within the department come in to conflict with the organisation's culture and if decisive leadership were not taking in tackling the dysfunctional norms then the possibility of these norms spreading throughout the organisation and overthrowing the organisation's existing culture is posed. An organisation's culture may be seen as the commonality between the various group norms within the organisation. With effective leadership these norms can be centred around those of the organisation's official leadership through the effective communication and reinforcement of the leadership's values. It can , therefore, be seen that the statement 'organisational culture is the key to understanding work organisations' cannot be substantiated as an organisation cannot be understood by simply looking at one aspect of its behaviour in isolation to the broad body of study collectively known as 'organisational behaviour'. Organisational Culture within London Underground London Underground was formed out of the railway lines that were built, owned and operated by a number of private railway companies that served the centre of London. These companies were formed around the turn of the century and were finally brought under the unifying umbrella of London Regional Transport in the 1940's. The private rail companies had developed the most modern technology to generate profits and had, on the whole, done this successfully London Underground was formed out of the need to have a co-ordinated transport plan for the growing capital city in order to move people around without choking the streets with traffic. It was only with the arrival of a new government in the late 70's that was intent on dismantling the nationalised industries that the leadership within London Underground was forced to rethink the direction it had been taking over the previous decades. London Underground had become a club. An organisation where high value was placed on fitting in, on loyalty, and on commitment. This club culture placed along side the lack of direction that the organisation was plagued with started to foster dysfunctional norms within groups that were furthest away from the leadership. As these individuals were promoted due to their seniority the organisation started to take on these dysfunctional norms as its dominant culture. The government had been using its influence throughout the 80's to appoint a new leadership to London Underground and in the early 90's this leadership announced the 'company plan'. In order to obtain the finance from government that the organisation required to replace or repair the now crumbling infrastructure the organisation was to undergo a full review of its activities that would slash staffing levels by almost 25% through a complete review of the company's activities. The end result would be an "underground fit for the next century". The culture within London Underground had become very strong and a whole range of tactics were employed to overturn the old culture. The organisation's leadership was replaced not only on the board of directors but wherever necessary throughout the organisation with 'outsiders' brought in from what has now become known as 'the real world'; where this was not possible or where there were suitable candidates within the company then employees who espoused the company's new values were promoted. The unwritten norms that had become the basis for the old culture were replaced, after months of long, heated discussions with the unions, with formal rules and regulations that were, and still are to a great extent, tightly enforced. The net result today is an organisation that is at least pulling in the same direction as its leadership and where the values and behaviours have now been published and are being used to point the way forward. · Openness, Honesty, Trust, Respect · More for Less · Empowerment Within a Framework · Continuous Improvement, Steady State, Innovation Management · Constructive Descent f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Correctly Political A Look into the dynamics of Political Co.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Correctly Political: A Look into the Dynamics of Political Correctness Every American probably knows what it means to be politically correct. After all, we hear about it on the news almost every night. We have to be constantly aware of whether or not something we say or do is going to offend someone. This mode of communication is present in every aspect of our lives, from the most formal to the most informal situations. This paper will answer questions on the origin of the term 'politically correct' and the applications of the communication pattern it refers to: who started it, who is doing it, and why. Is political correctness a good idea? Is it too pervasive? Varying opinions on the definition of political correctness exist. For the purposes of this writing the most concise definition available has been selected. Political Correctness refers to matters of inclusive speech, advocacy of nonracist, nonageist, nonsexist terminology, and insistence on affirmative action policies, avoidance of Eurocentrism as reflected in a "traditional" canon of literature, acceptance of multiculturalism as a valued feature of American society, and dismantling hierarchy as controlled by a white male power structure. (Hoover and Howard 963) In a nutshell, political correctness is an attempt at changing the way we look at things. The goal is to be respectful of all people and cultures. Unfortunately, in the process of fostering understanding, the culture and ideas that are presently embraced must be discredited and virtually destroyed. This "traditionalist" power structure is constantly under fire in the debate over political correctness. Nontraditionalists have proposed that we "regard the creation of a culturally diverse community as not just fair, but as a valued objective in its own right." (qtd. in Hoover and Howard 967) In order to fully understand the effects of politically correct thinking, it is necessary to see it through time to its present state. There is a wealth of information on the history of the term "political correctness" and it's applications. However, scholars usually do not agree. The most common commentaries have noted its use in North American social movements from the late 1960's and within Leninist parties before this time. "Politically Correct" seems to have originally been an approving phrase of the Leninist left to mean someone who steadfastly toes the party line. It evolved into a term of disapproval among leftists for those whose line-toeing fervor was too much to bear. (Richer and Weir 53) Thus, the expression went from having a positive meaning to having a negative meaning. What we think of today as political correctness (PC) began in a recognizable form during the social movements of the late 1960's. PC was used as a self critique by social movements, each saw itself as politically/ethically correct. PC referred to the culture or practices of the women's movement or gay liberation or a Marxist party, but not to a common culture cross-cutting these movements. There existed a shifting line of conflict between movements, and groups could signify affinity or hostility with another group by proclaiming these movements politically correct. (Richer and Weir 53) Paul Berman, a well-known essayist, has a very interesting view of the social movement culture of the 1960's: "The left wing uprising of circa 1968 had two phases, which were in perfect discord. The first phase was an uprising on behalf of the ideals of liberal humanism -- an uprising on behalf of the freedom of the individual against a soulless system. The second phase was the opposite, at least philosophically. It was a revolt against liberal humanism. Is said, in effect: Liberal humanism is a deception. Western-style democracy, rationalism, objectivity, and the autonomy of the individual are slogans designed to convince the downtrodden that subordination is justice." (Berman 6) The first phase of the social movement culture seems to have been the search for peace and love for all. It appears that as time went on, groups became either excessively radical or merely disillusioned, and turned on their earlier goals. A once idealistic movement became cynical. Once again, "political correctness" changed from positive to negative. The best way to illustrate the incongruity of political correctness is to present a few cases of it in use. Arguably one of the most outstanding examples of affirmative action in the Eighties is the insistence of John Paul II on beatifying Kateri Tekakwitha and thereby placing her on the road to canonization, even though this 17th century Mohawk Indian maiden appeared not to have performed any of the miracles traditionally required for Sainthood. (Seligman 60) PC is applied to everyday situations in many ways, but one of the most easily recognized is terminology. It is surprising how many books and stories are on the 'not PC' list. It is also surprising to read them once they have been altered to contain more inclusive language. Another intriguing illustration of applied political correctness is the "Dates to Remember" list on the California Teachers Association 1995-96 calendar: Massacre of the Sioux at Wounded Knee Day (December 29), Internment of Japanese-Americans Day (February 19), Diwali (October 23), the Birthday of Mahavira, the founder of Jainism (April 30), National Coming Out Day (October 11), and the Stonewall Rebellion Anniversary (June 27-28). (Leo 18) Perhaps a more familiar story can better show the significant language of PC. How about the Three Little Pigs? In the book Politically Correct Bedtime Stories, The Three Little Pigs begins: "Once there were three little pigs who lived together in mutual respect and in harmony with their environment. Using materials that were indigenous to the area, they each built a beautiful house." (Garner 9) Most Americans are likely to be familiar with this story, but does it sound a little different when transformed into something politically correct? One of the oddest publications of this politically correct era is a PC version of the Christian Bible, The New Testament and Psalms: An Inclusive Version (Oxford University Press). Note these changes: The Lord's Prayer now begins, "Our Father-Mother in Heaven." The 63rd Psalm's "Thy right hand upholds me" made left-handers feel bad and is now "your strong hand upholds me." "Kingdom," an overly male word is now "dominion." And the word "darkness" when referring to evil or ignorance has been removed out of deference to dark-skinned peoples. (Leo 19) Included in the definition of political correctness is "acceptance of multiculturalism as a valued feature of American society." This is perhaps the most difficult task of nontraditionalists. Diversity is not difficult for an American to accept, after all, you see diverse people every day. Multiculturalism is something different, though. Not only is one expected to recognize the existence of other groups, but to learn about them and treat their heritage as equal in importance to one's own. Author Dinesh D'Souza sums up multicultural education: "I'm in favor of multicultural curriculum that emphasizes1/4the best that has been thought and said. Non-Western cultures have produced great works that are worthy of study, and I think young people should know something about the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. To do so, it's helpful to be exposed to the Koran. Young people should know something about the rise of Japanese capitalism. Is there a Confucian ethic behind the success of Asian entrepreneurship in the same way we hear about Max Weber, the Protestant ethic, and the spirit of capitalism? These are legitimate questions. But they are not the questions routinely pursued in most multicultural courses, which instead have degenerated into a kind of ethnic cheerleading, a primitive romanticism about the Third World, combined with the systematic denunciation of the West." (Berman 31) In my experience, this is exactly the way schools look at multicultural education. I have participated in several attempts at multicultural classes, and they all turn out the same: we study holidays, important figures, and learn a few songs from an African or Indian culture. Is this really important information in the fight against cultural illiteracy and ignorance? Because of the ambiguity of PC theory, it can be used as a tool by two groups of polar opposites: neoconservatives and leftists. (Richer and Weir 253) Right now it is advantageous to appear politically correct. So the left, which traditionally upholds PC, can do so without losing public approval. That is, until the right holds them to it. When political correctness is applied to an institution, such a University, many problems arise. Look at something like textbooks. If the University insists on the use of inclusive language in their textbooks, isn't the school promoting a type of censorship of alternative works? Larger issues are more difficult. When the right looks to the University and says, "Isn't the left going to do something about the hate speech on campus, where is the freedom to learn without fear?" the left is forced to reply by advocating speech codes and other forms of restrictive expression. Therein lies the "Catch-22" of political correctness: in order to have freedom for all, some freedoms must be compromised. The debate over political correctness seems to be most heated when it comes to Universities. There are countless books and articles which study and debate the problems and effects of PC. The left and right of the University are the nontraditionalists and the traditionalists. Debates over Universities center on curricula, in particular the literary canon. The canon is made us primarily of works by dead white males and is part of the core curriculum at nearly every University in America. Nontraditionalists seek to alter the canon by either supplementing it with a multicultural emphasis, or overhauling it and starting from scratch to create a more diverse base of literary education. Traditionalists wish to continue to teach the current canon, and see the nontraditionalists' aims as subversive and irresponsible. (Hoover and Howard 968) At a few Universities, nontraditionalist views are influencing class scheduling. Some schools have instituted "alternative" courses: Dartmouth offers "The Invention of Heterosexuality and How to Have Promiscuity in an Epidemic." At Brown one could find a course called "Christianity, Violence, and Victimization." Even Yale has PC courses: "Gender and the Politics of Resistance: Feminism, Capitalism, and the Third World." (Leo 18) PC affects more than University campus f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Costs and contributions The Wave from South of the Border.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Costs and Contributions: The Wave From South of The Border Every year, hundreds of millions of people enter the US via land ports of entry, and the INS each year apprehends over 1.3 million aliens at or near the border. Over 90 percent of those apprehended near the border are Mexicans, and some who enter the US legally and illegally are carrying drugs into the US. This influx of illegal immigrants from south of the border has created quite a stir in many places. Is this good that people are coming to the U.S.? What will happen if this pattern keeps up? Will they steal our jobs? What effect will this wave of people have on us? These questions plague many and deserved to be answered in the following paper on: "Costs and contributions: The Wave From South of The Border". "Dowell Myers (USC) reported on his double cohort method--by age and year of entry-- of analyzing what happened to immigrants arriving in the seven southern CA counties after 1980. His analysis shows that especially young immigrants make considerable economic progress after their arrival--as measured by their total incomes--and that some of their behavior converges rapidly to that of natives, e.g., they rapidly abandon buses and drive cars to work. In southern CA, one-third of all bus riders are recent immigrants. Myers noted that immigration is raising other issues, including overcrowded housing. The US definition of acceptable housing was two or less persons per room until 1960, when the definition was change to one or less per room. However, as immigrants moved into southern CA, overcrowding jumped, raising questions about how aggressively cities should enforce housing codes developed during a non-immigrant era." Many are haunted by the question: will we be hurt? Over crowding has had a major impact on families living near the Mexican border lowering standards of living and living space as well. Also, citizens wonder about the filthy scum that comes from south of the border-are all illegal immigrants scum? George Vernez outlined an ambitious project that is dealing with the question of whether immigration is a plus or minus for CA by examining the effects of immigration on internal migration, on wages, and on public finances since 1960. Those studies showed that immigrants from most countries do catch up to similar natives in average weekly earnings after 10 to 20 years, but not immigrants from the major country of origin--Mexico. Furthermore, immigrant children tend to follow in their parents' footsteps, meaning that the children of Asian immigrants tend to do well in school, etc., while the children of Mexican immigrants do not. Is this a problem to worry about? I mean, come on, a few illiterate children doesn't hurt anything, right? How many immigrants are there again? While immigration to the US in 1994 was substantial - 800,000 people - this still falls far short of the peak year of 1907 when 1.3 million people entered the country; and since, at the beginning of the century, the total US population was only around one-third of what it is today, the impact was much greater. Another economic concern is that immigrants will swamp social services such as education, health and welfare. Immigrants who arrive traumatized in their new countries are indeed likely to need considerable support. But other immigrants generally contribute much more in taxes than they take in benefits. This means that in contrast to popular belief, legal immigrants actually benefit the U.S. as a whole. On the other hand, illegal immigrants can cause many economical drains. The U.S. is a little leery about people migrating to the U.S. for many reasons. The chief concern is that poverty will drive people in increasing numbers from developing to industrialized countries. The United States frets over its border with Mexico - and the 2.6 million illegal immigrants it already has. On the flip side of the coin, if there is a minus, there must be a plus. Money will need to be spent on the education of immigrant children but adult immigrants are likely to be young and healthy and few will require welfare or pensions. In the United States, for example, legal immigrants who arrived in the 1980s have been found to use welfare at a rate well below that of the natives. Illegal immigrants, fearing detection, are of course even less likely to use welfare - even though through sales taxes they make a considerable contribution to the public coffers. Others worry about the economic impact - nervous that immigrants are going to steal their jobs. Such fears may be understandable but are generally groundless. In reality, immigrants do not substitute local workers but rather complement them - often doing the "dirty, dangerous, and difficult" jobs that local people refuse. This was spotlighted in the United States in 1993 when the presidential nomination for Attorney General was found to have employed an illegal immigrant. She was not alone: the employment of women in the United States is critically underpinned by 350,000 illegal immigrants working as domestic help. Despite the continuing international debate on the impact of immigration on employment, the argument that workers take jobs from existing residents has usually been shown to be without grounds for accusation. Immigration can help rejuvenate the population, though it would have to take place on a really massive scale to have any impact on the age profile. Cutting off immigration may satisfy populist political sentiment but it is doubtful whether it makes much economic sense. Apart from making a useful contribution to the labor force they can also have a useful demographic contribution. Many industrial countries are facing steadily aging populations - and will have fewer active workers to support a growing retired population. In conclusion, it is this detective's belief that trying to cut off the influx of immigrants into the U.S. would be, economically speaking, stupid. There is substantial evidence piling up by the hour that immigrants help the economy rather than hinder it. Leave the gates open. These people help us in the right amounts. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Crearion Evolution and interventon which theory is correct.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Creation, Evolution and Intervention: Which Theory is Correct? For: Mrs. Talbot bb Class: Socioledgy88 Date Due: Oct. 9/96 By: Neel Ghelani89 Creation, Evolution and Intervention: Which Theory is Correct For many years, it has been widely debated how modern man came about. In this essay, I will explain the ideas of the three main theories: Evolution, Creation, and Intervention. I will also discuss which theory I believe and why it is that I believe it. Evolution Evolution, in biology, is the complex process by which organisms which originated on earth change because of changes in their environment and their function on earth. The earliest fossils ever discovered are from single celled organisms which resemble today's bacteria. People who believe in evolution believe that for approximately 3.4 billion years these single celled organisms have changed and evolved into many different species including humans. This theory also states that humans and other species continue to evolve today and as a result of all these changes they will eventually become a totally different species then what they are now. Evolutionists believe that evolution has created many organisms spread across the globe, some of which have become extinct and some of which are the plants and animals which live today. The theory that groups of organisms can be transformed into different organisms has been suggested many times since the early 1800s, when scientists began looking for evidence that the evolution process took place. "The most outstanding evolutionists in the nineteenth century was Jean Baptist de Lamarck, who argued that the patterns of resemblance arose through modifications of a common lineage-for example , that lions tigers and others all descendant from a cat like ancestor." (Dickey p.42) It had already been a widely accepted theory that different animals adapt to different modes of life and environmental conditions. Lamarck argued that physical and mental changes occurred from animal adaptations to different environments. Once the animal changed, Lamarck believed that the changes would be passed on to the offspring through genes. Unfortunately this theory was never really scientifically tested. Charles Darwin successfully explained the evolutionary process , with his famous book On The Origins of a Species by Means of Natural Selection. In this book, Darwin stated that, in the environment organisms who have better qualities such as being faster or trail scenting are more fit to survive. Consequently they are able to take the vital ingredients required by unfit organisms such as living space and food. Eventually, they kill off the unfit and unadapted. This theory is best known as, survival of the fittest, and can be summarized in the following statement. When environmental conditions change populations must change in order to be fit and thus survive. Understanding the evolutionary process depends a great deal upon the interpretations of the fossil record, which many consider to be incomplete because many fossils can not be found. For this reason, there are many different views about what the fossil record states. One fact that puts doubt in the evolution theory is that when a fossil appears in the fossil record it does so very abruptly, and then stays their for several years. The fossil usually does not show the gradual changes that take place in the evolution of species. For this reason, Jay Gould of Harvard university developed a "punctured equilibrium" theory stating that the changes do occur rather quicker than some believe. Creation "The notion of creation is defined as the production of an existing thing out of no preexisting material".(Dickey 237) In the bible and in other comparable ancient literature, creation is a theme used to explain how human beings came to earth. In the bible and most other creation stories from ancient religions, the universe is said to be a great mess in which order was introduced by a God. In the bible, it states that the creator cleaned up the world and organized everything such as the stars and the day from night. In many ancient cultures the stories tend to be similar and differ only in terms of places and figures. Other ideas of creation include myths of emergence. According to the bible, earth, all of its species and the universe were created less then 10 000 years ago. The bible also stated this process took place in six days. It states that man was created when god put two humans onto the earth, Adam and Eve. The bible said that from these two people came the entire worlds population today. People who believe the bible creation story word for word are called fundamentalists. In the 1700s, James Usher disturbed many traditionalists with his theory that the earth was probably more then ten thousand years old. What disturbed the creation theory even more was Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. This theory states that living things are a product of less sophisticated species. Many fundamentalists refuse to except this because it would mean that the bible was wrong, or because they didn't want to accept the idea that we came from a lower order species. They want to believe they want to believe that god created them and they did not come about as a freak of nature. Today, evolutionists believe that the creation story is greatly flawed, and the fundamentalists believe that the theory of evolution is greatly flawed. Interventionists In the middle of evolution and creation is Intervention. Interventionists believe that evolution did take place and that human beings have always been evolving as the theory of evolution states. Interventionists believe that, in some point in human development, something from somewhere in the universe, possibly a superior intelligence, another species or even space aliens, bred with humans thus changing the ape like creatures into modern humans. One of the most famous interventionists was Alfred Russell Wallace who presented this theory in the mid to late 1800s. Interventionists believe that intervention most probably took place when the most intelligent life was only the Homo Erectuses, A less sophisticated mammal who could walk upright. There are three major pieces of evidence for intervention: the first is the quote from the bible discussing intervention: "When the sons of god came down to earth and bore children to the daughters of humans."(Moses p.17) This quote is straight out of a creation story many believe to state exactly how humans were created, this is why it is so compelling and makes some people believe intervention must have taken place. Secondly the fact that the speed of gradual change caused by evolution greatly increased after the Homo Erectus. Interventionists believe that "the process of evolution is too slow and gradual to account for such a rapid change."(Dickey pg.92) They believe that the changes increased because the Homo Erectus bred with a different organism giving its offspring half of its features through its genes. What I believe I believe that evolution did take place, because this is the only logical explanation to explain how fossils have been found in Asia and Africa of creatures that do not exist today. Many people contend that these fossils were put in these places so God could test our faith, but it is my opinion that these people want to believe something so badly that they have fooled themselves into believing this. These people only say this because there is no other explanation for fossils being where they are other then evolution did take place. These people want to believe that we are the supreme beings in the galaxy and not that we came from a unsophisticated monkey so they will do anything to prove evolution wrong. If god did exist with all the technology we have today we would be able to scientifically prove it but he doesn't so we can't. We can though prove scientifically how man was in fact created, through evolution and we know this from fossils. I believe intervention took place at some point in the middle of the evolution process, but not with creatures from other planets or even with god but with a different species from our own planet, who came about from evolution, possibly a Neanderthal and another smaller less sophisticated creature. I believe this because Charles Darwin's' very believable theory stated that only the fit survive. Neantherthals were extremely fit. They were twice as strong as the average human and had much bigger brains. Some people believe they became extinct during the finale ice age, but they were smart so I believe they moved south to Africa and adapted to the climate. This could be done by humans and Neanderthals are considered twice as smart as us so they must have been able to do it. Once they were in Africa they bred with smaller less sophisticated animals possibly monkeys and this created the modern human. This explains why the speed of changes in the fossil record increased so dramatically around the Homo erectus stage in evolution. What has made me even more sure of intervention is the quote from the bible saying "the sons of god bore children to the daughter of humans" This quote is straight from a major creation story many fundamentalists take very seriously. I don't know how they can believe that god put man on earth when there only source for information about creation they have tells them intervention did take place. Conclusion Evolution, creation and intervention all are valid theories of how humans came into existence. The question of which theory is correct is up to each individual to decide . I believe that evolution does occur and this created many species but I do not believe this created modern man. I believe intervention occurred and that two products of intervention bred together in order to make the modern human. Bibliography 1)Dickey, Norma H. Funk & Wagnalls New Encyclopedia. R. Donnelley and sons; Washington,1985 2)Moses. "Genesis" The Holy Bible. Thomas Benson; Nashville,1990 3)Skeoch, Alan. Focus on Society. Merrill Publishing Company; Toronto,1988 f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Crime and the United States.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ A crime is defined as "an act committed in violation of a law forbidding it and for which a variety of punishments may be imposed." Crimes are classified into two basic groups; "mala in se" which are crimes that are evil in themselves, and "mala prohibitita" which are crimes that are only crimes because society at the time deems them wrong. In these days crime is more easy perceived by society. Surveys of public opinion in the United States show that more and more people believe that crime is increasing. People feel less safe in their environment and have thus taken measures to protect themselves. But is this view accurate? Most of the crime rates from 1973 to 1992 have risen greatly. In 1973 there was a murder every 27 minutes. Now there is a murder every 22 minutes. The astounding fact is in 1973 there was a violent crime every 6 minutes but now it has increased to a murder every 16 seconds. Crime per thousand from between 1983 and 1992 rose 9.4 percent but from 1991 to 1992 it went down 4 percent. In recent years crime has been decreasing. Property crime, murder, robbery, and burglary have all decreased at least three percent in recent years but that is not much. There is one exception; rape which has gone up 3 percent. Violent crime has risen 40.9 since 1983 while in recent years it has only gone down a tenth of a percent. This may be one of the reasons people feel less safe. People aren't afraid of larceny or property crimes. They are afraid of violent crimes, which is why is recent years they feel insecure. Many people believe the problem is in the trial system itself. Not enough people are convicted. In our trial system where you are innocent until proven guilty and to be proved guilty it must be done beyond reasonable doubt or preponderance of evidence in civil cases. After it has finally been very well proven a judge or jury must unanimously decide the criminal is innocent or guilty or it is declared a hung jury. It also is too easy to get a shorter sentence on a plea bargain. For instance a person accused of armed robbery, an offence that on average a person would get thirty years for; the criminal will often plead guilty to a lesser offence such as carrying a concealed weapon. Carrying a concealed weapon would often give a six year sentence but the criminal often gets off in half that time. So you see how the sentencing just went from thirty years to three years. Another possible cause is our prison system. Prisons breed crime themselves. If a burglar is sent to prison he must contend with the violence inside it by being rough himself. This means a burglar who enters a prison may emerge a murderer. Prisons are often used to rehabilitate and made more pleasant as so to not create the cultures that develop more criminals in them. This often makes prison seem not so bad to criminals. That solution is worse then the problem. Is the United States crime problem as bad as people think it is? The crime rate in the United States isn't even in the top fifteen. The problem in the United States is the rise in violent crime. The United States ranks third in the world in robbery and violent theft. There is a rise in juvenile crime too. A possible reason for this is the breakdown of the family. In families where both parents work the kids are left alone or in a day care. The parents are around less for support. This makes it that much easier for the kids to become delinquents. There are many possible ways to fix the United States crime problem and the rise in violent crime. One solution is to use the death sentence. One less murder alive is one less murderer on the streets. Another answer is to prohibit handguns. The second amendment may give the right to bear arms but it isn't clear whether this right should be granted to individual citizens or an official state militia. The Supreme Court has never ruled on this issue. Without handguns nobody would be afraid to be held up. It would be much safer to go out at night. When crime makes people live their lives differently and possibly in fear something must be done. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Cuba.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Cuba is the largest island of the West Indies, lying south of Florida and east of Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula. The Republic of Cuba is combined with the surrounding islands. On the East, Cuba is separated from the island of Hispaniola by the Windward Passage. The U.S. maintains a naval base at Guantánamo Bay in the Southeast. The capital and largest city of Cuba is Havana. The island extends about 760 miles from Cabo de San Antonio to Cabo Maisí, the western and eastern extremities. The average width is about 50 miles. The total area is 44,218 square miles including the area of the Isla de la Juventud (Isle of Youth) and of other islands of the country. Land and Resources About 1/4 of the surface of Cuba is hilly, the remaining consists of flat or rolling terrain. The hilly areas are scattered throughout the island and do not come from a central mass. The main 3 ranges are the Sierra de Trinidad in the central part of the island, the Sierra Maestra, in the Southeast, and Sierra de los Órganos in the West. The first two ranges are under 3000 feet. The Sierra Maestra, has the greatest in altitude and mass, and contains Pico Turquino (6561 ft), the highest point in Cuba. Most of the soil of Cuba is relatively fertile. One of the natural features of the island is the large number of limestone caverns. Most of the many rivers of Cuba are short and unnavigable. The main river is the Cauto, located in the Southeast. The coast of Cuba is very irregular and is indented by numerous gulfs and bays. The total length is about 2500 miles. The island has a large number of harbors. Climate The climate of Cuba is subtropical, the annual temperature is 77°. The annual rainfall averages about 52 inches. More than 60% of the rain fall during the wet season, which extends from May to October. The island lies in a region heavily hit by hurricanes during the hurricane season. Natural Resources f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Cuban Revolution.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Jason Rosenzweig January 9, 1997 Cuban Revolution Mr. Barron After the Cuban Revolution many change occurred in Cuba. Cuba was once a corrupt dictatorship, now and for the past 36 years Castro has led a communist government. Before Castro took over Batista, Batista ran a biossed economy for the rich. Officials took pay offs, keeping the majority of the peoples thoughts invisible. Protestors of Batista were murdered, and their body's were thrown in gutters. During these times the life for the rich was plentiful, they had more Cadillacs than any other city in the world, and the highest number of T.V. sets per capita out of all the Latin American countries . Many gambling casinos were also present. While life for the poor was plagued with unemployment, inadequate health care, and a high illiteracy rate. Castro's take over of the government, changed many ways of life in Cuba, most of which benefited the poor or the majority of the people. Education was improved for the poor, there are many times more schools and staff members to educate the young. Health care was improved, infant mortality rate has dropped from 60 to 11.1 which is comparable to industrialized nations. Even with all the good changes their are hardships do go with them. Castro took over business's, some of which were owned by foreign investors, collecting some of the revenue to help Cuba's economy. Some of Batistas followers and the wealthy fled to the U.S. to escape the taking of their wealth or being jailed. On April 17, 1961 the CIA arranged a invasion with 2000 exiles to invade Cuba to spark a uprising against Castro, this was known as the Bay Of Pigs. The invasion failed, this opened a window of opportunity for the Soviet Union to change the global power balance towards the Soviet. In 1962 a event known as The Cuban Missile Crisis was born, the Soviet Union plant Nuclear War Heads in Cuba to prevent the U.S. from any farther attempts to invade Cuba. The U.S. in return setup a quarantine to stop trade with Cuba. After six days of public statements and secret diplomacy Khrushchev ordered the missile sites dismantled in return for a U.S. pledge not to invade Cuba All in all Cuba is a very difficult place to live, even with the education and health care improved. The economy is paralyzed by the embargo put on them, with the Soviet collapse they lost almost all there imports/exports. Food is very scarce, sometimes people have to wait days in a food line, and when it's there turn theirs nothing left. The U.S. should stop the embargo on Cuba, for Communism is no longer a threat, the embargo puts too much suffrage on the people of Cuba, just for their beliefs on the government. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Cult.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Types of cults Two main kinds of cults exist today: Messianic Cults This is a cult that has a leader. Whatever the leader orders his members to do must be done, whether it would be sacrifice or murder, it must be done. In return the leader of the cult would "save" his followers. Mellenarian Cults This is a type of cult that refers to the 1,000 year reign of Christ. These groups believe that dramatic events, such as the end of the world or judgment day, will occur at the turn of the century. Traits of cults A feeling and a certainty of belief. A single strong and powerful leader. A tendency to control communication. A totalistic outlook; a view that spiritual life in the group must be present 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This would not allow a member to do any hobbies, work or interests outside of the cult. People who join cults There are four different types of people who participate in cults. The first type of people are normal people who come from intact families and turn to cults at a moment of difficulty in there life. These people haven't had any other problems previously. The second group of people are people who had problems in there past in development and emotion. The third and smallest group of cult members are psychotic individuals. The fourth group of people feel as if they don't fit into society. Different cults Charles Manson was never close to his parents, for he never met his father and his mother was an alcoholic. This lead Manson through a confusing age. He was always getting in trouble with the law. After he got out of prison he began to experiment with the psychedelic drug LSD. In San Francisco he learned how to talk like a hippie and sounded very wise, to lost and confused young men and woman. He always looked for sad or disordered young women. As he found them he talked to them, and they quickly trusted him deeply. In a short time he had gathered up enough young women to be his slaves and do whatever he asked. This is were Charles Manson began his cult leadership. Manson told four of his followers to break into a wealthy home in Los Angeles and kill everyone in it. The followers armed with knives and guns obeyed there master and murdered five innocent people. The next night Manson lead six of his followers to the LaBianca house a rich couple lived together in. Manson tied the LaBianca's up and ordered three cult members to execute them. Now the Manson family fled to a remote part of Death Valley in Southern California. There the family stole cars and continued to take drugs. Eventually the Highway Patrol spotted the stolen cars outside and linked them to the murders. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Dating and Self Esteem.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Single adults partake of many activities to seek dates and find mates. Many use advertisements in local newspapers to attract possible candidates for a relationship. Others go to single's clubs and bars to find their potential soul mate. The type of activities people choose are dependent on the person's self-esteem and self-confidence. The information for this research was obtained from the article "Self Esteem of Persons Seeking Dates Via Bars, Singles Clubs, and Personal Advertisements." The article was written by Paul Yelsma and Paul L. Wienir. It appears in "Sociological Spectrum" for January - March 1996. The research method used in this article was a questionnaire. These questionnaires were sent to people who advertised in the local paper. Single's club participants were presented questionnaires and asked to complete them at one of the two clubs in the same geographic region. Those who attended bars were either contacted directly or given questionnaires. The questionnaires were completed by 152 subjects: 40 from ads; 62 attended singles clubs, and 50 frequented bars. (Yelsma and Weinir, p. 35) What effect does self esteem have in a person's decision on what type of method to use to find their possible companion? It is shown that people with lower self-esteems tend to choose personal advertisements, while people with higher self esteems tend to lean towards the bar scene. Others with a mediocre self-esteem seem to go towards the clubs scene. According to Josephs, Larrick, Steele, and Nisbett, (1992, p. 27) "The higher one's self esteem, the less one has to fear from threats to the self, and individuals with higher levels of self-esteem should be less affected by the threats to the self." This means that the higher ones self esteem is, the more they will not be afraid to show themselves in public. Those with the low self-esteems, will hide behind the words of a personal advertisement, while those with higher self-esteems will be open enough to attempt to meet people on a personal basis. One of the reasons people are reluctant to use personal ads are because of their odd beginnings. In the early days of personal ads, they were used by those seeking homosexual relationships, and for "immoral actions." However, since then, the have become much popular. People from all walks of life use personal ads to attract others with similar likes and dislikes. In a personal advertisement, the person making the ad gets the advantage of never actually meeting the person before first contact. This allows them to have a veil of secrecy around them. For those with low self-esteem, this allows them to hide in the words, only allowing the information they want to be released to possible dates. The person who reads the ad must then decide if they want to contact the other person solely based on a few words describing a stranger. In my opionion, the person replying to the ad must have immense willpower to go on a "blind date." Personal ads are not the only method being studied. People with a mediocre self-esteem tend to go to single's clubs. Single's clubs have one purpose: to give a location that single men and women can meet one another without the risk of hitting on someone who's already attached. Also, because it is a place for singles, and singles alone, a person doesn't risk as much rejection because the person they are attempting to attract is there for the same reason. Bar crowds are different. A bar is filled with several types of people. Some are there to find a date, some are there just to relax and get a few drinks, and some there are actually on dates. A person has to have a relatively good self-esteem to approach someone in a bar. When they approach someone, they are risking embarassment, and rejection on a higher level than either of the two previous methods used. If a person is not rejected however, it can be a major self-esteem booster, making the person feel much better about themselves. It also gives them a sence of accomplishment, that they actually did something for themselves. This boosts both self-esteem and self-confidence to an all time high. Self-esteem also used in the descision on how many methods a person uses. The article states that people with lower self esteems tend to use more than one method. This means that a person with low self-esteem will tend to use all three methods to find a date, while those with higher self-esteems will use only one. The choice in what method a person uses to find a date is directly related to the amount a self-esteem a person posseses. A person with low self esteem will lean towards the anonymity of personal advertisments, while those with higher self-esteems will use physical attraction, and seek a date in bars and clubs. Also, the number of methods used depends on self-esteem as well: the lower the self-esteem, the more methods they will use to find a suitable date. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Daves Sociology paper.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ David Donalson Dr. Michael D. Lucas SOC 1301: 501 Semester Project April 23, 2002 Adolescence: The Time of Learning and Loathing Adolescence. Defined by Macionis as the "buffer between childhood and adulthood." (Macionis 2001, 130). It is at this time that the adolescent is learning to act and think on their own without the help of his or her parents and trying to make the social situations that will allow them the popularity to survive and prosper through this adolescence. The problem with this time is that the adolescents are learning how to act and as such are willing to try anything in order to find their niche in society. In some instances, adolescents turn from the legal path and venture into alcohol and drugs. Other adolescents cannot stand the burden of the pressure and soon develop social phobias. And some others just fly through their adolescence without any such mistakes or burdens. How is it possible for there to be such a large distinction in the way adolescents grow up? Macionis had a theory that stated: "adolescence reflects cultural inconsistency." (Macionis 2001, 131). What this meant is that, while puberty is taking over the adolescents body and changing their physical chemistry, these adolescents are learning from their culture how to be a thriving people. The culture explains to them, through the adolescents peers and some parental help, what is the common way to act and what is to be acceptable behavior. This is, in part, what makes for the large distinction in the way adolescents grow up. The social background from which one grows up is reflective on how the adolescent takes to the new changes happening. General household income can, as Macionis puts it, extend adolescence for several more years after the initial change, lasting until the late twenties and even thirties. (Macionis 2001, 131). This extension in time for the adolescence period shows how fairly vague the idea of adolescence is when compared to the concrete ideas of childhood and adulthood. A common product of adolescence is a distinct personality of the new individual. This personality is a mold of the ideals of the common social culture mixed with various stressors and personality points of interest that, in the end, is someone usually different from the parents but with most of the same values. As Shanahan put it: "although adolescence as a state of semi autonomy between childhood and adulthood has long been part of the Western life course, it has nevertheless been highly responsive to social, political, economic, and cultural forces." (Shanahan 2000, 14). Thus pointing out how, during the adolescent period of life, many of our life roles are established and kept for the rest of the life of the individual. If one thinks back to their adolescence (unless such an individual is still in the adolescent period of their life), that individual will remember several instances culturally and economically that changed their naïve perspective away from the sheltered existence that those individual's parents had sheltered him or her with and into the "real" world This road of change is filled with personal choices, some good and some bad, in an attempt to establish the best course in life. Shanahan also wrote how that: "although many studies show that adolescence is not a period of sudden and pervasive distress, scientific journals devoted to adolescence are filled with contributions examining psychological disorder, substance abuse, anti social behavior, sexually transmitted disease, delinquency, troubles relationships with parents and poor academic performance." (Shanahan 2000, 14). Shanahan was attempting to establish the link behind risky behavior and adolescence. Due to the new feelings associated with adolescence, it is common for the adolescent to try out various behaviors, like some of those listed above. "Most of the behaviors considered risk-oriented are essentially developmental in nature; risk taking is a fact of life" (Michaud, Blum, & Ferron 1997). A concept not readily studied, the idea that adolescents go about on their deviant behavior as a complex ritual of risk taking provides a different perspective. Maybe the adolescents are not trying to destroy everything that the parents have established for them in an attempt to get back at them but instead are trying to establish the limits that they are safely able to cope with. An example of this could be alcohol. When was the first time an alcoholic beverage was consumed by the common individual? The answer varies from area to area and from culture to culture but in the Western culture, it is common for several alcoholic beverages to be consumed before those adolescents are of age to legally purchase and consume the alcohol. It is just one of the social standards that are set by our culture, almost a sort of rite of passage through one's adolescent period in order to appear more "adult-like". Alcohol is one of the largest adolescent behaviors commonly associated as wrong and yet is firmly establish in the Western culture. In a study done by Ronald A. Akers and Thomas R. Heffington, the number of High School Seniors who have had an alcoholic beverage at some point in their young life number around 81.7%. (Akers & Heffington 2000, 94). Alcohol consumption has become so socially ingrained into the common Western culture during adolescence that it is rapidly becoming a social norm for adolescents to drink. "In western society, alcohol use is of as much interest to young adolescents, the group whom the younger children often model" (Miller, Smith, & Goldman 1990, 348) and as such, consuming alcohol is becoming the social norm in today's western society. This is leading to increased difficulties in the child's life because of the differences in opinions being presented and of their options. Is it right for the adolescents to be told not to consume alcohol from their parents and the law, all the while the social norm being developed from their peers says that consuming alcohol is not only fine but one of the ways to "fit in" to the society? Many would state that the law should be followed but these individuals do not feel the needs of the adolescents to merge with society and, whether the politicians or the members of society who view under age consumption of alcohol as wrong believe they can change this ideology or not, there are still the 81.7% of high school seniors who did not believe in their philosophy and have consumed alcohol at least once. Akers and Heffington have made the statement that "both conforming and deviant alcohol behavior are explained sociologically as products of the general culture and the more immediate groups and social situations with which individuals are confronted." (Akers & Heffington 2000, 93) The adolescents partake in the consumption to fit in and, while in an inebriated state, they have some tendencies to be swayed into deviant behavior because it is what that individual's peers are expecting. Without the proper situation and the right people with which to enact this social "rite of passage", things can get out of hand. It is for this reason that the majority of the state governments have established a legal drinking age of 21. The problem with this limit is that: 1) the upper end (age wise: between the ages of 18-21) of the adolescents understand that they have the right to vote and to have their lives thrust into a war after the age of 18 while not being able to consume alcohol , 2) most of the adolescents believe that they are old enough to do as they wish and make the decisions to do whatever they want and that decision could be to drink and finally 3) adolescents view the dictates of the government as the same dictates of the parents and as such, view these as restraints that must be bent and broken in order to establish his or her own personality and sense of being. In the 1960s, there was a large controversy as to the validity of allowing 18 year old individuals to go to war while not allowing them to vote. The same can be said of today, although not in such a large scale. The teenage adolescents are revolting against the ways of their parents by consuming alcohol even though it is illegal. It is their own way of stating that they are free from the shackles of childhood and are calling forth to seek the equality that adulthood brings to the table. Also, it is an activity that gets a group of peers together in a social situation that adolescents look for in order to establish themselves among their peers. On point two, adults have to come to the understanding that, during adolescence, many of the adolescents have a false conception of adulthood that they have not truly experienced yet but still feel as though they can do anything that an adult could. This is another reason for the consumption of alcohol. The large amount of media exposure that is exposed to these growing adolescents establishes the idea that drinking is a direct link to sexual experiences and overall enjoyment with a group of peers. Because of the lack of experience in drinking, most adolescents try it out initially in order to try to obtain this media-driven perception of what alcohol will do to their social group. Finally, to reevaluate a point already brought up for point 3, teenage adolescents are attempting to dislocate themselves from their parents in a direct attempt to establish their own personal identity. In the Miller, Smith, and Goldman article, Shantz was expressed as saying that an "at this time, children shift away from an automatic acceptance of parental authority toward understand of obedience as voluntary and authority as a consensual relationship." (Miller, Smith, and Goldman 1990, 348 & Shantz 1975, 257-323). This proves how the adolescents are trying to make themselves a part of the society as adults because they do not seek the understanding of the parents but are instead searching for the answers themselves. That is not to say that the strain put upon the adolescents from trying risky behaviors do not have an adverse affect. A common problem that affects the adolescents in their attempts to fit in is social phobia. Social phobia, as described by Simonian, Beidel, Turner, Berkes and Long in their social phobia articles, states that it is "defined as an unreasonable fear of doing or saying something embarrassing or humiliating in front of others." (Simonian, Beidel, Turner, Berkes, and Long 2001, 137-138) The reason that social phobia is such a problem among adolescents is that this is the period in their life where, though they may try just about anything, it is all done in the attempt to connect with his or her peers. The fear of embarrassing oneself among those who the individual is trying to impress inevitably leads to anxiety on the part of the adolescent individual. One of the major reasons why adolescents experience such social phobia is through the pushing for success from adults, such as family members and teachers in school. In Velting and Albano's article, they discussed how by adolescence, children have been and are "regularly required to negotiate social evaluative tasks, including answering questions in class, giving oral reports, working or playing in group, taking tests, and performing musically and athletically." (Velting and Albano 2001, 128) These sort of activities commonly exercised in the classroom only increase the anxiety of adolescents due to the competition that ensues from the required tasks presented to the children in school. Competition, while being a common activity in which all people participate in, creates a winner-loser environment that creates anxiety for both the winner and the loser. The winner and loser in these situations both have anxiety before the decision of winner is announced. Then, the winner soon feels the burden of anxiety due to the expectation of the next competition and the need to repeat as winner while the loser obviously feels the anxiety of losing the competition and of the effect it will have on his interactions with his peers. In order to fight off the effects of social phobia, adolescents usually develop some defenses as well as reverting to some childhood defenses. As Araujo, Ryst, and Steiner's study suggests, an "increasing body of evidence support[s] the validity of the defense construct in the adolescent age group." (Araujo, Ryst, and Steiner 1999, 27) These adolescents are trying to cope with all of the new feelings that they are experiencing and when their social phobia is active, they have to cope with it in one way or another and that is through these defenses. Much can be said of a person's use of defenses in a social situation. Some defenses are where the individual assumes a submissive role and accepts whatever anxiety is sent their way. Others use defenses such as projection suggest a more aggressive viewpoint on the anxiety and the source of that anxiety. As Araujo, Ryst and Steiner expressed in their study of adolescent females defenses, "each of these defenses is aimed at containing anxiety and distress while maintaining overtly placid interpersonal relationships. Nevertheless, the high dependence on projection may indicate that beneath the placid surface the adolescent is in a turmoil of suspicion and vigilance." (Araujo, Ryst and Steiner 1999, 25) This expresses the desire of the adolescents to be "placid" in order to avoid the embarrassment put on by other and the potential backlash that may come from lashing out, but it does not still get rid of the desire to find the truth and reactions that are brought forward from the source of the anxiety. That sort of anxiety from social phobia and the expectations of other helps to develop who the adolescent will become personality-wise in the social world. Defenses are a commonly seen aspect of one's personality and are key to interpreting stress. While not all of one's personality traits directly come from stress management, a study done by Halloran, Ross and Carey reported that "one's personality not only contributes to how stress is managed but also may contribute to the amount of stress encountered on a daily basis." (Halloran, Ross, and Carey 2002, 201) Thus, stress and social phobias do have an impact on how you act. As expressed by the Halloran report above, "an adolescent with self-confidence and good social support would be more able to cope effectively with stressors that may precipitate symptoms of depression and anxiety." (Halloran, Ross, and Carey 2002, 211) While appearing obvious, it is important to establish this distinction because self-confident adolescents still suffer from anxiety, even though it may appear as though they are not to their peers. This means that the low-self-confidence adolescents are in a situation where they view other high-self-confidence adolescents handling their own anxieties and social phobias, creating even more anxiety. This, in turn, leads to a more depressive attitude in the adolescents that will stay with them throughout their adulthood. Social phobia, along with the other problems expressed earlier, create several problems for the adolescent. Part of the problem is that "parents are typically no longer responsible for arranging social interactions for their children; thus, the initiation of opportunities for socializing, including dating, is added to the daily tasks of young adolescents. These demands, in combination with the cognitive advancements in perspective taking and self-awareness accomplished by early adolescence, set the stage for the emergence of social anxiety." (Velting and Albano 2001, 128) Thus, the adolescent is put in the situation he or she has looked forward to but is unprepared for, their own free choice to do what they want. The social anxiety comes from the lack of foreknowledge about what will happen in the choices they make. For example, if one individual chooses to have sex with another for the first time, they are in a situation that they have only heard of but do not know how to react to it. Thus, the idea of performance in the sexual experience is in question, to use a condom or other form of birth control, and the location of the act are all stressors on the adolescent individual. This stress soon builds up and the adolescent individual soon does not know what to do. Another problem with social phobia is that the adolescents are learning the use of expression in all shapes and forms and as such are fearful in many situations. A study done by the Simonian and company group actually established that "children with social phobia... had significantly poorer facial affect recognition skills than normal controls and reported greater anxiety upon completion of the recognition task." (Simonian, Beidel, Turner, Berkes, and Long 2001, 143-44) They proved this by using fifteen children with social phobia as the test group and 14 children with no disorders as a control group. In the study, they showed pictures of human faces representing various emotional states and it was proven that the social phobia individuals had the tougher time establishing an emotional state through facial representation. The "deficits were most pronounced for facial representations of happiness, sadness, and disgust" (Simonian, Beidel, Turner, Berkes, and Long 2001, 143) and as such would make it hard for them to interpret the true feelings of their fellow peers, thus leading to an increase in anxiety. It was even proved that "children in the social phobic group evidenced significantly higher post-task versus pre-task anxiety ratings." (Simonian, Beidel, Turner, Berkes, and Long 2001, 143) Thus, even the testing process was a source of anxiety for the adolescents. These poor socially phobic individuals thus will have anxiety throughout their life because of their inability to cope with the levels of anxiety being flung their way by overbearing adults. In conclusion, adolescence will be the most difficult time during an individuals life. This is the time with which the individual will try new experiences formerly left out of their life, such as sex and alcohol, while experiencing new levels of anxiety caused by the stress of fitting in to the society and keeping the positions that the individual obtains in their search for their niche in society. The problem with this is that there are many adults out there that would label the experimentation as both risky and, to some of the experimentation, obscene. These adults should learn to understand that it is not the adolescent who needs to learn their place in society, which is exactly what the adolescent is trying to do, but to instead "try to understand, on an individual level, the role, the meaning,[and] the motives... of the teenager" (Michaud, Blum, and Ferron 1997) When the adults would be able to do this, they may be able to help the adolescent in the sudden change from childhood to adulthood instead of hindering the process. The suggestion presented does not say that the parent should go get the adolescent drunk as a way to guide them through their rite of passage, but to instead be more understanding to the feelings of the adolescent. Sometimes the best way to help the situation is to accept it and talk to the adolescent instead of the standard yelling and punishing of that adolescent. As stated earlier, a child with a supportive social group has the better chance of coping with the affects of anxiety (Halloran, Ross, and Carey 2002, 211) and it is also proven that "observations made of adolescents and young adults treated for alcohol- and drug-related problems suggest a large proportion come from dysfunctional familial environments." (Pandina and Johnson 1990, 278) Therefore, the greatest help for a growing adolescent is an open family and the understanding that whatever happens, to learn and grow from that experience and to not let it get the best of him or her. Works Cited Pierre-André Michaud, MD; Robert Wm. Blum, MD, PhD; Christine Ferron, PhD. 1997. "Bet You I Will!": Risk or Experimental Behavior During Adolescence?. http://www.familyreunion.org/health/blum/commentary.html Macionis, John J. 2001. Sociology. 8th ed. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall Inc. Shanahan, Michael J. 2000. Encyclopedia of Sociology. 2nd ed. Vol. 1. eds. Edgar Borgatta & Rhonda J.V. Montgomery. New York: Macmillan Reference USA. Akers, Ronald A. & Thomas R. Heffington. 2000. . Encyclopedia of Sociology. 2nd ed. Vol. 1. eds. Edgar Borgatta & Rhonda J.V. Montgomery. New York: Macmillan Reference USA. Pandina, R. J. and V. Johnson. 1990. Journal of Studies on Alcohol. "Serious Alcohol and Drug Problems among Adolescents with a family History of Alcoholism." Vol. 51. Velting, Olivia N. and Anne Marie Albano. 2001. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and Allied Disciplines. "Current Trends in the Understanding and Treatment of Social Phobia in Youth." Vol. 42 #1. London: Cambridge University Press. Araujo, Katy, MS; Erika Ryst, BA; Dr. med univ. Hans Steiner. Fall 1999. Journal of Child Psychiatry & Human Development. "Adolescent Defense Style and Life Stressors." Vol. 30 #1. Halloran, Elizabeth C., Ph.D.; Gloria S. Ross, Ph.D.; and Michael P. Carey, Ph.D. Spring 2002. Journal of Child Psychiatry & Human Development. "Relationship of Adolescent Personality and Family Environment to Psychiatric Diagnosis." Vol. 32 #3. Simonian, Susan J., Ph.D.; Deborah C. Beidel, Ph.D.; Samuel M. Turner, Ph.D.; Jennifer L. Berkes, BA and Jonathan H. Long, BA. Winter 2001. Journal of Child Psychiatry & Human Development. "Recognition of Facial Affect by Children and Adolescents Diagnosed with Social Phobia." Vol. 32 #2. Miller, Paris M., Ph.D.; Smith, Gregory T., Ph.D.; and Goldman, Mark S., Ph.D. 1990. Journal of Studies on Alcohol. "Emergence of Alcohol Expectancies in Childhood: A Possible Critical Period." Vol. 51. (As used in reference to the Miller article): Shantz, C. U. 1975. "The Development of Social Cognition." Hetherington, EM (ed). Review of Child Development theory and research. Vol. 5. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 10 Donalson f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Debate on Surrogate Motherhoor For side.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The practice of bearing a child on behalf of another woman. This is surrogate motherhood. Is it considered immoral? By some, yes. In some countries it is banned-and in others it is promoted or up for consideration. In recent days, the issue of "right and wrong" has surfaced in the midst of this argument, sharing different meanings to the opposing sides. To some, it is right only for the woman who brings forth life to raise the child; for it is deemed that she is the only one fit to be the child's mother. Clearly, we must indeed recognize this side of the argument. But to those with that viewpoint, that is the end of the argument. They do not see any reason for the issue to be continued further; rather, to end the debate and declare anyone who disagrees to lack morals or values. But have those who preach this anti-surrogate moralism ever experienced what it would be like to be those on the other side of this issue? Suppose, for a moment, that they were the ones who were incapable of having children. Would they condemn themselves the way that they condemn others if they were in another predicament? It is surely easy to say what one would do in any situation, but one can never know exactly what they would do until that situation comes. How many of you have ever held a small child in your arms and looked into its small eyes and felt the love that you had for it. Perhaps it was a younger sibling, perhaps even a child of your own. You know how much that you love that little one. And of course, you all know how much the child's mother loves it. What must it be like, I ask you, to be a mother or a father and know that you will never have a son or a daughter to hold and call your own? Knowing that you will never be able to raise a child and love it must be a terrible nightmare for any caring and decent person who wishes to have a child. What is wrong then, with having a woman give birth to a child that she cannot care for and give it to a wanting mother and father who cannot have a child of their own. What difference is it between surrogate-motherhood and adoption? There is none. Adoption is legal, and is highly respected among people from many walks of life. Pro-choice and Pro-life supporters herald adoption as a way of taking care of children in need. Why then, should anyone who supports adoption attack another option for a mother that is the same? Surrogate motherhood provides good and decent parents who cannot otherwise have children the opportunity of loving and raising a child and giving it a kind and loving home. Imagine being a woman who has been told that you are no longer capable of having a child-you know that surrogate motherhood is the only way in which you will ever have a child. I ask, What right do any of us have to deny a woman who cannot have a child the right to receive a child to raise and call her own. I ask, What right to any of us have to deny a man the opportunity to be a father and to raise his son or his daughter. We have no right to deny parents the opportunity to have children! Consider all of the children in orphanages who are alone and feel unloved. What right do we have to deny them of loving parents? And how is it possible that we can allow child-molesters and abusive parents to bear and raise children and deny good unfortunate couples the right to raise a child. Such an idea is ludicrous and insane! All that we need to do is reason a little to understand that surrogate-motherhood is a perfect way for men and women to raise and love children that it is otherwise impossible for them to have. We have adoption, which is very similar to surrogate motherhood. We have grandparents and aunts and uncles who raise children. Why on earth can't we allow good and decent people the opportunity to raise and love children as well? It is all perfectly legitimate and decent to allow people to parent and love a child, and who can argue that raising and loving a child is wrong? Thank-you for hearing the voice of compassion and reason. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Decay of Moral Values.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Family Unity and Moral Values The increase in the number of divorces and the decrease in the number of marriages does not reflect a breakdown of the family unit in the United States and the decay of moral values. "I don't think divorce is as big of problem as politicians make it out to be. Yes, many couples get divorced, but their children can still have stability and grow up to be good people." (Price) The breakdown of the family unit in the United States and the decay of moral values are due to the change of society and environment. These days, when many families are at home together, they often remain apart. There are no bondage and communication in families. Television and technology has corrupted the minds of children in America. Less religious influence, persistent underclass unemployment and alternative lifestyles have contributed in the downfall of families and moral values. The nation and state have done little or nothing to provide help rebuild families and values. Family value has reference to what we believe about the family. It's concerned with quality of living and how you define quality of living. It basically gets down to what you think is the most important, in other words what you value. "Family values is nice when you've got Ward and June and Wally and Beaver. Unfortunately, the world has changed quite a bit from the 1950s to 1996. Things have just changed so rapidly and so quick..." (Anderson) The honesty, setting examples with your morals and actions, and bringing up the people to be responsible. Responsible for themselves, responsible for ecology, responsible for humanity qualities have been neglect in the upbringing of children today. Many people believe that true family values are the stepping stones for families to achieve growth of love. They follow seven principles. 1.Make a commitment to your family and hometown. 2.Live for the greater whole. 3.Learn true love in the school of the family. 4.Dedicate your own family to the global family of humankind. 5.Strive daily to put the spiritual above the physical. 6.Align with heaven to share blessings on earth. 7.Be sexually pure to create the true culture. (Bales) But every family has its own values and few of them are exactly alike. The variations are endless, and there is no single ideal standard that all families can or should exist. Because society has changed, moral has changed and people can not follow the morals of the past. Both parents assisting in the household income is new in today's society compared to the past. Where the only the man of the house worked and the women would stay home and take care of the children. Today's society require a family to have two income to survive, one income does not provide a stable life style anymore. The issue of homosexuality and diversity have surfaced, and moral values have changed. Families are lost in the dream world of their TV sets and video games. Children are learning values and issues from TV and not from their own parents. The children do not learn how to communicate with their parents, and will not learn to communicate with their mate later in life. Their marriage will end up in divorce and their children will follow the same cycle as they did. The evolving "information superhighway" will make it even easier for individuals to lose themselves in non-real worlds at the expense of their very real families. People should value their families higher than their fantasies. "If parents could be adult about it by cooperating in their child raising, speaking well of each other, and supporting each others' decisions whether both parents are in the home or not, then less stress would be put on the innocent parties, who are often the parents as well as the children. Will benefit the children as well as themselves... But that's not the kind of world we live in, and we point fingers and waste time, money and energy trying to fix blame." (Price) Base on the book "The Case Against Divorce" by Diane Medved an important issue was raised. The issue of religion in today's society. People are less religious and the amount of time spent in church has declined in past years. This tells us the people are not learning knowledge and wisdom from the church but from somewhere else. That people do not believe that the true solutions to get the family in the right track are spiritual and moral. "Would you rather be surrounded by a million people who were very religious, or would you rather be surrounded by a million people who were not very religious? I think we would rather be surrounded by those who are religious, because we would feel more safe..." (Carter) "I think religion has wonderful things to offer. It makes you stop and think about whether what we are doing is right or wrong, as opposed to secular law, which makes you wonder whether what you are doing is going to get you arrested or not." (Carter) "To Jews, the point of your existence on Earth is to help improve the world. This creation is unfinished, a team effort between humans and God. We have the basic raw matter, and we are given free will, and our job is to make this place beautiful." (Carter) Politicians love to rhapsodize about the virtues of traditional families, religious principles and personal integrity. Yet the truth is these high-minded, abstract ideals are conspicuously missing in may of their personal lives. It is common wisdom now among both parties that forcing mothers off welfare into the job market will counter the breakdown of the inner-city family by instilling the work ethic and responsibility. But what will this do for family values if there is no welfare for food and no available work for the uneducated and the untrained? "Our nation, states and communities should spend more of their time making it easier and more attractive for people to connect on a personal, face-to-face level and for families to re-learn the pleasures of sharing productive activities rather than helping lock us each into a technological cocoon." (Medved) The increase in the number of divorces and the decrease in the number of marriages does not reflect a breakdown of the family unit in the United States and the decay of moral values. "I don't think divorce is as big of problem as politicians make it out to be. Yes, many couples get divorced, but their children can still have stability and grow up to be good people." (Price) The breakdown of the family unit in the United States and the decay of moral values are due to the change of society and environment. These days, when many families are at home together, they often remain apart. There are no bondage and communication in families. Television and technology has corrupted the minds of children in America. Less religious influence, persistent underclass unemployment and alternative lifestyles have contributed in the downfall of families and moral values. The nation and state have done little or nothing to provide help rebuild families and values. The only solution is to connect, communicate and establish bondage in the family. Try to spend more time and energy with families will greatly improve family unity and moral values. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Definition og Interpersonal Communication.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Interpersonal communication is defined by Michael Cody as: the exchange of symbols used to achieve interpersonal goals(28). Does this definition include everything, or does it only include certain things?. When we are dealing with the issue of interpersonal communication we must realize that people view it differently. In this paper I will develop my own idea or definition of what interpersonal communication is. I will then proceed to identify any important assumptions or issues that become important in the definition that I choose. Finally, I will provide examples of communicative and non- communicative events based on my definition. Interpersonal communication, in my opinion, is the exchange of information verbal or non-verbal between two, no more than 5 or 6, people for the purpose of getting a feedback and sharing information. Interpersonal communication is not interpersonal if it involves too many people. When the number of people exceeds a certain amount it is no longer interpersonal communication,it then becomes mass communication. In my definition it is vital that feed- back be given to the person that is doing the communicating. When feedback is not present then the lines of communication break down and then there is no communication at all. Even if the message is perceived wrong interpersonal communication still exists as long as the feedback is given. For example: when you talk to someone that is hard of hearing and you ask them to do something and they hear you say something other than what you said there is still interpersonal communication, although it is miscommunication. If the person, however, does not here the speaker at all and does not give any feedback, then interpersonal communication has not been established according to my definition. Another important dimension to my definition is that the information is exchanged in order to share the information. When the information that is exchanged is not used to share the information, then interpersonal communication has not taken place. If you speak in a way in which the person does not feel receptive to what you are saying then you have not achieved interpersonal communication. When a boss yells at his employees, or a teacher yells at his or her students then interpersonal communication has not taken place. True communication has taken place, but it was not interpersonal communication. The information is not being shared it is being forced upon people. The information has to be shared such as when a friend tells another friend about a problem that he or she is having or when a child talks to his or her parents about something personal. That information is being shared by two people in order to illicit a feedback. There are many important issues that become important when discussing my definition of interpersonal communication. One primary assumption is that communication must be carried on by people that are alive. Michael Cody uses an assumption like this when he is discussing his definition of interpersonal communication. Codys' assumption says that interpersonal communication occurs between people who are in a state of being. His state of being is different form mine in that I mainly imply that the person must be alive in order to establish interpersonal communication. In Cody' assumption his state of being is three pronged including, 1) people change, 2) people are searching for meaning for development and 3) it implies that communication can never be replicated (Cody 30). When Cody talks about "being " he is going into more detail than I would. As stated earlier my state of being means just being alive. Another important issue that needs to be brought up when discussing my definition of interpersonal communication is the issue of the number of people. When dealing with the issue of interpersonal communication the amount of people being communicated with is of utmost importance. Can a preacher have interpersonal communication with his congregation on Sunday morning?. According to my definition he cannot. Interpersonal communication must be done when there is a certain amount of people. You cannot have one person and have interpersonal communication, likewise, you cannot have a hundred people and have interpersonal communication either. Interpersonal communication must be done when at least two people are present. In order for the communication to stay effective you cannot have more than six people. The reason for the limitation is that when too many people get involved it becomes harder to bring forth the message that you want to send. As I stated earlier if the message is not sent and shared then interpersonal communication has not taken place. Finally, I would like to discuss some examples of communicative and non-communicative events based on the definition that I have given. An example of a communicative event that would use my definition would be as follows: When two people are talking they are speaking to each other in order to change information. For example: When you walk the street and you see someone you know you speak and you ask " how was your day". The point when you asked how the persons day was you initiated the process of interpersonal communication. The person will respond, and the information that the person shares with you completes the process of interpersonal communication. An example of non- verbal communication using my definition is somewhat more difficult. When you are sitting at restaurant and you a start playing foot tag with your date you are sending a non-verbal form of interpersonal communication. The first contact of the foot is the initiation of the communication. When the person responds, favorably or unfavorably, non-verbal interpersonal communication has taken place. In conclusion I would like to say that developing a definition for interpersonal communication is no easy task. Because interpersonal communication is such a vague topic it makes it that more difficult. With much effort and practice we can develop a universal definition for interpersonal communication. Interpersonal communication, in my opinion, is the exchange of information verbal or non-verbal between two, no more than 5 or 6, people for the purpose of getting a feedback and sharing information. I have explained my reasons for choosing this definition and I have also given information and example that will support it. My definition is by no means exhaustive, but I think it is a start to developing a universally excepted definition for the term interpersonal communication. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Demographic Comparison.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Introducci*? Portugal y Afganist? son pa?es que se diferencian en varios aspectos demogr?icos, principalmente en la densidad de poblaci*? las tasas de natalidad y mortalidad, la geograf? y la tasa de crecimiento entre otros. Este trabajo tiene como objetivo comparar a Portugal y Afganist? en todos sus aspectos demogr?icos. Estos dos pa?es son muy importantes para mi porque quiero aprender m? sobre pa?es en Asia y pa?es Europeos. Dos a)? atr? yo fui a Europa y me di cuenta que era muy diferente que Chile. El a)?pasado fui a algunos pa?es asi?icos y tambi? note una gran diferencia entre los pa?es asi?icos y los pa?es europeos, entonces quise aprender m? sobre ellos. Tuve problemas buscando por informaci*?sobre las migraciones y algunas otras estad?ticas pero pude arregl?melas con la mayor? de ellas. Ubicaci*? Portugal esta situado en la zona oeste de Europa, bordeando el Oc?no Atl?tico. Portugal esta al extremo de Europa bordeado por Espa)? ocupando la parte mas occidental de Europa, la pen?sula Ib?ica. La capital de Portugal es Lisboa, una ciudad con grandes avances tecnol*?cos y de mucha atracci*?tur?tica. El ?ea de Portugal es de 92.389 kil*?tros cuadrados. Los principales r?s fluyen desde Espa)?y solo el Mi)?y el Guadiana son navegables entre los dos pa?es. Los principales r?s portugueses son: Mondego, Vouga, Sado y Zezere. Portugal tiene inviernos h-?dos y veranos muy secos los cuales tienen temperaturas que var?n de -1 grados celsio a 40 grados celsio. La precipitaci*?promedio anual varia desde 686 mm a 1.151 mm. Afganist?, por el otro lado, no tiene costas mar?imas. Los pa?es que bordean a Afganist? son: Turkmenist?, Ir?, Pakist?, Uzbekist?, Tayikist? y China. Afganist? esta dividida en 29 provincias. Aunque el pa? este situado en una zona subtropical, la altitud condiciona su clima. En invierno es muy fr?, y en verano es muy caliente. Afganist? tiene temperaturas que var?n desde -21 grados celsio hasta 40 grados celsio, que llegan a ser mucho mas bajas que en Portugal por la altura en la que se encuentra este pa?. Afganist? ocupa un ?ea de 652.009 kil*?tros cuadrados. Poblaci*? La poblaci*?de Portugal es de 9.830.000 personas en un ?ea de 92.389 kil*?tros cuadrados. Con estos datos podemos calcular que la densidad de Portugal es de 106,4 habitantes por kilometro cuadrado. Portugal tiene 1793 kil*?tros de costa. La poblaci*? Portuguesa se encuentra, mayoritariamente en las zonas rurales del pa?, con el 63,60% de la poblaci*?viviendo en el campo, y s*? un 36,40% habitando las zonas urbanas. La ciudad mas poblada de Portugal es Lisboa, con 830,500 habitantes. Portugal tiene una alta poblaci*?rural debido a los grandes valles y sierras. Afganist? tiene una poblaci*?de 18.879.000 habitantes. El ?ea de Afganist? es de 652.009 kil*?tros cuadrados lo cual da una densidad de poblaci*?de 29 habitantes por kilometro cuadrado. 20% de la poblaci*?Afgana vive en zonas urbanas lo que deja un 80% de la poblaci*?viviendo en zonas rurales, en el campo. Esto puede indicar que Afganist? no es un pa? muy industrializado ni desarrollado. Afganist? no tiene la tecnolog? ni las fuentes econ*?cas para poder llegar a ser un pa? desarrollado. Los excelentes terrenos para la cr? de ganado y los peque)? valles f?tiles que est? situadas en el centro del pa?, les da a ese 80% de habitantes un trabajo para ganarse la vida. La mayor? de la poblaci*?trabaja en agricultura o cr? de ganado. Crecimiento Portugal tiene un crecimiento de 0,0% al a)? Las cifras de natalidad y mortalidad de este pa? demuestran la cifra de crecimiento. La tasa de natalidad en Portugal es de 12,0 ni)? nacidos por cada mil habitantes al a)?lo cual no es una cifra muy alta. La tasa de mortalidad es de 11,0 personas al a)? por cada mil habitantes. La mortalidad infantil llega a la baja cifra de 10,0 ni)? al a)?lo cual es muy bajo, pero comparado con la cantidad de ni)? que nacen en este pa?, se puede ver el contraste. La baja tasa de natalidad, mortalidad y mortalidad infantil demuestran que Portugal es un pa? desarrollado o que esta muy cerca de serlo. La salud y la educaci*?en Portugal son bastante buenas. Esto se debe a que hay muchos m?icos que ayudan a los habitantes de Portugal. En Portugal hay 1 por cada 388 habitantes lo cual es una cifra bastante alta comparada con la de Afganist?. Afganist? tiene un crecimiento poblacional de 6,7% anuales. Comparado con Portugal, Afganist? tiene un crecimiento poblacional mas alto lo cual indica que no es un pa? muy desarrollado ni de grandes avances tecnol*?cos. La natalidad de este pa? asi?ico es de 44,0 ni)? nacidos por cada mil al a)? La mortalidad, por otro lado, es de 20,0 muertos por cada 1000 habitantes al a)? Estas cifras indican que mueren la mitad de personas que nacen lo cual incrementa la poblaci*?en grande. La mortalidad infantil en Afganist? es de 164,0 ni)? por cada mil. Esto indica que los m?icos en Afganist? no ayudan mucho y no hay suficientes para cada madre embarazada. Casi el 20% de los ni)? que nacen, mueren, lo cual es una cifra muy alta. La explicaci*?m? obvia de lo que se vive en Afganist?, en t?minos de tasa de natalidad y mortalidad es el alto nivel de subdesarrollo que existe en esas tierras. Debido a eso, la salud y educaci*?son mediocres, y la lejan? de centros urbanos del 80% de la poblaci*?no mejora mucho las cosas. A causa de esto, las posibilidades de morir ante una enfermedad son mayores. En Afganist? hay s*? 1 m?ico por cada 4.797 habitantes, lo cual es una cifra demasiado baja y reduce la esperanza de vida. De igual forma influye la educaci*? donde se puede ense)? a la gente como prevenir enfermedades y como actuar en el caso de que ocurra una. Calidad de Vida La calidad de vida en Portugal es bastante buena. La esperanza de vida en Portugal puede ser una de las razones fundamentales de su buena calidad de vida. La esperanza de vida es de 75 a)? lo cual es una cifra bastante alta para. Esto demuestra que Portugal es un pa? desarrollado que tiene los avances tecnol*?cos y las buenas cosechas para alimentarse bien y poder vivir a tan alta edad. El alfabetismo de Portugal es de 86,8% que es bastante alto. Esta cifra demuestra que solo el 13,2% de los habitantes no saben leer ni escribir. Una prueba de que Portugal tiene aspectos desarrollados es la alimentaci*? Los habitantes de Portugal reciben 3,342 calor?s per capita diarias y US$9.130 anuales. Estas cifras son bastante altas comparadas con otros pa?es. Portugal es un pa? Europeo que recibe buena alimentaci*?y buen sueldo. Afganist? es un pa? que no tiene una buena calidad de vida. Es una pa? subdesarrollado que no tiene las comodidades que un pa? Europeo pueda tener. La esperanza de vida en Afganist? es de 44/hombres y 43/mujeres. Esta es una cifra muy extra)?porque normalmente las mujeres tendr?n que vivir mas que los hombres, por el esfuerzo que los hombres hacen al trabajar en los campos. En Afganist? las mujeres hacen varios trabajos muy duros lo cual le causan desgastes f?icos muy altos. La educaci*?y la salud en Afganist? no es muy buena por los pocos colegios que hay y los pocos m?icos. Las altas tasas de natalidad y mortalidad indican que nacen muchas personas en Afganist? para poder tener una buena vida, contando que Afganist? no tiene los suficientes recursos para proveer a todos ellos con comida y educaci*? El alto porcentaje de poblaci*?rural, 80%, no ayuda mucho en la industrializaci*? de este pa?. Otro aspecto de la baja calidad de vida en Afganist? es el sueldo que ganan. Los Afganos ganan alrededor de US$200 d*?res anuales lo cual es una cifra muy baja. Las altas poblaciones lo cual llevan a grandes familias, no pueden vivir con solo US$200 d*?res anuales. El 80% de la poblaci*?que vive en zonas rurales se pueden auto alimentar lo cual da una gran apoyo en la alimentaci*?Afgana. Los habitantes Afganos consumen alrededor de 1.764 calor?s per capita diarias lo cual es muy baja, y menor que la cifra recomendada por especialistas que es de 2000 calor?s per capita diarias. Los habitantes de Afganist? ganan muy poco dinero. Ese dinero lo deben obtener por lo que venden de sus cosechas. Otro factor que influye en forma determinante en el subdesarrollo de Afganistanes la deficiente educaci*? En Afganist? la concentraci*?de habitantes esta en las zonas rurales lo cual indica una cifra de muy baja educaci*? El alfabetismo en Afganist? de 29,4% demuestra que la educaci*?es muy baja. Esta cifra indica que el 70,6% de los habitantes de Afganist? no saben leer ni escribir. Conclusi*? Este trabajo tuvo como objetivo comparar a dos pa?es totalmente opuestos. Uno de ellos, Afganist?, era un pa? con muy pocos recursos y era subdesarrollado. El otro era Portugal, un pa? bastante desarrollado y con muchos recursos econ*?cos, industriales y sociales. Encontr?muchas diferencias lo cual me ayudaron a entender las diferentes vidas que hay en ambos pa?es. Tambi? me di cuenta que estos dos pa?es ten?n costumbres totalmente diferentes y que la tecnolog? e industrializaci*?en un pa? son cosas muy importantes. Yo note que este trabajo era bastante corto comparado con los otros trabajos, pero me di cuenta que realmente aprend?bastante, lo cual en mi punto de vista, es realmente lo que me servir?en el futuro. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Deng Xiaoping.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ China has a long history with several great leaders, but none of those leaders have even come close to being as great as Deng Xiaoping. Deng Xiaoping was a loyal communist who sacrificed his own life so his people could have a better one. During his long political career, he served as a Communist politcommissar of the 129th Division (Liu-Deng Army) from 1929 to 1949. As politcommissar, he bravely and successfully fought the Nationalists. In 1945, he was elected to the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. He became a member of the Politburo in 1955 and ever since that year, he has been an invaluable member of the party. Depending on your personality or view, you may come to conclude that Deng Xiaoping was a force for evil and that he was responsible for taking away the freedom of millions of Chinese citizens. Some people may even conclude that Deng Xiaoping was a "power-hungry" dictator who would do anything to obtain power. I have concluded differently. I believe that Deng Xiaoping was a force of good. He has devoted his entire life to helping his country, China. Before the Communist began to revolt, the Nationalists were doing a poor job of running the country and did not keep their promise for land reform. Deng Xiaoping believed that a Communist government would do a better job of running the country. During the Nationalist- Communist Civil War, Deng greatly influenced the outcome in favor of the Communists by using effective military strategy. Deng Xiaoping was appointed Politcommissar of the 129th Division of the Eighth Route Army (the Liu-Deng Army) from 1938 to 1947. He employed several campaigns against the Nationalists in which he inflicted severe damage. One campaign was when he led his army in the battle of Huaihai, which put 550,000 men of the Kuomintang troops out of action. Afterwards, he led his army across the Yangtze and liberated Nanjing, the capital of the Kuomintang government. Then his army liberated the entire southwest of the country. In October 1, 1949, China became a Communist nation. Without Deng Xiaoping's tremendous performance during the war, the Nationalists probably would have easily won. Because of Deng Xiaoping, the people of the nation were finally able to begin to modernize and enjoy a higher standard of living. From the day China became a Communist nation, to 1976 when Deng Xiaoping's superior, Mao Tse-tung dies, Deng Xiaoping did several things that greatly influence China. However, most of what happens to China during that period should be credited to Mao Tse-tung because he decided what policies to use and not to use. This however does not mean that Mao made good decisions. Several times during the 1960s and 1970s, Deng Xiaoping and Mao Tse-tung started to disagree on how to run the country. The reason is that Mao Tse-tung started to become interested only in maintaining his own power. However, Deng Xiaoping, truly cared about the welfare of the people in his country. The first disagreement between Deng Xiaoping and Mao Tse-tung occurred in 1962. Mao proposed a plan called, "The Ten Points." This agricultural plan was an extension of the commune system. It disregarded the negative experiences the people had at the communes. The main purpose of this plan was to keep all the people in the same class. Deng Xiaoping and his supporters within the party disagreed with this plan. Therefore, they proposed an alternative plan called, "The Ten Further Points." This plan gave the peasants more freedom to grow crops and more freedom in politics. Mao did not like this and began to feel paranoid. He believed everyone in the party was against him. As a result, he launched the Cultural Revolution that led to the downfall of several Chinese leaders including Deng Xiaoping. Deng Xiaoping eventually rose back to power (he had two more downfalls but regained power both times too). He never really opposed Mao again until his death in 1976. After Mao's death, Deng Xiaoping finally stepped out of Mao's shadow and attempted to reverse the country's "backwardness." In April 1976, four months before Mao's death, the Gang of Four led by Mao's wife, Jiang Qing, a powerful member of the Politburo caused the third downfall of Deng Xiaoping. Deng Xiaoping was forced to hide with old comrades from the Nationalist-Communist Civil War. He persuaded an old marshal, Li Xiannian, to join his side to fight against Jiang Qing. Deng Xiaoping also got the support of military leaders of northern and southern China. With all this support, he convinced Hua Guofeng, the premier of China, to arrest the Gang of Four. On October 6, an armed force unit arrested Jiang Qing in her home. The other three members were summoned to a nighttime emergency session at the Peoples' Congress Hall. The three came with the least bit of suspicion. When they entered through the door of the building, the trap was sprung and they were all arrested. By ridding China of radicals who could have easily harmed the lives of the Chinese people, he once again saved millions from unwanted suffering. Deng Xiaoping finally controlled the nation as he desired. Although the general secretary is supposed to be China's most powerful official and Deng Xiaoping only occupied the position of Second Deputy Party Chairman (later the position of Chairman of the Military Commission), he was the one with all the power. In late December 1978, the "Deng Era" began. During the "Deng Era," Deng Xiaoping proved thoroughly that he was a force of good by spending the remainder of his career reforming China for the better. One of the first things Deng Xiaoping did for the country was to make Mao less "Godlike." To make Mao less "Godlike," he convinced the people that Mao did make mistakes while he was in power. Deng Xiaoping told the people that Mao's greatest mistakes were the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward Policy. After Mao was made less "godlike," it became easier to reform China. From the late 1950s to 1979, the economy of China was at a standstill. The living standard of the Chinese citizens was not improving and becoming worse. Industry was producing at only fifty percent. The first policy Deng Xiaoping reformed was the land policy. In 1979, he eliminated communes and began to give greater independence to the 800 million peasants. He leased the land to the peasants and allowed them to decide what to grow. Part of his policy was to have the peasants relinquish a certain portion of their harvest (usually one-third) for a price guaranteed by the government by contract. The rest of the harvest was theirs to sell or keep. Because of this policy, production of food greatly increased and the net income of a farm family more than doubled. Soon the Chinese were enjoying a higher standard of living. Before this policy, the people of China usually did not have enough to eat. After the policy, the Chinese were enjoying eggs, meat (which used to be almost nonexistent) and other treats. Deng also wanted to improve the industry of China. He did this by allowing small private enterprises do business. These enterprises were usually small restaurants and other types of shops. In 1979, Deng Xiaoping also created four special economic zones where foreign investors could invest their money. In 1984, fourteen more special economic zones were opened. Unfortunately, at the time this book was written, it was not yet determined if the economic zones were going to be successful. However, the intentions of Deng Xiaoping were for the good of the nation. I remember when I was at the library just a month ago. I was stumbling through the shelves looking for a biography about a famous person. I started going through each biography alphabetically. It wasn't until I reached the letter "D" that I found the biography about Deng Xiaoping. I picked up this thick book and reluctantly decided to do my term project on Deng Xiaoping. The only thing I knew about him was that he was a Communist leader of China. Since I am a United States citizen who strongly favors democracy over other forms of government, I naturally disliked Deng Xiaoping. I believed he was a villain simply because he was a Communist. One month and three hundred and forty pages later, Deng Xiaoping became my political idol. Deng Xiaoping was a very good man. As a leader, he treated his people like he treated his own children. He wanted his people to live happily, and in order to do so, he gave his life in exchange. Even when there was a lot of pressure from the public, Deng Xiaoping did not cave in. Instead, he tried his best to ignore the pressure and to choose what would be best for the people; even if it meant being unpopular sometimes. I learned that Deng Xiaoping is the reason China is on the verge of becoming a superpower in the world. Today, most of China enjoys the fruitful success of a strong economy because of Deng Xiaoping's carefully planned policies. Also, Deng Xiaoping saved China from the corrupt Nationalists by winning the Civil War for the Communists. This man did great things for the hundreds of millions of Chinese. Without his ingenuity and shrewd leadership, China would probably be a poor country with severe economic problems, and without this biography, I would have missed learning about a very interesting person. He dedicated his life for the well being of his people. Deng Xiaoping was not only a force for good, he was a prophet. If more people were like him, there would not be a need for heaven. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Depression.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Everybody's mood varies according to events in the world around them. People are happy when they achieve something or saddened when they fail a test or lose something. When they are sad, some people say they are 'depressed', but the clinical depressions that are seen by doctors differ from the low mood brought on by everyday setbacks. Psychiatrists see a range of more severe mood disturbances and so find it easier to distinguish these from the normal variations of mood seen in the community. General practitioners (GP's) need to be sensitive enough to distinguish emotional reactions to setbacks in life from anxiety syndromes, somatisation and clinical depressions. The general idea is that anxiety disorders, depressive episodes, somatisation and adjustment reactions are all different entities, but in practice it is not always that clear-cut. Major depression, as defined by psychiatrists, is unfortunately relatively common. What is depression? The term "affect" refers to one's mood or "spirits." "Affective disorder" refers to changes in mood that occur during an episode of illness marked by extreme sadness (depression) or excitement (mania) or both. Depression is a disorder of affect. Affective disorders are predominantly disturbances of mood that are severe in nature and persistent despite the influence of external events. Depression is characterized by severe and persistent low mood, which is often unresponsive to the efforts of friends and family to cheer the sufferer up. Patients who suffer with repeated episodes of depression have a Recurrent Depressive Disorder. Depressive episodes can be classified into mild, moderate, and severe types, with or without psychotic symptoms. To be classified as depression, an episode must last more than two weeks. A condition where the mood is persistently low, but does not quite fulfill all the criteria for a depressive episode, is sometimes called "dysthymia." Community studies have found that depression is prevalent between 5 and 20% of all people. About 10% of people over age 65 will have a major depressive episode. The incidence of depression is higher in women and in urban settings rather than rural settings. Clinical features of depression Mild depressive episodes typically include features such as: ·Sadness and crying, ·Loss of interest in and loss of enjoyment of life (anhedonia), ·Poor attention and concentration, ·Low self-esteem and ideas of unworthiness, ·A bleak view of the future and the world in general, ·Poor sleep and appetite. People with mild depressive episodes find it difficult to continue with their work and social lives, but usually continue to function, although less than normal. Moderate depressive episodes have a wider range of symptoms, which are present usually to a greater degree. Sufferers find it very difficult to function normally at work or home. Severe depressive episodes typically may also include features such as: ·Great distress and agitation, ·Slowed thought and movement (psychomotor retardation), ·Ideas of guilt, ·Suicidal fantasies or plans which may be acted upon, ·Pronounced somatic symptoms, ·Psychotic symptoms. People with severe depressive episodes find it impossible to continue with their work, domestic and social lives, and usually cease to function in these areas. Depression is often accompanied by slowing of thought processes and biological features of everyday life which differ from a normal sense of sadness. Crying is a frequent symptom, although some individuals are reluctant to admit this, and others feel so depressed it that is as if they have 'gone beyond crying'. Suicidal ideas occur in most depressed people, and asking about these is a crucial aspect of their assessment. Depressed patients often find it a relief to talk about these ideas with their doctor. Asking about suicidal ideas is a sequential process, beginning with questions about the severity of the low mood. The doctor can then ask if the patient has ever felt that life is not worth living. A 'yes' could be followed by inquiring whether the patient has ever felt like ending their own life. Finally the doctor needs to assess if the patient has any particular plans in mind. Case History: Janet Janet Gordon was aged 35 when she lost her job as a manager of a department store. At first she looked on her period of unemployment as an opportunity to try out activities she had previously no time for. She went hill-walking and painting every day. Two months later she had lost interest in these things and was despairing that she would never work again, although she had an exemplary work record. Her sleep at night was poor and she had started going to bed during the day. Janet cried almost daily and had lost interest in the food she cooked. All food tasted bland, she said to her mother (who was concerned when she saw how much weight Janet had lost). At her mother's suggestion Janet went to her family doctor where she complained about how tired she always felt. She asked for some sleeping tablets to help her sleep at night. Case History: Alan Alan Benson was brought to the accident and emergency department by his son. Alan had tried to hang himself from the banisters at the family home. Fortunately the clothes' line that he had chosen to hang himself with had broken under his weight. When he was seen by the psychiatrist Alan had a red weal mark around his throat from the noose. He was staring at a fixed point on the floor. Now and then he would groan deeply and whisper to himself. He kept repeating the words 'I'm for it..I'm for it now.' He would not make eye contact with the doctor and initially refused to answer questions. His son said that the previous week his father had stopped going to work as a bailiff after he found out that his wife was having an affair. He had watched her obsessively for two days, not letting her out of his sight. Then a few days ago he had taken to his bed, and lain there for hours and hours not moving, not speaking, not eating and not drinking. He had talked about how everything was his fault and had at times been pleading with an unseen person to forgive him. He felt that he had committed some unpardonable crime and that he should now be punished. Armed with this information the psychiatrist talked to Mr. Benson again. This time Mr. Benson replied, even if only briefly. He said that God was telling him that his wife had to find another man because her husband had been so evil. He confessed that he had once had an affair himself many years before, and that God had told him in the last week that He had punished Mr. Benson with syphilis. His wife could be spared from the syphilis only if he killed himself. Once he was dead, he thought, his wife could begin a clean life with another man. Differential Diagnosis Many physical disorders can be present with depressive illness. They include: hypothyroidism, hyperthyroidism, Addison's disease, Cushing's disease, electrolyte disturbances, alcoholism, drug abuse, carcinoma and dietary deficiencies (B12, B1, and folic acid). Various drugs can cause depression. Psychological disorders that may mimic depression include adjustment reactions, anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, anxiety disorders, substance abuse, obsessive-compulsive disorder, dysthymia, seasonal affective disorder, and abnormal bereavement reactions. Panic disorder commonly co-exists with or pre-dates depression, (Andrade et al, 1994). Diagnosing and treating underlying physical causes must be attempted and are key factors in the correct prognosis of the actual cause of a persons depression. Risk factors for depression ·In Young Adults: ·Urban dwellers, ·Unemployment, ·Physical ill-health, ·Previous affective illness, ·Family history of depression, ·Childhood abuse/trauma, ·Loss of mother before age 11, ·Looking after several young children, ·No confidence, ·Bereavement. In Older People: ·Bereavement of a close figure in last six months, ·Loneliness (but not living alone), ·Lack of Satisfaction with Life, ·Female Sex. The risk factors for older people identified above have some predictive value in identifying people at risk of depression three years later. Life satisfaction and bereavement help predict recurrences of depressive illness. The higher prevalence of depression amongst women could be because women are more prone to depressive illness biologically or because of their social roles, or could be because male depression is under-recognized, or incorrectly labeled. However, suicide is more common among men than women. It is worth remembering that only 50% of depressed patients who present to their GP are correctly diagnosed as suffering with depression. Most depressed people in the community do not receive treatment. Over 90% of depressed elderly people in the community suffer without treatment. Armed with knowledge of its prevalence, causes and common features, one might assume that it is a simple task to diagnose depression in general practice settings. Unfortunately it isn't. Certainly having a high index of suspicion and a professional willingness to consider the possibility of depression are important factors in our ability to diagnose depression. Additionally patients also have a significant part to play in enabling - or preventing us - from arriving at a diagnosis of depression. It is rare to find depression as a simple, unitary diagnosis in general practice. It is much more common for patients to show a combination of problems - some physical, others social - within which depression can all to easily be either unnoticed, or assumed to be inevitable and therefore untreatable. Freeling et al [1985] and Tylee et al [1993] have shown that severe depression is much more likely to be missed if associated with significant physical illness. Moreover, many patients have strong reservations about disclosing depression to their GPs. Depression itself often contains feelings of hopelessness and despair. Patients may therefore feel that there is no point in talking to the doctor about it since there is nothing that they or anybody else can do about it. These negative perspectives can be compounded by GPs - often unwittingly - if they give the impression of rushing through their consultations and being unable or unwilling to sit and listen to our patients' concerns. There is still a considerable stigma attached to mental illness. Many people have a great fear of the consequences of acknowledging their depression to a professional person: they may be 'carted off to a loony bin', or written off as 'mad'. If the word 'depression' appears in medical notes they fear - often correctly - that this will be prejudicial to future employment or insurance prospects. Fear of antidepressant medication is also a very important obstacle to disclosure of depression. A study undertaken by the Defeat Depression campaign showed that many people confuse antidepressants with benzodiazepines, and are genuinely worried about becoming dependent - 'getting hooked' on them, and about unpleasant effects of withdrawal. There is considerable public skepticism about the effectiveness of antidepressants. Most patients would prefer to be offered counseling rather than drugs, but doubt if they will be given such a choice by their GP. Faced with this complex barrage of obstacles, it is perhaps surprising that we ever do manage to make a diagnosis of depression! However, there are many things that can be done to increase the chances of detection. We need to help some patients to reattribute physical symptoms to psychological causes. If a patient is feeling tired all the time, has no energy or interest in life and is sleeping very badly, these chances of their being depressed are very high. Often a direct question - 'do you think you may be depressed?' - is all that is needed to move the consultation onto a psychological agenda. Sometimes it is better to take a more indirect route. The word 'stress' is a very useful bridge, since it intrinsically has both physical and mental components: 'Are under any extra or unusual stress at the moment?', or 'Do you think these symptoms might be due to stress?' are effective open ended questions. For those few patients who appear reluctant to consider any diagnosis of depression it may initially be most profitable to concentrate on its more physical manifestations - sleep and appetite disturbance, or energy loss - without forcing the issue of their underlying causation. We must also accept patients' genuine anxieties about the shame attached to depression, and acknowledge their concerns about the harmful effects of drug therapies. Good basic consultation skills include inquiry into patients' expectations and fears about the nature and consequences of their problems. This will take us a long way towards understanding not only whether our patients are depressed, but the context and meaning that their depression has for them. Many people experience enormous relief when their problems are explored in this way. To a large extent, therefore, effective diagnosis is also the most crucial aspect of effective treatment. Management There are two important dimensions to be considered in deciding how best to manage depression in general practice. First, mild depression may often be managed effectively through sympathetic exploration of the factors precipitating it - whether physical illness, a recent personal crisis in work or relationships - and encouragement of the patient's own coping mechanisms and supportive informal social networks. Moderate and severe depression have been shown to respond to antidepressant drug therapy. As we have seen it is essential to discuss patients' anxieties and expectations of drug treatment before starting it. Also, drugs should be viewed as complementary rather than alternative to talking about depression. Problem-solving is a useful and simple skill to develop. The first stage is the creation of a problem list. This is something usually best done by the patient between sessions, although they may need some help initially. The patient writes down a list of problems which he is experiencing at present, either in terms of how he feels - miserable, tired, bored etc. - or in terms of things he is unable to do - go to work, enjoy hobbies, etc. He can then rank these problems in order of importance, and set goals for overcoming them. These goals should be staged and not too ambitious. For instance, if feeling bored is a central concern, it might be useful to discuss which aspects of life give the most pleasure and interest - watching TV soaps, walking the dog, having a bath, and agreeing that the patient will spend a set amount of time each day doing just that. Problem-solving works well in conjunction with drug therapy, and directly addresses the sense of hopelessness that is central to depression. It enables both doctor and patient to achieve a sense of purpose and direction, and provides a practical means ofmonitoring and demonstrating progress. The second dimension to the management of depression in general practice concerns the views and experience of the doctor and the patient. GPs vary considerably in their skills, experience and confidence in dealing with depression. Some of us will prefer to refer early to other professional colleagues, whether counselors, psychologists or psychiatrists, while others are more comfortable about managing even acute and severe problems. Patients, as we have seen, may also have strong views about the causes, effects and treatment of depression. If we are to manage it effectively we must take these into account. When people feel they are being listened to, and have genuine choices about what happens to them - whether they receive counseling or drug therapy or both, whether they are referred for psychiatric opinion or not - they are more likely to be committed to the management plan that emerges. Many patients, even when expressing suicidal thoughts, may prefer to be managed at home by their GP than be admitted to a psychiatric ward: the problem then becomes one for us, in assessing the degree of risk and responsibility that we feel able to sustain. It is worth remembering that, involving our patients in genuine decision-making about the management of their illness is intrinsically therapeutic. Studies of treatments versus placebo have endorsed the value of physical therapies such as ECT (electric-convulsive treatment or "shock therapy") in severe depression and antidepressants in mild, moderate and severe depression. Most depressive illnesses respond to such treatments. Tricyclic antidepressants need to be taken regularly in adequate doses for an adequate length of time. Inadequate doses of Tricyclic antidepressant are linked to suicidal behavior in some studies. Newer antidepressants (SSRIs and RIMAs) offer a relative safety in overdose. Some psychological treatments have proven efficacy, notably cognitive-behavioral therapy and interpersonal psychotherapy for mild and moderate depression. Their drawbacks are that they take longer to have an effect and are not well-standardized. There is evidence that cognitive behavioral therapy and interpersonal psychotherapy may help maintain health when combined with antidepressant medication, but there is as yet little evidence to suggest that counseling alone is a suitable treatment for major depression. Where there is evidence of continued relationship or family difficulties psychotherapy may be particularly useful. Cases of moderate to severe depression may need vigorous treatment by a community psychiatric team and close follow-up to help prevent relapse and improve prognosis. Severely depressed patients with or without psychotic symptoms require inpatient admission and may respond best to electro-convulsive treatment. Who to refer people to: Counselors, psychotherapists, community psychiatric nurses, occupational therapists, social workers and psychologists, unless also medically qualified, are not trained to diagnose depression, recognize its origin, or formulate long-term management plans. If referring on to one of these agencies as the sole provider of psychological care, the onus is on the general practitioner to diagnose the depression correctly, to be certain about its origin and to have a clear long-term management protocol in mind. The General practitioner must therefore be sure to have excluded physical illness as a cause of the depression before referring on to the non- medically trained. Prognosis The long-term prognosis for depression is still guarded, however. Up to 15% of patients who have had depression will go on to kill themselves. Recurrent episodes of depression are the norm rather than the exception. Long-term studies of lithium suggest that it may help to reduce the number of episodes and prevent suicide. Studies of long-term use of antidepressants suggest beneficial effects. Long-term efficacy of psychotherapy and counseling has not been proven. Learning points: depression ·Depressive illness affects 10-18% of the adult population. ·Depressive illness in the community is largely untreated, because patients generally do not seek medical help, and of those that do seek help only about 60% of those that see their family doctor are recognized by them as suffering from depression. ·Depressive illness is treatable - over 80% of cases can be resolved with adequate treatment. ·Treatment may include antidepressants, (SSRIs, tricyclics, MIRA drugs, or MAOIs), ECT (for severe or delusional depression) or psychotherapy for mild to moderate depression (particularly cognitive therapy). f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Deregulation of Aviation.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The airline industry has been subject of intense price competition since it was deregulated, and the result has been a number of new carriers which specialize in regional service and no-frills operations. These carriers typically purchase older aircraft and often operate outside the industry-wide computerized reservations system. In exchange for these inconveniences, passengers receive low fares relative to the industry as a whole. This research examines two low fare air carriers, ValuJet and Southwest Airlines. By investigating these air carriers, we can better understand the economic impacts of price versus service in the airline industry as a whole, as well as, the impacts on passenger and investor confidence. Until 1978, air transport rates were approved by the government, which meant that price was not a primary competitive factor. Instead, airlines would compete on service and image. The airline industry was dominated by giants (American, United, TWA) which offered nationwide and some international service, and by regional carriers, such as Southwest, which offered short trips between airports not served by the nationals. Deregulation of the airline industry brought about in 1978 introduced a situation in which the national and regional carriers were suddenly able to compete in an environment that resembled a free market. Rate schedules were lifted, price fixing was eliminated and route management was removed. The main factors that affected whether an airline could serve a particular city was whether or not that city had enough gates for the new carrier, and whether the carrier was able to afford to purchase them. Companies such as Southwest recognized potential for low fares, and began building a niche for themselves by offering low fares with equivalent low levels of service. Southwest's success gave rise to a new generation of low fare airlines, with ValuJet entering the market in the early 1990's. Unfortunately, ValuJet suffered a string of accidents which brought the future of this air carrier into question. ValuJet is a low-priced airline that offers inexpensive tickets for regional travel. Based in Atlanta, the airline serves the Southeastern United States and competes with Continental Airlines as well as with other small regional carriers. It serves 31 cities primarily in the southeastern United States. The airline began its service with flights to Tampa and Orlando from Atlanta in 1993. The no-frills strategy paid off for the fledgling airline, which posted half again as many revenue passenger miles in April 1996 as it did in April 1995. However, the company announced that it was slowing the expansion of its services, voluntarily, at the same time that it posted this impressive revenue mark (Cole & Pasztor, 1996, p. A6). Perhaps due to overexpansion or to poor luck, Valujet experienced a series of mishaps in its short history. In January 1994, a DC-9 skidded off a runway in Washington which resulted in the entire airport being shut down. In June 1995, a ValuJet flight went through an emergency evacuation after an engine failed and shrapnel flew into the cabin. Additional incidents, including one where the landing gear collapsed after a particularly forceful landing, led the FAA to begin an intense review of ValuJet in February 1996. This review found that ValuJet was in compliance with FAA regulations, but cited concern about pilot training and aircraft maintenance (Larson, 1996, p.30). In May 1996, Valujet flight 592 crashed in the Everglades, killing all aboard and resulting in a shutdown of the carrier for several months. When ValuJet began flying again, it did so with a reduced schedule, and considerable speculation about whether the company will be able to continue operations long-term. The company is also involved in litigation resulting from the crash, and the long-term prospects for the company are questionable. The following chart identifies key operating statistics for Southwest (seat miles are in millions, cost factors are in cents) (Shammas, 1996, p. 5541P): 1995 1994 1993 Revenue Passenger Miles (RPM) 2,624 941 44 Available Seat Miles (ASM) 3,813 1,471 63 Load Factor 68.8 % 64.0 % 69.7 % Revenue per RPM 13.4 13.8 13.1 Cost per ASM 6.8 6.8 9.8 Because Southwest's flights are generally an hour or less in length, the airline saves money by not having to serve meals. It has a liberal work rule arrangement with its unions, so productivity is high, and overall costs are low. For example, Southwest gets 672 hours per year on average from pilots versus 371 for American Airlines pilots, and 60 percent more passenger miles per flight attendant (Levinson, 1993, p. 34). These figures enable the company to realize profits during years in which the industry as a whole was suffering. The following chart identifies key operating statistics for Southwest (seat miles are in billions, cost factors are in cents) (Klein, 1996, p. 2077): 1995 1994 1993 Revenue Passenger Miles (RPM) 23.33 21.61 18.83 Available Seat Miles (ASM) 36.18 32.12 27.51 Revenue per RPM 11.83 11.56 11.77 Cost per ASM 7.07 7.08 7.25 In addition, the company has a 70 percent average load factor in an industry that averages 63 percent, and operating costs per passenger mile are 22 percent less than industry average. It has one of the youngest fleets in the industry (6.9 years compared with an industry average of 12.9 in 1992), and the best on-time and baggage handling records in 1992 (Gold, 1993, p. 29). Each of these factors contributes to the company's financial and marketing success. Southwest's success has come about because it is providing a product that the market wants, no-frills regional air travel, at a price that is attractive. Despite its no-frills orientation, the company maintains strong customer service satisfaction and high levels of customer service, encouraging repeat business. When the airline enters a new market, such as Baltimore, its fares are as much as 85 percent less than those of its higher-priced competitors, attracting passengers quickly and forcing the competition to either match the price or lose market share. In its target markets, Southwest has positioned itself to even compete favorably with traveling by car (Thorpe, 1996, p. 262). Southwest's success has not been without problem, and the company has again demonstrated an ability to find creative solutions to those problems. For example, the company has traditionally expanded its 737 fleet by adding older aircraft available at discounts (sometimes as much as 30 percent) (Kripanlani, 1992, p. 20). Since the company's ability to enter new markets is determined in part by the size of its fleet, and since the company is committed to staying with homogenous fleet of 737s, it runs the risk of ending up with a large number of older aircraft that it no longer needed (depending on the market), or that do not meet new environmental standards. Southwest solved this problem by beginning a lease-back program in 1988. Under the program, Southwest sells some of its older 737s, then leases them back for its own use. As of the beginning of 1992, the company had done this with more than half of the Boeing 737-200 aircraft that it operated (Brown, 1992, p.57). This program enables the company to release aircraft that it no longer needs or that no longer meet the stringent new environmental standards. At the same time, the company can modify its remaining 737-200s in order to make them compatible with noise and pollution regulations if it needs the capacity. The company's stock has split three times since 1990, and its price-earnings ratio is a healthy 13.1 percent. Its load factor is well within the industry norm of 67 percent (Sanborn, 1996, p. 251), and the company's commitment low fares and its safety record should help it maintain good performance even in light of the ValuJet crash (which brought increased attention to all low fare carriers). The crash of Flight 592 has brought increased scrutiny to ValuJet (and to low-fare carriers in general), and the long-term effect on ValuJet is not yet known. The stock, which had two, two-for-one splits in 1995 and which peaked at more than 30 dollars per share in late 1995, has plummeted to below 12 dollars per share in late 1996. Investors with high tolerance of risk might consider the stock at this low level, and the company might be a takeover target in the future as other carriers seek its routes. However, the company's aging aircraft fleet would not be an asset to most carriers, and it is unclear whether stockholders would realize a reasonable profit, even at today's low prices. The outlook for Southwest is considerably brighter than for ValuJet. The company has one of the highest safety records in the industry, and the company has also benefited from higher ticket prices and increased passenger traffic. The recent reinstatement of the federal excise tax is not expected to have a negative effect on Southwest demand since it has indicated it will increase fares in only 20 percent of its markets, but this will affect profitability. The company's strategy is to make up the difference of lower revenue with increased demand through its lower fares (Thorpe, 1996, p. 262). The airline industry has become one of the most competitive segments of our economy. The economic realities of operation costs versus passenger demand for cost-effective travel has forever changed the face of the travel industry. After deregulation in 1978, the airline industry was forced to abandon its service-oriented philosophy and consider the competitive pressures since they affected the various companies bottom line. Price had suddenly become the benchmark in the airline industry. Companies such as Southwest and ValuJet recognized the potential for low fares with commensurably low levels of service. With the changing paradigms in the airline industry comes risk, not only to the individual airlines but also the public in general. At what point do the economic pressures of making a profit for the airlines affect passenger safety? If the trend toward more airline disasters continues and those accidents can be attributed to cost-cutting measures, surely Congress will intervene. The airline industry must be disciplined in its approach to solving the economic pressures, while, at the same time stay focused on safety issues. If the airline industry is to survive and give the consumer choices, passenger confidence cannot be sacrificed for the sake of the bottom line! f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Describe how you would plan & undertake a social investigatio.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Methods of Social Investigation 'Describe how you would plan and undertake an investigation into why some of this College's students do not complete their degree courses.' (You have been given only 100 to finance the study; and one term's sabbatical.) Define the variables in the given title After a Research Statement has been formulated it is very important that the researcher defines any variables within it. A variable is any word whose meaning may be ambiguous or which could have several different meanings. This is a crucial stage in the planning process as a vague title renders any results at the end of the research without true meaning. In this case, the Research Statement is the given title 'Describe how you would plan and undertake an investigation into why some of this College's students do not complete their degree courses.' Within this Research Statement there are several variables : 'college's', 'students', 'complete' and 'degree courses'. These variables will be defined as follows: 'College's' We will take this to mean students at Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, University of London. 'Students' Undergraduates on a first degree (excluding post graduates and so on). 'Complete' Graduate 'Degree courses' The course for which the student originally registered. By defining the variables above there can be no confusion as to the meaning of the Research Statement. This process also helps the researcher to focus on the group of people that he wishes to study. Decide on the purpose of the research Having defined the variables in the Research Statement, the researcher now needs to focus his attention on the purpose of the research, and consequently lay down the Research Objectives. This part of the planning process allows the researcher time to consider what he hopes to achieve from the research and ensures that the research represents his objectives. The purpose of our research is to identify the reasons for students failing to complete the degree course for which they were originally admitted (variables already identified). The results of the research would allow the college to take action to encourage students to continue their studies and could even be used to aid the selection process and perhaps prevent problems from the outset. This is the final purpose of the research. Who is to be studied The researcher needs to identify the group of people upon which to base the study. The process is made easier by the fact that we have already defined the variables in the Research Statement. The research group has been thus so far defined as those students of Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, University of London who did not graduate from the first degree course for which they originally registered. To concentrate the study group further, the research will be based on those students who left during the academic year 1995/6 only. The study will include students who were registered in all faculties within the University. Initial sources of information Once the research group has been identified the researcher needs to consider how to identify those individuals which fall within the specified group. In this case, the information we require will be held in the College Registry and also in the Faculty Offices. This information is confidential and is not available to the public, and this difficulty will be dealt with in the next section. How to begin the investigation This particular research project requires the cooperation of a group of ex students of the college on what may be a sensitive subject. Therefore, the first action that we would take is to send a contact letter out to all those within our potential research group. The letter would describe the research that we are carrying out, it's purpose and the method by which we intend to conduct it (thereby informing the recipient of what they will be asked to do). It would then ask the ex student whether they would mind taking part in the research. It would then ask those who are willing to be involved to send some basic details about age, sex, faculty and so on. The letter would not be personalised as we do not yet know the names and addresses of the ex students. We would then take the letter (and copies) to the registry and ask if they would mind sending them to the ex students that they have on their files. This is to protect the confidentiality of the information held at the Registry. We would also include a stamped addressed envelope in the letter to encourage the ex students to respond. At this time we still do not know the names of the ex students and will only know that information from the response. I would also set a final response date so that we have a cut off point and know when we can begin the investigation in full. After the final response date we would examine the basic details of the respondents (age, sex and so on) and from this information, formulate a Random Sample. Random sampling is a procedure in which bias is removed from the sample. In other words, we ensure that we do not have thirty women and 3 men in our sample. We would aim to have a wide cross section of people with no one particular group being any more predominant than the other. In official statistics approximately 3% of all students 'drop-out' of University. Whilst I suspect that the figure would be lower here, we shall use this figure as a base and given the number of students is approximately 5,000 would estimate the total number of 'drop-out' cases to be around 150. Bearing in mind that the sensitive nature of the research may cause a low response rate we would hope to have approximately 50 research subjects after the random sample. Which method of investigation to use? "A survey is a method of collecting information from people about their ideas, feelings, plans, beliefs, social, educational and financial background". The survey would be the most effective way of conducting this investigation for several reasons. Firstly, the postal survey allows us to cover a wide geographical area within our limited budget. Secondly, the survey allows the respondent to answer the questions in privacy, which is important given the sensitive nature of the questions and thirdly the survey allows us to correlate the results more easily. Survey design Survey design is a complicated topic as so many points need to be considered together. The points that we would bear in mind whilst designing our survey are as follows: The position of the questions is very important The first question should be clearly related to the purpose of the research as defined in the research statement. The questions should move from the familiar, such as name and so on, to the more complex. Sensitive questions should be placed in the middle, so that the respondent is still concentrating on the questionnaire but is not put off from starting to answer it. The final questions should be relatively easy to answer as the respondent may be getting bored with the questionnaire. It is very important to ensure that the questions are independent from each other. We should be careful about the language that we use, avoiding emotional language, leading or presuming questions. It is also important to stress the confidentiality of the questionnaire so that the respondents are encouraged to both take part and answer honestly. Bearing in mind these design criteria we would use open ended questions to ask the respondent for basic information about their age, sex, ethnic origin, course title, and year of entry to the college. We would then go on to ask them why they decided to leave the college prior to graduating. Pilot survey After we had designed the survey we would conduct a small pilot survey on current students at the University. A pilot survey allows the researcher to check that the questionnaire is understandable and so on. It may also give him some idea as to the amount of time it may take to get a response and may even indicate a response rate. On a limited budget, it is hoped that the pilot survey would help to prevent any expensive mistakes later on in the research project. If the pilot survey is successful we would go on to send the survey, with a stamped addressed envelope, to our sample group. Survey Results After the final deadline for respondents has passed we would collect together the received surveys and initially examine the basic information (age, sex and so on) to ensure that we still have a random sample.We would then look at the reasons given for leaving the college. The easiest way to correlate these results would be to catogerise them in a table such as that displayed below. Reason for leaving Number of respondents Total Change of course IIIIIIIIIIIII 13 Change of college IIIIIII 7 Illness IIIIIIII 8 Not ready to study/year out IIIIII 6 Financial/grant problems IIIIIIIIIII 11 No longer wishes to study II 2 English language problems I 1 Accommodation II 2 Other I 1 After we had correlated the results in a table we would calculate percentages to give a more meaningful picture. We would then represent the results graphically in either a pie chart or a bar chart so that the information can be assimilated easily by anyone interested in the results of the survey. Problems with our approach The main problem with research of this kind is the sensitive nature of the topic and the low response rate that might result from that. Also, those people who reply to the initial contact letter may differ from those who do not and a whole strata of ex-students may not reply to the contact letter because of the reason that they left. This must be taken into consideration when the results are published. A final problem may be that a large number of students may have left the address held by the college and this may affect the response rate. Conclusion In conclusion then, this method of planning and undertaking an investigation into why some of this college's students do not complete their degree courses should produce some useable and unbiased results. BIBLIOGRAPHY Fink, A & Kosecoff, J (1985) How to Conduct Surveys Giddens, A (1993) Sociology Howard, K & Sharp, J (1983) Management of a Student Research Project Kane, E (1985) Doing Your Own Research Moser and Kalton (1971) Survey Methods in Social Investigation Oppenheim, A (1992 2ed) Research Methods in Social Relations Emma Woodmansee SP104 Methods of Social Investigation 'Describe how you would plan and undertake an investigation into why some of this College's students do not complete their degree courses.' (You have been given only 100 to finance the study; and one term's sabbatical.) Define the variables in the given title After a Research Statement has been formulated it is very important that the researcher defines any variables within it. A variable is any word whose meaning may be ambiguous or which could have several different meanings. This is a crucial stage in the planning process as a vague title renders any results at the end of the research without true meaning. In this case, the Research Statement is the given title 'Describe how you would plan and undertake an investigation into why some of this College's students do not complete their degree courses.' Within this Research Statement there are several variables : 'college's', 'students', 'complete' and 'degree courses'. These variables will be defined as follows: 'College's' We will take this to mean students at Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, University of London. 'Students' Undergraduates on a first degree (excluding post graduates and so on). 'Complete' Graduate 'Degree courses' The course for which the student originally registered. By defining the variables above there can be no confusion as to the meaning of the Research Statement. This process also helps the researcher to focus on the group of people that he wishes to study. Decide on the purpose of the research Having defined the variables in the Research Statement, the researcher now needs to focus his attention on the purpose of the research, and consequently lay down the Research Objectives. This part of the planning process allows the researcher time to consider what he hopes to achieve from the research and ensures that the research represents his objectives. The purpose of our research is to identify the reasons for students failing to complete the degree course for which they were originally admitted (variables already identified). The results of the research would allow the college to take action to encourage students to continue their studies and could even be used to aid the selection process and perhaps prevent problems from the outset. This is the final purpose of the research. Who is to be studied The researcher needs to identify the group of people upon which to base the study. The process is made easier by the fact that we have already defined the variables in the Research Statement. The research group has been thus so far defined as those students of Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, University of London who did not graduate from the first degree course for which they originally registered. To concentrate the study group further, the research will be based on those students who left during the academic year 1995/6 only. The study will include students who were registered in all faculties within the University. Initial sources of information Once the research group has been identified the researcher needs to consider how to identify those individuals which fall within the specified group. In this case, the information we require will be held in the College Registry and also in the Faculty Offices. This information is confidential and is not available to the public, and this difficulty will be dealt with in the next section. How to begin the investigation This particular research project requires the cooperation of a group of ex students of the college on what may be a sensitive subject. Therefore, the first action that we would take is to send a contact letter out to all those within our potential research group. The letter would describe the research that we are carrying out, it's purpose and the method by which we intend to conduct it (thereby informing the recipient of what they will be asked to do). It would then ask the ex student whether they would mind taking part in the research. It would then ask those who are willing to be involved to send some basic details about age, sex, faculty and so on. The letter would not be personalised as we do not yet know the names and addresses of the ex students. We would then take the letter (and copies) to the registry and ask if they would mind sending them to the ex students that they have on their files. This is to protect the confidentiality of the information held at the Registry. We would also include a stamped addressed envelope in the letter to encourage the ex students to respond. At this time we still do not know the names of the ex students and will only know that information from the response. I would also set a final response date so that we have a cut off point and know when we can begin the investigation in full. After the final response date we would examine the basic details of the respondents (age, sex and so on) and from this information, formulate a Random Sample. Random sampling is a procedure in which bias is removed from the sample. In other words, we ensure that we do not have thirty women and 3 men in our sample. We would aim to have a wide cross section of people with no one particular group being any more predominant than the other. In official statistics approximately 3% of all students 'drop-out' of University. Whilst I suspect that the figure would be lower here, we shall use this figure as a base and given the number of students is approximately 5,000 would estimate the total number of 'drop-out' cases to be around 150. Bearing in mind that the sensitive nature of the research may cause a low response rate we would hope to have approximately 50 research subjects after the random sample. Which method of investigation to use? "A survey is a method of collecting information from people about their ideas, feelings, plans, beliefs, social, educational and financial background". The survey would be the most effective way of conducting this investigation for several reasons. Firstly, the postal survey allows us to cover a wide geographical area within our limited budget. Secondly, the survey allows the respondent to answer the questions in privacy, which is important given the sensitive nature of the questions and thirdly the survey allows us to correlate the results more easily. Survey design Survey design is a complicated topic as so many points need to be considered together. The points that we would bear in mind whilst designing our survey are as follows: The position of the questions is very important The first question should be clearly related to the purpose of the research as defined in the research statement. The questions should move from the familiar, such as name and so on, to the more complex. Sensitive questions should be placed in the middle, so that the respondent is still concentrating on the questionnaire but is not put off from starting to answer it. The final questions should be relatively easy to answer as the respondent may be getting bored with the questionnaire. It is very important to ensure that the questions are independent from each other. We should be careful about the language that we use, avoiding emotional language, leading or presuming questions. It is also important to stress the confidentiality of the questionnaire so that the respondents are encouraged to both take part and answer honestly. Bearing in mind these design criteria we would use open ended questions to ask the respondent for basic information about their age, sex, ethnic origin, course title, and year of entry to the college. We would then go on to ask them why they decided to leave the college prior to graduating. Pilot survey After we had designed the survey we would conduct a small pilot survey on current students at the University. A pilot survey allows the researcher to check that the questionnaire is understandable and so on. It may also give him some idea as to the amount of time it may take to get a response and may even indicate a response rate. On a limited budget, it is hoped that the pilot survey would help to prevent any expensive mistakes later on in the research project. If the pilot survey is successful we would go on to send the survey, with a stamped addressed envelope, to our sample group. Survey Results After the final deadline for respondents has passed we would collect together the received surveys and initially examine the basic information (age, sex and so on) to ensure that we still have a random sample.We would then look at the reasons given for leaving the college. The easiest way to correlate these results would be to catogerise them in a table such as that displayed below. Reason for leaving Number of respondents Total Change of course IIIIIIIIIIIII 13 Change of college IIIIIII 7 Illness IIIIIIII 8 Not ready to study/year out IIIIII 6 Financial/grant problems IIIIIIIIIII 11 No longer wishes to study II 2 English language problems I 1 Accommodation II 2 Other I 1 After we had correlated the results in a table we would calculate percentages to give a more meaningful picture. We would then represent the results graphically in either a pie chart or a bar chart so that the information can be assimilated easily by anyone interested in the results of the survey. Problems with our approach The main problem with research of this kind is the sensitive nature of the topic and the low response rate that might result from that. Also, those people who reply to the initial contact letter may differ from those who do not and a whole strata of ex-students may not reply to the contact letter because of the reason that they left. This must be taken into consideration when the results are published. A final problem may be that a large number of students may have left the address held by the college and this may affect the response rate. Conclusion In conclusion then, this method of planning and undertaking an investigation into why some of this college's students do not complete their degree courses should produce some useable and unbiased results. BIBLIOGRAPHY Fink, A & Kosecoff, J (1985) How to Conduct Surveys Giddens, A (1993) Sociology Howard, K & Sharp, J (1983) Management of a Student Research Project Kane, E (1985) Doing Your Own Research Moser and Kalton (1971) Survey Methods in Social Investigation Oppenheim, A (1992 2ed) Research Methods in Social Relations Emma Woodmansee SP104 Methods of Social Investigation 'Describe how you would plan and undertake an investigation into why some of this College's students do not complete their degree courses.' (You have been given only 100 to finance the study; and one term's sabbatical.) Define the variables in the given title After a Research Statement has been formulated it is very important that the researcher defines any variables within it. A variable is any word whose meaning may be ambiguous or which could have several different meanings. This is a crucial stage in the planning process as a vague title renders any results at the end of the research without true meaning. In this case, the Research Statement is the given title 'Describe how you would plan and undertake an investigation into why some of this College's students do not complete their degree courses.' Within this Research Statement there are several variables : 'college's', 'students', 'complete' and 'degree courses'. These variables will be defined as follows: 'College's' We will take this to mean students at Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, University of London. 'Students' Undergraduates on a first degree (excluding post graduates and so on). 'Complete' Graduate 'Degree courses' The course for which the student originally registered. By defining the variables above there can be no confusion as to the meaning of the Research Statement. This process also helps the researcher to focus on the group of people that he wishes to study. Decide on the purpose of the research Having defined the variables in the Research Statement, the researcher now needs to focus his attention on the purpose of the research, and consequently lay down the Research Objectives. This part of the planning process allows the researcher time to consider what he hopes to achieve from the research and ensures that the research represents his objectives. The purpose of our research is to identify the reasons for students failing to complete the degree course for which they were originally admitted (variables already identified). The results of the research would allow the college to take action to encourage students to continue their studies and could even be used to aid the selection process and perhaps prevent problems from the outset. This is the final purpose of the research. Who is to be studied The researcher needs to identify the group of people upon which to base the study. The process is made easier by the fact that we have already defined the variables in the Research Statement. The research group has been thus so far defined as those students of Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, University of London who did not graduate from the first degree course for which they originally registered. To concentrate the study group further, the research will be based on those students who left during the academic year 1995/6 only. The study will include students who were registered in all faculties within the University. Initial sources of information Once the research group has been identified the researcher needs to consider how to identify those individuals which fall within the specified group. In this case, the information we require will be held in the College Registry and also in the Faculty Offices. This information is confidential and is not available to the public, and this difficulty will be dealt with in the next section. How to begin the investigation This particular research project requires the cooperation of a group of ex students of the college on what may be a sensitive subject. Therefore, the first action that we would take is to send a contact letter out to all those within our potential research group. The letter would describe the research that we are carrying out, it's purpose and the method by which we intend to conduct it (thereby informing the recipient of what they will be asked to do). It would then ask the ex student whether they would mind taking part in the research. It would then ask those who are willing to be involved to send some basic details about age, sex, faculty and so on. The letter would not be personalised as we do not yet know the names and addresses of the ex students. We would then take the letter (and copies) to the registry and ask if they would mind sending them to the ex students that they have on their files. This is to protect the confidentiality of the information held at the Registry. We would also include a stamped addressed envelope in the letter to encourage the ex students to respond. At this time we still do not know the names of the ex students and will only know that information from the response. I would also set a final response date so that we have a cut off point and know when we can begin the investigation in full. After the final response date we would examine the basic details of the respondents (age, sex and so on) and from this information, formulate a Random Sample. Random sampling is a procedure in which bias is removed from the sample. In other words, we ensure that we do not have thirty women and 3 men in our sample. We would aim to have a wide cross section of people with no one particular group being any more predominant than the other. In official statistics approximately 3% of all students 'drop-out' of University. Whilst I suspect that the figure would be lower here, we shall use this figure as a base and given the number of students is approximately 5,000 would estimate the total number of 'drop-out' cases to be around 150. Bearing in mind that the sensitive nature of the research may cause a low response rate we would hope to have approximately 50 research subjects after the random sample. Which method of investigation to use? "A survey is a method of collecting information from people about their ideas, feelings, plans, beliefs, social, educational and financial background". The survey would be the most effective way of conducting this investigation for several reasons. Firstly, the postal survey allows us to cover a wide geographical area within our limited budget. Secondly, the survey allows the respondent to answer the questions in privacy, which is important given the sensitive nature of the questions and thirdly the survey allows us to correlate the results more easily. Survey design Survey design is a complicated topic as so many points need to be considered together. The points that we would bear in mind whilst designing our survey are as follows: The position of the questions is very important The first question should be clearly related to the purpose of the research as defined in the research statement. The questions should move from the familiar, such as name and so on, to the more complex. Sensitive questions should be placed in the middle, so that the respondent is still concentrating on the questionnaire but is not put off from starting to answer it. The final questions should be relatively easy to answer as the respondent may be getting bored with the questionnaire. It is very important to ensure that the questions are independent from each other. We should be careful about the language that we use, avoiding emotional language, leading or presuming questions. It is also important to stress the confidentiality of the questionnaire so that the respondents are encouraged to both take part and answer honestly. Bearing in mind these design criteria we would use open ended questions to ask the respondent for basic information about their age, sex, ethnic origin, course title, and year of entry to the college. We would then go on to ask them why they decided to leave the college prior to graduating. Pilot survey After we had designed the survey we would conduct a small pilot survey on current students at the University. A pilot survey allows the researcher to check that the questionnaire is understandable and so on. It may also give him some idea as to the amount of time it may take to get a response and may even indicate a response rate. On a limited budget, it is hoped that the pilot survey would help to prevent any expensive mistakes later on in the research project. If the pilot survey is successful we would go on to send the survey, with a stamped addressed envelope, to our sample group. Survey Results After the final deadline for respondents has passed we would collect together the received surveys and initially examine the basic f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Developement of ancient systems of writing in Iraq and Egypt.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The Development of Ancient Systems of Writing in Iraq and Egypt Ancient systems of writing in the Middle East arose when people needed a method for remembering important information. In both Ancient Iraq and Ancient Egypt each of the stages of writing, from pictograms to ideograms to phonetograms, evolved as a response to the need to express more complex ideas. Satisfaction of this need gave us the two most famous forms of ancient writing, cuneiform from ancient Iraq, and hieroglyphics from ancient Egypt. Both of these forms of writing evolved and their use spread to other peoples even after the originators of the scripts had passed on. Some of the oldest writing found in the Middle East dates from 8000 to 3000 B.C. This corresponds to the approximate time period that the people of the region went from living a nomadic life to settlement in villages and trading among themselves. When trading large or varying types of commodities you need a method for recording. To meet this need developed a token system for the recording of financial data. These tokens were of varying shapes for various things, two to three centimetres in size, and used for enumeration and keeping track of goods and labour. These tokens eventually had to be stored so they wouldn't be misplaced or lost. To secure them, they were placed in opaque clay envelopes. To indicate what was inside the envelope markings were made on it, eventually someone realized that all you had to do was mark on the clay what was in the envelope and you discard the tokens altogether. With this major development we get the first writing on clay tablets. In Ancient Mesopotamia the most readily available material for writing on was clay. When writing on clay first arose, the scribe would try to make an artistic representation of what he was referring to. This is a logical first step in writing as if you wanted to record that you had three sheep, you would draw a picture of a sheep and then add to the picture some marking to indicate that you had three of them. Thus the earliest stage in writing arose, pictograms. Pictograms, although not really writing in the modern sense of the term, do represent a method of communicating an event or message. They also "led to true writing through a process of selection and organization." As people wanted to write more down and in a faster method, the pictograms lost their artistic look and took on a more "stylised representation of an object by making a few marks in the clay . . . ." The writing was eventually written in "horizontal lines rather than in squares or in vertical bands . . . became smaller, more compact, more rigid, more 'abstract', finally bearing no resemblance to the objects they represented . . . ." The next stage in the development of ancient writing was when the scribes wished to write more complex ideas down. In time a sign that had represented a tangible object, came to represent some word or thing. For example, the symbol representing the sun eventually represented over seventy different words. This caused some confusion as the reader could not be certain what the writer was using the symbol for. A solution to this problem was the introduction of a method to indicate what the symbol represented. These new symbols were called determinative. For example, the Sumerians placed a symbol in front of, or sometimes behind, the word sign to give the reader an indication of how to interpret it. The sign for plow could have the sign for wood in front of it, this meant that the symbol for plow meant the tool, if there was a symbol of a man in front, the symbol for plow would be interpreted as plowman. The most advanced stage of development was the phonetogram. A phonetogram is a symbol that represented the pronunciation of part of a word. Phonetograms developed from symbols for words that sounded like the syllables of other words. For example you could have the symbol "4" and "C" in modern writing go together to make the symbol 4C, which would represent four seas, but if you added the determinative ' to make it 4'C' it could be read as the word "foresee". Thus a transition from pictographic to phonetographic. With this, you could adapt a script to write the sounds of any word from any language. In Ancient Mesopotamia these three stages in writing can be found in cuneiform. Cuneiform (Latin for 'wedge') writing is made on clay with the end of a wooden or reed stylus. The impression made by the stylus left a mark in the clay that resembled a wedge, hence the name cuneiform applied to the script. Originally the script was written on small clay tablets and read from top to bottom. When the scribes began to use larger blocks of clay, it became necessary for them to shift the position of the tablet in their left hand, thus rotating the script 90 degrees. (See Fig. 1 attached). The use of cuneiform is seen in documents as far back as 3000 BC up to about the first century AD when astronomers still used the script. Of the documents found, more that 75% of the 150,000 are of an economic nature. This includes legal documents, text relating to sale and purchase, census and tax returns, and several other types of documents relating to matters of trade and commerce. The very number of documents found relating to economic activity shows that the script developed to satisfy the need to record these economic activities. Cuneiform evolved from a pictographic form to idiographic and finally to a phonetographic form. It is in the final form that the script was adopted by other people in the region. When the Akkadians conquered Sumer they adopted the cuneiform writing system for their own language. First attempts at using the cuneiform script for writing Akkadian started sometime during the third millennium but wasn't used extensively till the reign of Sargon I, then Akkadian was written till about 100AD. With the adaption of cuneiform to write Akkadian, the number of different types of symbols shifted from pictograms in Sumerian to phonetograms. The main reason for this is that the Akkadian language is structured differently than Sumerian. The current number of Sumerian phonetograms was not enough to write the Akkadian language, therefore they had to make more symbols to write in cuneiform. Other symbols were adapted as they were, the picotograms that represent an object in Sumerian would represent the same object in Akkadian, the only difference would be the words would be pronounced differently. For example the Sumerian symbol for god, dingir, would be used to write the Akkadian word for god, ilu. In time other people of the region adopted the cuneiform script as well. The Elamites, of south-west Iran, adopted it and reduced the number of symbols to about 100. The Hittites and Old Persians also adopted the script, with Old Persian the number of symbol reduced even further to 41 signs. The Ugaritic people of northern Syria also adopted the script, using 30 signs, which basicly corresponds to the West Semitic linear alphabet. With each of these languages the original Sumerian script was adopted in such a way as to write the new language in the easiest phonetic form possible, hence the reduction in the number of signs almost down to the number of signs in an alphabet. The use of cuneiform eventually died out around 100AD, with its death ended the ability for people to read the script. In the 18th century some progress was made with travellers to Persepolis, they copied short works in cuneiform that were thought to be from the Persian kings Cyrus, Darius, and Xerxes. The first breakthrough in deciphering Old Persian was made by the German G.F. Grotefend. Using an assumption that Old Persian consisted of only a limited number of signs with single slanting wedges as word dividers, as well as observational evidence indicating that the script read from left to right, he recognized a series of repeating symbols. The text seemed to be referring to one King as the son of another and Gotefend theorized that it was Darius and his son Xerxes. Working from these names he derived from looking at Greek, Hebrew, and Avestan, he came up with a translation. The most extensive cuneiform deciphering work done in the 19th century was by Henry Rawlinson. Rawlinson, in 1835 an English Military advisor in Persia with knowledge of Avestan and Sanskirt, copied a trilingual text of King Darius from a mountainside in Behistun in what is now western Iran. The trilingual text, written in Old Persian, Babylonian and Elamite, described King Darius's victories in the 6th century B.C., gave Rawlinson a large corpus of material to work with. In 1847 he translated the Old Persian and was working on the Elamite, and in 1851 he had finished deciphering the meanings of about 200 Babylonian signs. He also used a list of all the people of Darius's empire, from the text, compared it with information from Greek histories and used his knowledge of ancient languages to decipher a number of the signs. With the decipherment of cuneiform, the various economic and literary texts of Ancient Mesopotamia once again were able to be read by scholars, giving us a clearer picture of a once great civilization. During the same time period that cuneiform developed, another great writing system of the Ancient Middle East appeared, the Egyptian Hieroglyphs. From the Greek ta hieroglyphica, meaning 'the sacred carved (letters)' comes our word hieroglyphics. Hieroglyphics are probably the most artistic scripts in the world, consisting of actual drawings or carvings of things from the real world and written continuously in either columns or in a horizontal line. This script was read from right to left, or sometimes from left to right, with upper signs being read before lower ones. (See Fig. 2 attached). Like cuneiform, originally the hieroglyphs were pictograms. For example represented the sun, or a picture of a human face represented a face. As with cuneiform this made the writing system limited because it needed hundreds of symbols for all the words, making expression of complex ideas difficult. The hierogylphs went to a phonogram stage where the symbols were uniconsonantal (one consonant), biconsonantal (two consonants) and triconsonantal (3 consonants), greatly reducing the number of signs required to write. In its most advanced form hieroglyphics were composed of three types of signs, pictograms, phonetograms, and determinatives to help the reading understand a symbols meaning. As the Greek name suggests, these hieroglyphics were mainly used for religious purposes rather than for economic as in ancient Iraq. The Egyptians believed th f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Did the 14th Amendment help the blacks or punish the south .TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Amendment #14 punished the south for the entire rebellion, and the Civil War. The way that Congress made the law made it seem that it was helping the Freedmen, however, most of the sections are directed to the south, or made so that the only people who would violate these sections would be the southern states. Paragraph 1 states that Ex-slaves made citizens if they have been born in the United States. This part doesn't hurt the south, in fact, it gives them and advantage on the number of reps in the House. It also helps the freedmen since it is giving them full rights as U.S. citizens and equality in the U.S. Paragraph 2 states that when a state denies citizens (freedmen) the right to vote, its representation shall be reduced. This is obviously hurting the southern states since the southerners didn't want the freedmen voting, they would be losing their representation in the House. However, for this to be effective, the person must meet the current voting requirements. Paragraph 3 states that People who have been in rebellion are ineligible for federal and state office. In other words, if you were a military or political leader for the Confederate States of America, than you can't hold any United States, or individual state office. This is punishment to those leaders of the Confederacy who have committed an act of treason. This is a suitable punishment for these people who are not suited to hold any office. Paragraph 4 states that debts incurred in aid of rebellion are void. This drastically hurts the people who supported the south. If someone had sold products to the south, expecting that after the war they would get paid a great sum of money, than they would get nothing from the United States government and nothing from those states. This was a sort of "payback" for those people who aided the south. These first four paragraphs, which three of them have to do with hurting the south and only one to help the ex-slaves, have shown that this amendment was what the south got for having this Civil War. Without this amendment, the southern states could have gone unpunished, and possibly start another rebellion. This amendment obviously goes against the south, due to all of the paragraphs which have something directly to do with what the south did. Taking all this into account, the south, having started this war by attacking a U.S. fort, deserved it. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Did the Expansion of the Aztec Empire Lead to Their Downfall .TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Did the Expansion of the Aztec Empire Lead to Their Downfall? The Aztec Indians originated from a place called Aztlan, somewhere in north or northwest Mexico. At that time the Aztecs were a small, nomadic tribe living in the border territory on the margins of civilized Mesoamerica. (see map I) In the 13th century they settled in the valley of central Mexico. The Aztecs finally found refuge on a small island in Lake Texcoco, where about 1345, they founded the town of Tenochtitlan. The island was found through a prophecy which said they would settle where they found an eagle perched on a cactus. (see diagram I) During the next century the Aztecs grew to be greatest power in Mexico. As they grew in political status they became sophisticated and civilized, learning from established peoples who had been town dwellers for more than 1,000 years. (Ekholm, Gordon F.) The Aztec empire consisted of numerous, loosely connected urban communities. Land ownership was communal. Each local group was composed of a few families that jointly owned a piece of land. Part of the yield of cultivated land was given to the state as a kind of tax. Technology depended more on human skills than on mechanical devices. Iron and steel were unknown, although copper and bronze were used for tools and Mexican jewelers made ornaments from gold, silver, and their alloys. Wheat, barley, cattle, horses, sheep, and goats were unknown until introduced from Europe and the Mexicans were efficient farmers who made full use of irrigation, terracing, and fertilization of the fields. Aztec Mexico was rich and civilized. The state controlled every aspect of life. Schooling and training in the martial arts were compulsory for all boys, while the girls were trained in gathering, cooking, and the sewing arts. A centralized bureaucracy looked after the collection and storage of taxes, matters of legislation and punishment. (Peterson, Frederick) Life for the Aztec's was good. Because of the complexity of their government all were happy. Then in 1519 Spanish conquistador, Hernan Cortes, met the Aztec leader Montezuma in Tenochtitlan. Montezuma believed that the Spaniards had come in peace, but he is proven wrong in 1521 when the Spanish, lead by Cortes, violently conquered the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan. The purpose of this report is to answer the question "Did the Expansion of the Aztec Empire Lead to Their Downfall ?" I feel that it most likely did. This is because when the Aztec's were conquered they were the most powerful civilization in the New World. The Spaniards saw them as "the ones to beat" to gain supreme power in the Americas. To understand why the Spaniards wanted to conquer the Aztec Empire you have to be well aware of the power which they possessed in the Americas. The Aztec power did not come quickly. They started off as a poor, nomadic tribe and grew in power over time. First they conquered the Huastecs, a small tribe of people to the north. Then the Mixtecs and Zapotecs to the south were conquered. The subjugating of these two tribes holds great significance because they were both powerful tribes at the time. The Mixtecs excelled in the arts including stonework, metalwork, and wood carving. It is believed that theses people were of great influence to the Aztecs in this way. The Zapotecs were also powerful people yet had no traditions or migration legends, but believed themselves born directly from rocks, trees, and jaguars. (Brandenburg, Frank R.) The Aztecs conquered these people but did not destroy them. They remained autonomous until joining the Aztecs to better their chances when fending off the Spaniards. After these two great conquests the Aztecs power grew rapidly and they continued to conquer all the surrounding tribes including the Otomis, Totonacs, Tarascans and Tlaxcalans. The defeated tribes retained their own government though they often had to accept Aztec garrisons and give lands to Aztec nobles. All the conquered tribes were required to provide sacrificial victims for the glory of Huizilopochtil, (see diagram II) and to pay tribute in curious birds and animals, turquoises, gold and other precious metals, all of which were used for pleasure among the Aztec nobles and adornment of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital. Tenochtitlan had been gradually expanding off the island by the invention of floating gardens and by driving piles into the shallow waters of the lake. Two stone aqueducts provided the city drinking water from a nearby spring. Three concrete causeways thirty feet broad connected it with the main land, while to the east of the islands a dike seven miles long had been built across Lake Texcoco, cutting the lake in two and preventing Tenochtitlan from being flooded by any sudden rise in water level. (Soustelle, Jacques) On the southern side of the city was a broad embankment, lit at night by torches, to which came the peasants of the surrounding towns bringing their tribute of maize and fruits and flowers. The Aztec nobles lived in houses of red or white stone which were built around open patios. In Tlateloco, the northern part of the city, was a great marketplace with a paved floor, where the Aztec merchants displayed products from the other peoples of Mexico. Here were honey and vanilla, rubber and cochineal, pottery and textiles, slaves and animals, and carved jewels made of gold and jade from the country of the Zapotecs. The ruler of Tenochtitlan and the Aztec Empire was Montezuma. Montezuma occupied the throne when the Spaniards under Hernan Cortes landed (1519) in Mexico. Under a commission of the Cuban governor, Diego de Velazquez, Cortes sailed from Cuba in 1519 to conquer the Aztec empire. He founded the city of Vera Cruz, burned his ships to prevent his forces from turning back, and enlisted the help of the defeated Tlaxcalans. Velazquez tried to recall Cortes, who defeated a force sent to retrieve him. (Gibson, Charles) Unlike previous Aztec rulers, who were great warriors, Montezuma was a weak and indecisive man, more interested in sorcery and philosophy than in war. (Leon-Portilla, Miguel) He was at first unsure whether the Spaniards were gods or men, and when a study of omens and prophecies convinced him that they were gods he concluded that he was doomed. Coincidentally, Cortes landed in Mexico on the day of Quetzalcoatl birth according to the Aztec calendar. This lead Montezuma to believe that Cortes was Quetzalcoatl, the sun god or god of good and light. Instead of fighting the Europeans he tried to deter them by trickery, magic, and offering gifts. When that failed, Montezuma allowed Cortes to enter Tenochtitlan without a battle and received him in his court. Montezuma was taken prisoner without resistance, but the brutal conduct of the invaders aroused the anger of the Tenochtitlan inhabitants. The Aztecs managed to drive the foreigners out for a short while, but during the ensuing battle Montezuma died under mysterious circumstances. He was killed either by the Spaniards or by his own people. In conclusion I believe that the expansion of the Aztec empire did in fact lead to their downfall. This is because when the Spaniards went to Mexico they saw the Aztec empire as the supreme governing body. The Aztecs were the most advanced, civilized and powerful people in Mexico. They were also the richest of any other tribe. This was because all the other tribes were governed by the Aztecs so all of the wealth of Mexico was in Tenochtitlan. Another attribute which encouraged the Europeans to conquer Mexico was the Aztecs leader Montezuma. Montezuma saw Cortes and his army as an army of gods so he backed down and surrendered without a fight. This upset the people so much that they lost faith in the government and anarchy was created. The Aztecs had no plan of attack because their supreme ruler, Montezuma, was imprisoned by the Spaniards. Overall I would have to say that because of the size of the Aztec empire and the weakness of their government they were conquered by Hernan Cortes and his power-monger conquistadors. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Differences of Native American Tribes .TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The Differences of Native American Cultures The cultures of Native American tribes varied greatly from geographical region to region. The tribes in the Pacific Northwest had plenty of time to be involved in intricate forms of art. Great Plains tribes believed in magic buffalos and were nomadic. Easten Woodlands tribes made some pottery. Great Basin tribes worshipped the different seasons. Southwest tribes valued peace and wisdom. California and Baja tribes prized staying in one place and didn't like change. The geography of the area in which a tribe lived determined the kind of culture that each tribe developed. The surrounding environments of the different areas often changed the beliefs of each tribe. Things such as food, plants, animals, weather, etc. were often a factor in determining culture. Take the Plains tribe the Cheyenne, for instance. They originated from the area around Wisconsin. There, they fished, hunted, farmed and gathered like any other Eastern Woodlands tribe. Later on, they moved to the Great Plains, where they had the buffalo hunt and the sun dance. Geography affected Cheyenne culture in this way. The buffalo hunt was created so, since the Great Plains lacked much food, the Cheyenne could get enough food to survive. Before they arrived at the plains, the buffalo hunt was unneccesary because of the bountiness of food. The Inuit people (known incorrectly as eskimos) were, of course, affected by their geography. Their language consisted of over 50 words for ice. They had to live in igloos, because of the lack of building resources. Shamans were popular and had a lot of power because, since food was so scarce, they were believed to have powers that could help find it. Pacific Northwest people were obviously affected by their geography. Food and resources were so plentiful they didn't have to spend too much time farming of gathering food. This gave them time to form very conplex art such as totem poles. Also, since they had so many resources, every year a potlach was held. A potlach was acelebration where people gave their possessions to others to distribute the wealth. The tribes in the Northwest believed in sharing wealth because of its bountifulness. These are just a few examples of tribal differences due to geography. Knowing a tribe's geography is the first step to knowing about a tribe. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Disaster at Hilshire.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 11 Feb 1997 Soc 313 Film Review 2 Disaster at Hillsborough Summary The movie "Disaster at Hillsborough" showed the complexity of a stampede. From the build-up of people outside the gate, to the disaster that ended in the death of 95 people. The film started out outside the stadium where 95 people died at a soccer game. The stadium was not equipped for the masses of people to show up all at the same place at the same time. According to the officer interviewed there was no plan in case of an emergency and no problems anticipated. The atmosphere outside the gates was pleasant and people were looking forward to a good game. The stampede started when the people in the rear realized that the game was to start before they were going to get in. The stampede could possibly been averted if the kickoff were delayed but the man "in charge" refused to delay. Just as at the "Who" concert the people in the rear of the line were in an acquisitive panic to get into the stadium. This pressure was recognized by the police in the front of the line and due to poor communication nothing could be done to stop it. A large gate "gate C" was finally opened to let off the pressure in front. This is when the true disaster occurred. People funneled straight onto the already full pens and created the stampede which killed the 95 people. People in the rear were in an acquisitive panic and the people in the front who were getting crushed were in a fearful panic. The emergency gates would open but the police, not realizing the situation, kept people in and closed the gates. Critique This example could not be anymore perfect to show a stampede and panic. All four components were met. (1) Partial entrapment; the reality is complete entrapment. As at the Who concert the only avenue of escape was blocked by the police. (2) Perceived threat; this comes from both ends of the panic. The people at the rear were threatened by the fact that they would miss the kickoff of the game or even not be able to get into the game. The people at the front were facing the threat of being crushed. (3) The partial breakdown of escape routs is obvious from the front. The gates to get out were blocked by the police and there was a high fence blocking everyone on all sides except the tunnel which was blocked by people trying to get into the pens. (4) Front to rear communications breakdown occurred when the people at the fence realized the situation and could not communicate it to the people at the rear to keep the people from crowding up the tunnel. The biggest thing that caused this disaster was the failure of control by police and the communication breakdown. Personal Reflection I see a correlation between this stampede and the riot in L.A. in that the leadership failed. The chief at Hillsborough froze and lost his capacity to control the situation. In L.A. the chief also lost his capacity of control. In both situations there was no plans for emergency procedures. In L.A. the police were undertrained and in Hillsborough there was just no plan in case something went wrong. The saddest part about these disasters is that they could possibly been prevented f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Discipline in Education Past and Present.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Peer-Tutoring Independant Study "Discipline in the Classroom: Past and Present" Throughout the history of classroom education, many different types of disciplinary systems have been applied by teachers and other authority figures in schools for the sole purpose of controlling student behaviour. These systems include corporal punishment, psychological abuse or neglect, and assertive discipline. Although two of these three topics are illegal at this time, they were all widely used in schools across the country a short time ago. Corporal punishment in general can be defined as the infliction of pain or confinement as a penalty for an offense committed by a student. During the time that corporal punishment was used by schools all over the United States and Canada, parents did not have any say in school discipline. It was completely up to the school authority figures on the type of punishment and the severity of the punishment given to the student. The classroom teacher had the most say in the matter since it was the teacher who usually administered the punishment to the students. Because of this, some teachers (who especially liked the idea of physical punishment) took advantage of the minor guidelines set by the principal to protect students from excessive physical beatings. These guidelines varied from school to school, but often included length, width and thickness of the paddle or any other weapon used, the amount of times the student may be struck by the weapon, and other minor details about other types of physical punishment. The list of weapons that were acceptable for teachers to use include long: rubber hoses, leather straps and belts, sticks, rods, straight pins, hard plastic baseball bats, and arrows. If at the time a teacher did not have his/her weapon, they would often resort to punching, kicking, slapping and shaking as ways to "get children's attention". Besides these common manoeuvres of punishment, other and often more painful techniques were used by teachers. Children in a class for the learning disabled claimed that their teacher, and her aide banged their heads into their desks until some students were unconscious, twisted their arms, and even tried strangulation. Another teacher shook hot tabasco sauce in the mouths of the troublesome student and smeared it in their faces. When parents found out about this specific act of cruelty, they were outraged and took their case to state officials. The final verdict on this case was that they saw nothing wrong with forcing kids to eat something they did not like (Butterfield 1983). In the Christian schools, this kind of punishment was related to the concept of original sin and the need to combat Satan by beating the devil out of children. This same idea was used in other religions as well, and children were beaten because of mental illness, or disease. One of the most common arguments for corporal punishment is that its abolition would leave teachers powerless to control students, especially those who might be a threat to the teacher. Despite this, it has been proven that most corporal punishment is inflicted against relatively defenceless students who are to small or weak to strike back. Now that corporal punishment is illegal in almost all areas including the Unites States and Canada, the only physical force that can be used by teachers is in specific situations (with the unintention of inflicting pain) such as to quell a disturbance, to protect oneself, property, or another person. When a child is physically abused, absence from the abuser results in a relatively quick healing of the physical wounds, but the emotional scars left by the abuse last a lifetime. For this reason, many psychologists believe that when a child is psychologically abused in schools, it will have a far worse effect on children all throughout their lifetime, and quite often lead to stress related diseases (ulcer, depression etc.) and may even lead to suicide. It is a common mistake that a child can not be psychologically abused unless they are physically beaten, or abused. This could not be farther from the truth. Physical abuse accounts for only 20% of the total psychological damage left on abused children. There were many things that were done to children by their classroom teachers that had a far worse result on the student than any physical abuse would ever have. The most common of these is constant humiliation. It was not uncommon for teachers in the past to repeatedly criticize and laugh at a particular students disability, or even creativity for the main reason of punishing the student for a minor offense. Teacher's did this by often reading a student's personal journal to the whole class, reading a students grades, and most often apprehending and degrading the student about his or her appearance, family, or school work in front of the whole class. This kind of humiliation is difficult to take even as an adult, never mind a ten year old child. As a result of this so called "punishment", many students who were constantly embarrassed and degraded over a long period of time suffered from psychological abnormalities such as insomnia, nightmares, and even schizophrenia. Another such psychological "punishment" used by teachers was seclusion. This is not to be confused with the idea of suspension, or removal from class. Seclusion often meant locking misbehaved children up in to small dark closets, or damp dark basements for long periods of time. In one specific case, an eleven year old child who slipped and fell while walking down the hall, was put into a small, dark, wet almost cubby hole where janitorial supplies were kept. He ended up spending an incredible twenty-eight hours in this closet before the teacher remembered that he had locked him in with a pad lock the day before. The boy was able to drink water because there was a running hose in the room. The parents of the child were so scared and outraged that authorities were notified, but once again it was decided that only the teachers can decide the severity of the punishment. Assertive discipline is a very broad term, and can be achieved by using many different techniques. The main idea of assertive discipline is that it forces a student to do or carry out an unpleasant task as a punishment for a wrongdoing. Assertive discipline is used in schools today, and does not include any physical, or emotional harm that may damage a students ability to learn. This does not mean that teachers can not apprehend and punish a student for intolerable behaviour, but they can not do it by any means of inflicting students with fear of possible abuse, or maltreatment. In this day and age, teachers must watch carefully how they discipline their students because one slip of the tongue, or hand for that matter may lead to criminal charges of assault, or other related charges. Many teachers have now been stripped of their right to teach just for a small comment to a student that may have been interpreted the wrong way by the student. It is recommended now that teachers always have a witness present while speaking privately, or a tape recorder to avoid such devastating mishaps. Every public and secondary school teacher in the world has their own discipline system. Some teachers are more lenient than others, but each teacher should ensure that the consequences for a misbehaving student is great enough to persuade students to think again before breaking any rules. There are many different systems a teacher can use. Still being used most of all is the traditional detention. In this system, if a student misbehaves, he/she must spend a certain amount of their own free time in the class after school or during lunch. The only problem with this is that there are the few student who don't care if they spend the rest of their life in the class and may brake rules on purpose just to achieve this. This is often due to unpleasant home or social situations. Another system that is still being widely used is the "Write Out" punishment. This includes writing certain things out 1000 times, to copying a page of a dictionary for homework. This is an all around unpleasant thing to do, and is probably one of the better systems used. Throughout all the different discipline plans, each teacher must be positive but stern while punishing students. Verbal apprehensions in private also may have a positive effect on misbehaving students. Of all the different types of discipline studied, Assertive discipline has the most positive results on students. It has been proven to be better at stopping students from unacceptable behaviour, as well as not damaging them emotionally, or physically. Both Physical and emotional abuse have a very negative effect on students at the time, and the emotional scars created last a life time. Bibliography Canter, Lee and Marlene Canter. Assertive Discipline. Santa Monica, CA: Lee Canter and Associates, 1992 Hyman, Irwin A. Reading Writing and the Hickory Stick. Toronto: Lexington Books, 1990. McManus, Mick. Troublesome Behaviour in the Classroom. New York: Nichols Publishing, 1989. "World Book Encyclopedia". Toronto: World Book Inc, 1991 edition. pp.88-89 f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Discuss critically the validity of the contention that the mo.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1) Discuss critically the validity of the contention that the motivation to work well depends on more than a high salary and good working conditions. This essay will define what motivation is, the influence and effect that money and good working conditions have on staff and the other factors and issues that motivate staff to work in the context of the workplace. In order to critically discuss and evaluate what motivates staff in the workplace it is imperitive to firstly define the concept of motivation. Motivation can be defined as the force or process which impels people to behave in the way they do; Newcomb (1950) said that an organism is motivated: " when - and only when - it is characterized both by a state of drive and by a direction of behaviour towards some goal which is selected in preference to all other possible goals. Motive, then is a concept which joins together drive and goal". This implies that providing the drive for staff to achieve goals that have been set is a vital and important part of the managerial role. Although it is apparent that to become or be motivated does not always rely on drive and goals - it can often arise through voluntary action as well. McDougall (1908) made this extension of the concept of motivation to 'voluntary behaviour' explicit by suggesting that instincts were the 'prime movers' of all human activity. McDougall disagrees with the drive theorists arguing that the instincts of staff in the workplace provide a major source of motivation. Hebb (1949) also disagrees with the assumptions that directed and persistant behaviour is always preceeded by 'extra neural bodily irritants'. Hebb claims that 'The term motivation then refers to: (1) To the existence of an organisational phase sequence, (2) to its direction or content, and (3) to its persistence in a given direction or stability of content. There are obviously many schools of thought and theories on exactly what is motivation and why people are motivated, but it seems that the general concensus opinion lies with Maslow (1970) "Motivation is the force or combination of forces which lead us to behave as we do". The actual force or forces that motivate will be now be discussed. Money is an important factor in the motivation of employees, as profit acts as a measure of success of a business, so many people judge their own success or failure and the esteem in which they are held by the employer or the renumeration received for the job done. It must be mentioned that although a high salary is not the only motivator, it can act as an incentive to work more productively; "Pay buys the goods and services that people want to satisfy other needs. The more boring the job, and the less its intrinsic interest the greater the importance of money as a motivator and incentive to effort". Hammond (1988). An organisation offers both intrinsic and extrinsic rewards to its employees. It must be realised that pay is only an extinsic reward. Employees derive intrinsic rewards from the job itself, for example an employee may be motivated by the degree of authority given at the work place or the sense of achievement derived from completing their task (achievement motivation). Intrinsic rewards are usually totally unrelated to an employees pay/salary. The extrinsic rewards that employees derive are not directly related to the work itself but are associated with doing the job; they include the salary/pay, financial incentives, fringe benefits, working conditions and interaction with other people in the work place. The importance of the different types of rewards varies according to each individual and the situation that they are in - their particular stage in life. For example, for an eighteen year old school leaver eager to rent his or her own flat , money might be the determining factor in deciding whether or not to do a job (extrinsic reward), whereas a fifty year old executive with less pressing money worries will probably be search for a more challenging job (intrinsic reward). These examples can be related to the work of Maslow (1954) who identified five categories of need which he claimed could be placed in a hierarchy (FIG 1). By this he meant that at any given moment an individual will be aiming to satisfy one particular category of need, but once this has been done that person will be interested in satisfying the next higher level. FIGURE 1 - Abraham Maslows Hierarchy of Needs (1954) The previous example can be related to Figure 1 - the eighteen year old has lower level needs than the executive and, consequently the reward an organisation must offer to motivate will differ. In this case money is the main motivator for the eighteen year old whereas the executive is concerned more with working conditions and intrinsic rewards. According to Herzberg the distinction between extrinsic rewards is a significant one in that he found the fomer (which he called 'maintenance' or 'hygiene' factors) are important to prevent an employee being dissatisfied at work whilst the latter (called motivators) are the ones which actually satisfy. If the hygiene factors are inappropriate - for example , working conditions are poor or the company rules are seen as unfair - the individuals will be dissatisfied. By improving the hygiene factors an organisation can help to remove employees discontent. If however, they want to motivate their staff rather than just removing the causes of dissatisfaction then intrinsic rewards are necessary. Herzbergs "Two Factor" theory of motivation supports the latter part of the contention that the motivation for staff to work depends on high salary and good working conditions. McClelland (1953) said that even when presented with a high salary good working conditions and all other contributing factors some people are still not motivated. McClellands theory of achievement motivation says that we all want to achieve but for some people it is a high priority while for others success is relatively unimportant. The strength for ones need for achievement is not an inherited personality feature but is determined by environmental influences and parental attitudes to goal achievement. These people who have high achivement goals will realistically set themselves goals they can achieve. At the same time, because they have a high need for personal achivements, the individual prefers situations where there is a high degree of autonomy, responsibility and control over tasks for these individuals high salaries and good working conditions are not the major providers of motivation. When it comes to motivating people what matters is not just the actual reward but also their perception of it. For example a superior may ask a subordinate to take over a responsibility for a task because he or she believes it will give the subordinate the chance to develop their abilty in a given area. However, the subordinate might well view this as additional and unwelcome work. To the superior it is an opportunity to give the subordinate more challenging tasks and enable them to gain more experience; to the subordinate it could simply be seen as extra duties. Perception is also important when it comes to assessing the liklihood that a particular reward will be received. To be motivated an individual must believe that rewards on offer are attainable. If people want what is being offered to them, but do not believe that they can achiveve the outsomes necessary to earn such rewards their motivation will obviously be low. Simply offering the individual the chance of greater responsibility is of limited value it that person does not feel they can perform well enough in the existing job to be awarded it. As Vroom (1964) highlighted in his expectancy theory, if people are to be motivated they must: (a) want the rewards offered (b) believe they can achieve the outcomes necessary to be awarded to them. In conclusion high salary and good working conditions alone are not sufficient moivators for all staff to work well. Within an organisation the level of motivation that individuals have to do their work primarily depends on the fit between and individuals needs and a range of factors such as basic pay, fringe benefits, job design and the quality of communication, the more motivated that person is likely to be. Ultimately levels of motivation in an organisation can always be improved but that really depends on management wanting to probe how people in the organisation are working, thinking and identifying with what they are doing. Whilst there are inevitably real problems involved in trying to identify and meet the needs of each individual, there is no doubt that many firms still do not do enough to motivate their employees and still many believe in the contention that the motivation for staff to work well depends on high salary and good working conditions. This essay has outlined that there are a vast array of factors that contribute to the motivation for staff to work well - all staff are individual - managers need to take a reductionist view as opposed to holistic when examining what motivates staff to work well - in order to formulate motivation stategies that encompass the need of all individuals. Bibliography PETERS, R.S. (1960) The Concept Of Motivation Second Edition, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd. VERNON, M.D. (1969) Human Motivation First Edition, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press DALE TIMPE, A (1986) Motivation of Personnel First Edition, Hampshire, Gower Publishing Ltd. BINDRA, D (1973) Motivation Second Edition, Buckinghamshire, Hazell Watson and Viney EVANS, P (1989) Motivation and Emotion Second Edition, Worcester, Billing & Sons Ltd. WEINER, B (1974) Achivement Motivation and Attribution Theory First Edition, New Jersey, General Learning Press HAMMOND, S (1988) Business Studies Fourth Edition, London, Longman Group UK STEFANOU, R (1992) Understanding Industry Third Edition, Bath, Bath Press f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\disrupting the universe.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Disrupting the Universe Dr. Jack Kevorkian did something that most people would never even think of doing or think that someone would do such a thing. He really did disrupt the universe by taking the whole world by surprise. Jack Kevorkian was the first person in the United States to assist in suicides in a big way. He started in 1990 by placing a newspaper add for assisted suicide. He then developed a device he called the Suicide Machine, which injected deadly drugs into the bloodstream. Once the shock passed over, the issue was brought up that he did not commit any crimes, or he is a murderer. Most people think very strongly in one way or the other. Myself and many other people believe that Jack Kevorkian has not done anything wrong and he should not be punished. He has been present at 46 suicides since 1990. He has been to jail numerous times , but always let off on bail or another technicality. 38 times he has not even gone to court for his assisted suicides. Assisted suicides are still illegal in every state, but he has gotten off on technicalities or some other issue. All of the people he assisted in suicides either were terminally ill or they wanted to be killed due to other serious medical problems. There have been reports of a person beating her son in tennis one week before she killed herself with the help of Jack Kevorkian and his suicide machine, but she was terminally ill and Dr. Kevorkian would not help kill people unless their life was in danger or they were not living comfortably. Kevorkian was previously a doctor dealing with terminally ill people and death counseling. From this experience he knew that for some people suicide was the only Solution. On the other hand, some people believe that what he started was a terrible thing. Just the other day there was a article in the newspaper that a man who was sick was planning to kill himself, so he had a party with all his friends as sort of a going away celebration. Going away for good. People who do not believe in assisted suicide think that Kevorkian has made people think it is all right to kill yourself when things are not going right in your life. Many people think he is a murderer because of what he has done, and in a way he is. Jack Kevorkian dared to do what he believed in and as a result surprised the Universe. He is still, after all the things said and done to him, sticking to what he believes in. Disrupting The Universe Mike Cunningham 12-27-96 Social Studies 2, Mr. Johnson f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Distinctly Canadian.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Distinctly Canadian Canada, federated country of North America, bounded on the north by the Arctic Ocean; on the northeast by Baffin Bay and Davis Strait, which separate it from Greenland; on the east by the Atlantic Ocean; on the south by the United States; and on the west by the Pacific Ocean and Alaska. Canada is the world's second largest country, surpassed in size only by Russia. Canada has a total area of 9,970,610 sq. km (3,849,652 sq. mi), of which 755,180 sq. km (291,575 sq. mi) is covered by bodies of fresh water such as rivers and lakes (Canadian Encyclopaedia, 1988). Canada contains great reserves of natural resources, notably timber, petroleum, natural gas, metallic minerals, and fish. The name Canada is derived from an Iroquoian term meaning "village" or "community." In Canada we have many images, practices, and items that make us one of the best, younger countries in the world. In such a short time for a country to exist, we have many images that make us very culturally rich in everyway. Probably the most important images, practices, and items come for our friend, the American Indians (or Native Americans). They were a definite asset to Canada's cultural growth. The American Indians came into Canada in a series of migrations that occurred during the last stages of the Pleistocene Ice Age, Mongoloid peoples from Asia entered North America, probably crossing the Bering Strait. Gradually they spread over the continent and into South America. By 1600, more than 250,000 of their aboriginal descendants inhabited what is now Canada. Developing a Stone Age economy, they hunted, fished, and gathered food and, in warmer areas, also farmed. The basic social unit was the band, which varied from a few families to several hundred people. In areas of higher settlement density, bands were organized into tribes and even larger units. The largest linguistic group was the Algonquian, which included migratory hunting tribes such as the Cree and Naskapi in the eastern subarctic region and the Abenaki and Micmac in the eastern woodlands on the coast. By the 18th century, Algonquians had spread west, where Ottawa, Ojibwa, Blackfoot, Plains Cree, and others roamed the prairies and plains in search of buffalo. The Iroquoian speaking tribes the Huron and the Iroquois-lived in permanent farm settlements and had a highly developed tribal organization in the St. Lawrence Valley and around Lakes Ontario and Erie (Canadian Encyclopaedia, 1988). Tribes of Salishan, Athabascan, and other linguistic groups occupied fishing villages along the rivers of interior British Columbia. On the Pacific coast, Salishan tribes, such as the Bellacoola, and related Wakashan-speaking tribes-the Kwakiutl and Nootka-developed a rich culture, based on salmon fishing, expressed in potlatch ceremonies and carved wood totem poles. In the western subarctic, the Athabascan group-Carrier, Dogrib, and others led a primitive hunting existence similar to that of the Algonquians. Small, isolated Inuit bands developed a unique culture based on hunting seals and caribou, enabling them to survive the harsh environment of the Arctic (Canadian Encyclopaedia, 1988). As we can see the Indians gave us many items that give us our culture, Native Indians can be said that they are basically our culture. Whatever they have as images, items, or practices, are ours also. We can tell from the Natives that they feel that the animal kingdom was an important part of their lives. They show this from the things they hunt and the items they make (totem poles, with many sacred animals carved into them). Some very important Canadian animals are: bison (buffalo), caribou, salmon, beaver, loon, and the moose. These animal images are distinctly Canadian. Some of these animals live elsewhere, but when people think of theses animals, they think Canada. Bison, the largest terrestrial animal in North America, where it is usually called buffalo. The bison is characterized by a hump over the front shoulders; short, sharply pointed horns (in both sexes) curving outward and up from the sides of the massive head; and slimmer hindquarters. A mature bull of the North American bison is about 2 m (about 6.5 ft) high at the hump and 2.7 to 3.7 m (9 to 12 ft) long and weighs 850 to 1100 kg (1800 to 2400 lb); the female is smaller. The head, neck, forelegs, and front parts of the body have a thick coat of long, dark hair. The rear part of the body is covered with much shorter hair. The adult bull usually has a black beard about 30 cm (about 12 in) long (Canadian Encyclopaedia, 1988). Until the 19th century, as many as 60 million bison lived on the Great Plains from Mexico into Canada, and some were found east of the Mississippi River. They were central to the existence of the Plains peoples, who used them for food, hides, and bone implements; even the dried dung, called buffalo chips, was used as fuel (Canadian Encyclopaedia, 1988). Barren Ground caribou are native to the tundra regions of northern Canada, Greenland, and Alaska. Historically, the Inuit (Eskimo) living in arctic regions have depended on these animals for survival, using every part of the body for food, implements, or clothing. The caribou usually live in small herds of cows and calves and a few bulls. Most of the older bulls stay in separate small bands, except during rut, and travel on the fringes of migrating herds (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1975). Atlantic Salmon, the true salmon, the largest members of the salmon family, are characterized by tasty flesh that is often orange-red. The common salmon of the North Atlantic Ocean that is sent to market averages about 7 kg (about 15 lb) in weight, but specimens weighing more than 45 kg (more than 100 lb) have been caught. The Atlantic salmon migrates to cold, fresh water in late spring or early summer, swimming upstream at an average rate of up to 6.4 km (4 mi) per day. Because salmon can jump as much as 3.7 m (12 ft) out of water, they clear most obstacles in their path. The female lays as many as 20,000 eggs in October or November, after which time the adult salmon float downstream and return to the sea (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1975). Unlike the various species of Pacific salmon, the Atlantic salmon does not die after its first spawning but returns year after year to its breeding place. The newly hatched young, which are known as parrs or brandlings because of the dark transverse markings on their sides, remain in fresh water for about two years. At this time, the young, which are known as smolts and which have become silvery in colour, descend to the sea. Upon the first return of the Atlantic salmon to its spawning ground, the fish is known as a grilse. After spawning, it is known as a Kelt. Adult males travelling toward the spawning grounds are known as dog salmon (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1975). Several subspecies of the Atlantic salmon live in the lakes of the northern United States without ever descending to sea; such salmon are known as landlocked salmon. Landlocked salmon are much smaller than are migrating salmon, attaining a maximum weight of about 16 kg (about 35 lb). The two most important landlocked populations of the Atlantic salmon are the Sebago salmon, found from New Hampshire to New Brunswick, and the ouananiche, of Lac Saint-Jean, Canada (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1975). Beaver, semiaquatic mammal noted for the building of dams. One species of beaver occurs in North America, the other in Eurasia. The two species differ chiefly in the shape of the nasal bones and are so much alike that some authorities consider them to be varieties of the same species. They are large rodents; the average adult beaver weighs about 16 kg (about 35 lb), but specimens as heavy as 40 kg (90 lb) have been found, and some extinct beavers were almost bearlike in size. (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1975). Beavers have long been exploited for their fur, and for many years during the 18th and 19th centuries hundreds of thousands of beaver skins were exported to Europe from North America annually. The animals were also sometimes destroyed because of the damage they did to forests and the flooding occasionally caused by dams. Ceaseless slaughter led to near extinction of beavers in both Europe and North America. Although, they are becoming reestablished in Canada (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1975). Loon, common name for five species of diving birds having heavy, straight, sharp-edged bills; heavy and elongated bodies; short, slender, pointed wings; and short, stiff tails. Their legs are short, and the three front toes are webbed. Because their legs are placed far back on the body, loons cannot walk on land. They therefore place their nests along the shores of lakes or in marshes and swamps, where they can slide directly into the water. The nests are usually loose structures made of aquatic vegetation, in which the female lays two dark brownish eggs (Canadian Encyclopaedia, 1988). The common loon, an American species, breeds throughout much of Canada and the northern United States, wintering at sea south to the Gulf of Mexico, where it molts and becomes flightless. It is 70 to 90 cm (28 to 36 in) long. In summer its back is black spotted with white, and its head and throat black with a green or blue sheen. Winter and immature birds are gray (Canadian Encyclopaedia, 1988). In North America, Moose are found in wooded areas of Canada and the northern United States. An adult may stand 1.4 to 2.35 m (4.6 to 7.7 ft) high at the shoulder and weigh 200 to 825 kg (440 to 1820 lb). The males bear enormous, broad, flattened antlers with marginal prongs, or tines. The antlers are shed each year after the mating season, by which time they can attain a spread of 1.5 m (5 ft) or more (Canadian Encyclopaedia, 1988). Moose generally are solitary, although they may form into small bands in winter and trample down the snow where good cover exists, making a "moose yard" where the animals stay while the food lasts. In deep snow a moose is helpless and easily hunted by humans on snowshoes. During the mating season, bulls battle for the cows, and their roars may be heard for great distances. After a gestation of 226 to 264 days, one to three calves are born. If a baby is born the following year, the mother drives off her first offspring, although the young may rejoin the mother after a few weeks. For a time the species was threatened with extinction, both in Europe and in North America, because of indiscriminate hunting. Modern game laws and areas set aside for the protection of these animals have helped to save them (Canadian Encyclopaedia, 1988). Canada does not only equate beautiful animals, but Canada also includes, two nation sports; Ice Hockey, and Lacrosse. Again we see the influence of the Natives on Canadian items, by looking at Lacrosse. Lacrosse was invented by the natives of Canada, although it was much more violent then it seems to be presently. Lacrosse, field game played by two opposing teams, with a ball and a special netted stick, or crosse, with which the ball is caught, carried, and thrown. The game, originally played as training for warfare by the Native Americans of North America, and called baggataway, was adopted by the French-Canadians. They called the head of the stick used in the game la crosse because it resembles a bishop's crosier or cross. The National Lacrosse Association (now the Canadian Lacrosse Association) was formed in 1867 to govern the sport. Since then, lacrosse has, by reason of culture, tradition, and popularity, become the Canadian national game (Canadian Encyclopaedia, 1988). Then their is ice hockey, one of the most popular sports in whole wide world. Spectator may argue that beer is part of the game, but that is another essay topic. Hockey, game in which two opposing teams attempt to drive a puck through the goal of the opponent by means of sticks that are curved or hooked at one end. Ice hockey is probably a descendant of bandy, a sport that developed in England in the late 18th century but is now played only in the Baltic countries, Sweden, and Russia. Modern ice hockey was devised in either 1853 or 1860 by British soldiers stationed in Canada. Rules were set by students at McGill University in Montréal, Québec, in 1879, and several amateur clubs and leagues were established in Canada by the late 1880s. The game is believed to have been first played in the United States in 1893. By the beginning of the 20th century the sport had spread to Great Britain and other parts of Europe. Today, ice hockey is played in some 30 countries, principally in North America, Scandinavia, and Russia. "It is the national sport of Canada" (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1975). Probably the two most important Canadian images are the Mounted Police, and the Maple Leaf. We can be absolutely positive that if we ask anybody (with reasonable sanity) about the Maple Leaf or the Mounted Police they will surely say Canada. Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), in Canada, national police force, known familiarly as the Mounties, which, since 1950, enforces law in all provinces except Québec and Ontario. The corps, organized in 1873 as the Northwest Mounted Police, gained respect during the 19th century for combatting smuggling, horse thievery, and desperadoes in the violent northern territories. It is the only law enforcement body in the Northwest and Yukon territories of Canada, where members serve voluntarily. The RCMP has its national headquarters in Ottawa, Ontario, and is under the jurisdiction of the solicitor-general of Canada (Canadian Encyclopaedia, 1988) The force is widely known for its high degree of training, military bearing and pride, and ceremonial horse shows, and the Mounties have been the subject of many stories and films. Their parade uniform consists of a low, broad-brimmed hat, scarlet jacket, and blue trousers with a yellow stripe (Canadian Encyclopaedia, 1988). The Maple Leaf represents individual citizens and the nation as a whole, expressing its collective will and sovereity. The maple leaf is what is on our flag that represents all that we stand for. The maple leaf includes everybody and everything that is Canadian. Freedom is was the maple leaf on our flag tells us. Canada has many images, items, and practices that weren't mention, which are just as important as the ones above. Yet from only such a few Canadian images, it is very obvious that we are still linked enormously to the native cultures. Most of the items that are distinctly Canadian are descended from our native brothers. This is shown by the number of images Canada has that are related to nature, and natural life. Canada has the most images that are related to nature in all of the world. References 1988. Canadian Encyclopaedia, 2nd edition. Hurtig Publishers, Ltd. Edmonton, Alberta. 1975. Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th edition. William Benton Publisher, Inc. Toronto, Ontario. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Divorce in the United States.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Divorce in the United States Divorce involves the recognition that a marriage has hopelessly failed and that at least one of the partners has no desire to continue the marital relationship. Divorce legally dissolves a marriage, and permits the partners to remarry if they choose. Divorce differs from an annulment, which declares a marriage invalid because of some flaw in the contract. The early American settlers brought with them three different views on divorce: 1) the Roman Catholic view that marriage was a sacrament and that there could be no divorce; 2) the English view that divorce was a legislative matter; and 3) the Protestant view that marriage and divorce were secular matters to be handled by the civil authorities. The Constitution of the United States did nothing to limit the rights of the states to enact their own laws governing marriage and divorce. Despite several efforts to amend the Constitution, to allow Congress to pass federal legislation on divorce, to this day the states retain separate laws. Because divorce laws vary from state to state, the "migratory divorce" developed: couples would move temporarily to a state where divorce was easier to obtain than at home. For example, a couple living in New York State, where until 1967 the only grounds for divorce was adultery, would establish residence in Nevada -- a procedure that took only 6 weeks -- and file for divorce on grounds of mental cruelty. Popular attitudes toward divorce changed as the United States became more urbanized and less religious. The increasing acceptance of divorce was reflected in court interpretations of existing laws and in new legislation enacted by the states. Two tendencies merged, making possible the establishment of new and easier grounds for divorce. The focus of state divorce, which previously concerned itself with specifying legal grounds for divorce, shifted to criteria concerning the breakdown of the marital relationship. This could be seen in conditions that allowed divorce for alcoholism, drug addiction, or nonsupport. Another tendency permitted divorce if both parties gave of voluntarily separating and living apart for a specified period of time. For example, in 1967, New York allowed divorce for couples who had been legally separated for 2 years, eliminating the search for a guilty party. In 1969, California permitted divorce when "irreconcilable differences" arose, thus becoming the first state with a "no-fault" divorce law. Nearly all the other states soon added no-fault divorce options to their existing laws. Published statistics show that the United States has the highest divorce rate in the world, and in recent decades it has held fairly steady. In 1975 the rate was 4.9 per 1,000 people (over twice that of Great Britain) and in 1990 it was 4.7 per 1,000. It is sometimes said that in the United States, for every four marriages, a divorce occurs. Divorce statistics, however, tend to be misleading. In 1990 about 2.4 million marriages took place in the United States and about 1.2 million divorces -- about one divorce occurred for every two marriages. It would be equally true, however, to say that 80 percent of all married people are still in their first marriage. Statisticians speak of the "crude" divorce rate -- the number of divorces per 1,000 population. The crude divorce rate of 4.7 in 1990 in the United States may be compared with a crude marriage rate of 9.7 (9.7 marriages per 1,000 population). An even better measure is the number of marriages or divorces per 1,000 "population at risk," that is, the total number of persons who are in fact married at the time. In the United States in 1987, there were 123 divorced persons for every 1,000 married persons; in other terms, the divorced portion equaled about 12 percent of the married portion of the population. When marriage and divorce rates in several countries several factors must be taken into account: the proportion of the population that is of marrying age, the proportion that marry, and the age at marriage. Because people now live longer and marry earlier, the size of the population "at risk" increases. Only in Japan is the married proportion of the population as high as it is in the United States. Moreover, Americans who get divorced are likely to remarry. In the mid-1980's approximately 50% of divorced U.S. women remarried. Sixty years earlier, two out of three divorced persons did not remarry. If the divorce rate has risen noticeably, so has the marriage rate. Anthropologists report that many societies have even higher divorce rates than that of the United States. For example, Nigeria would have a divorce rate approaching 100 percent if some married people did not die young. The belief that high divorce rates reduce social organization has not been proved. The social effects of divorce depend on what happens to families that experience it and on the arrangements society makes for them. Divorce can be a devastating experience. While the divorce is in progress, and for some time afterward, both parties are likely to feel personally rejected, cheated in the economic arrangements, misrepresented legally, bitter about the co-parental arrangements, lonely because they have lost friends, and afraid of living alone. In the United States, the mother traditionally has been supported economically by the father, and granted custody of the children unless she is found unfit by the courts. The father is usually awarded more material possessions and awarded the right to visit the children regularly. Prolonged and bitter struggles for legal custody have often scarred both parents and children. In extreme cases, the parent losing a custody conflict, or upset about material divisions may even resort to burglary or kidnapping his or her own children. In recent decades, however, other patterns of child custody and economic arrangement have emerged alongside the old. Some mothers have voluntarily relinquished custody in order to pursue other goals, or because they believe the children may fare better with the father. Joint custody has also become more common, with parents sharing responsibility for the raising of their children, even after remarriage. Fair divisions of material possessions are rising as more women enter the work force and consequently contribute equally. Divorce has become an ingrained part of American society -- almost similar to marriage. Previously, I believed that married couples with children should avoid divorce for the sake of their children. However, after compiling data for this report and discussing divorce with others, I have determined that dissatisfied couples -- who avoid divorce -- often take their anger out on their children. This practice often harms the child emotionally -- or in some cases -- physically. Although my parents are not divorced, I have become acquainted with many people whose parents are divorced. Through discussions, I have determined that most of these people felt relieved when their parents finally got divorced -- because it ended the constant arguing and violence at home. Bibliography Albrecht, Stan L., et al., Divorce and Remarriage (1983); AUTHOR: Albrecht, Stan L. TITLE: Divorce and remarriage : problems, adaptations, and adjustments / Stan L. Albrecht, Howard M. Bahr, and Kristen L. Goodman. PUBL.: Westport, Conn. : Greenwood Press, FORMAT: xiii, 211 p. ; 25 cm. DATE: 1983 Belli, M., and Kranzler, Divorcing (1988); AUTHOR: Belli, Melvin M., 1907- TITLE: Divorcing / by Melvin Belli and Mel Krantzler. PUBL.: New York : St. Martin's Press, FORMAT: xii, 434 p. ; 23.5 cm. DATE: 1988 Clapp, Genevieve, Divorce and New Beginnings (1992); AUTHOR: Clapp, Genevieve. TITLE: Divorce and new beginnings : an authoritative guide to recovery and growth, solo parenting, and stepfamilies / Genevieve Clapp. PUBL.: New York : Wiley, FORMAT: xv, 377 p. ; 23 cm. DATE: 1992 Myers, M. F., Men and Divorce (1989); AUTHOR: Myers, Michael F. TITLE: Men and divorce / Michael F. Myers. PUBL.: New York : Guilford Press, FORMAT: xv, 286 p. ; 24 cm. DATE: 1989 Splinter, John P., The Complete Divorce Recovery Handbook (1992); AUTHOR: Splinter, John P. TITLE: The complete divorce recovery handbook : grief, stress, guilt, children, co-dependence, self-esteem, dating, remarriage/ John P. Splinter. PUBL.: Grand Rapids, Mich. : Zondervan, FORMAT: p. cm. DATE: 1992 Walzac, Yvette, and Burns, Sheila, Children and Divorce (1984). AUTHOR: Teyber, Edward. TITLE: Helping children cope with divorce / Edward Teyber. EDITION: 1st pbk. ed. PUBL.: New York : Lexington Books ; Toronto : Maxwell Macmillan Canada; New York : Maxwell Macmillan International, FORMAT: ix, 221 p. ; 24 cm. DATE: 1994 f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Doctrine of Fascism.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The Doctrine of Fascism Some General Ideological Features "Reactionary concepts plus revolutionary emotion result in Fascist mentality." -Wilhelm Reich Is nationalism inherently evil? Would a one-world government be more preferable? Are appreciating and defending one's own culture and cultural values somehow primitive instincts that must be overcome by the educational efforts of the enlightened? We have all heard of Fascism, but our image is usually of a brutal soldier wearing a uniform emblazoned with a swastika. Most people in the U.S. are aware that the U.S. and its allies fought a war against the Nazis, but there is much more to know if one is to learn the important lessons of our recent history. Adolph Hitler's Nazis were certainly the most prolific of the Fascist states. The seeds of Fascism, however, were planted in Italy. "Fascism is reaction," said Benito Mussolini, author of The Doctrine of Fascism, but reaction to what? Mussolini forged Fascism in post-World War I in Europe. The national aspirations of many European peoples nations without states, peoples arbitrarily assigned to political entities with little regard for custom or culture had been crushed after World War I. The humiliation imposed by the victors in the Great War, coupled with the hardship of the economic Depression, created bitterness and anger. That anger frequently found its outlet in an ideology that asserted not just the importance of the nation, but its unquestionable superiority and predestined role in history. Italy was the birthplace of Fascist ideology. Mussolini, ironically a former socialist journalist, organized the first Fascist movement in 1919 at Milan. In 1922 Mussolini led a march on Rome, he was given a government post by the king, and began transforming the Italian government into a Fascist state. In 1938 he forced the last remains of democracy, the Council of Deputies, to vote themselves out of existence, leaving Mussolini dictator of Fascist Italy. Fascism and the Doctrine of Fascism is more complex than popular belief. What, then, is the nature of Fascism? Fundamental Ideas The doctrine tells of a world where the instinctiveness of man to live a life of selfish and momentary pleasure are subjugated by a moral law. A law which binds together individuals into a mission in which through the denial of themselves and sacrifice of private interests realizes complete spiritual existence. In essence, Fascism attempts to create a state where the citizens do not exist individually, it creates instruments for the state to manipulate. It achieves this under the guise of spirituality. The hopeless, cheerless, and forgotten are the most susceptible to the Fascism virus. By putting them into uniforms and incorporating them into organized movement, Fascism makes them feel as if they belong to something great, something greater than their individual lives. It emphasizes the myth of a national or racial rebirth after a period of decline or destruction. To this end, Fascism calls for a spiritual revolution against signs of moral decay such as individualism and materialism. Fascism is opposed to all the individualistic abstractions of a materialistic nature. The Fascist conception is for the State, and as long as the individual is under the command of the state, it is also for the individual. The Doctrine of Fascism preaches that the true reality of the individual is the state. Therefore, anything outside the state or in opposition to the state has no true value. A citizen cannot believe in anything that the state does not want him to believe in, nor can he do anything the state does not want him to do. The state becomes the citizens supreme authority and the will of the citizen is the state. The Doctrine of Fascism is hostile towards Socialism, liberalism, and democracy. Fascism rejects the concept of class struggle as a threat to the unity of the state. While Socialism refutes the need for any type of government at all, Fascism is founded by the concept that there is nothing but government. Fascism rejects the liberal doctrines of individual autonomy and rights and representative government. Fascism, according to Mussolini, is for liberty, the liberty of the state that is. Individual liberty is only a facade for a life of trite material pleasure. Only through the state can a man have true liberty. Democracy, as told in the Doctrine of Fascism, equates the nation to the majority, thus lowering it to the level of the majority. A state should be ruled by the quality of ideas, not quantity of supporters. Therefore, the state should be unified and lead by the will of a few good men, perhaps even one great one. The doctrine forms a symbiotic relationship between the individual and the state. The Fascist state controls the individual and at the same time is the individual. Without the state the individual does not truly exist. The state is absolute. Without the unified multitude the state cannot exist. The doctrine is a writing of extreme right-wing ideology that celebrates the state as a organic community transcending all other loyalties. Political and Social Doctrines Fascism does not consider happiness possible, certainly not individual happiness. It views pacifism as weak and incapable. It rejects all theological theories according to which man would reach a definitive stabilized condition at a certain period in history. Thus, as Machiavelli states in The Prince, there is a need for constant readiness for war. In addition in order to maintain the state, it must constantly expand. To stop the expansion of the Fascist state is to kill it. It must continually test it's power and limitless. It must make it's power felt abroad, if through war then so be it Marxian Socialism, according to Mussolini in the Doctrine of Fascism, is the doctrine of historical materialism. Through Marxian Socialism the history of civilization can only be explained as a struggle of interests between differing social groups, almost as if humans merely assist in the economic process. The Fascist disagrees with this concept, Fascism glorifies heroes and romanticizes about great visions of grandeur not associated with economic motives. The doctrine also argues that class struggles are not the primary agent of social change. The Doctrine of Fascism, also attacks democracies practicality. Fascism denies that a society can be ruled successfully by a majority. Especially through periodical consultation. The Fascist state is a spiritual and moral fact because it makes concrete the political, juridical, economic organization of the nation. The state is past, present, and most of all future. The State guarantees security; it provides and transmits spirit to the people; it educates them for civic virtue; and it calls them to unity. When the sense of the state declines and the materialistic and selfish tendencies of individuals and groups prevail, the Fascist state will move to their decline. Surprisingly, the Fascist state does not have a set theology. Mussolini criticizes Robispierre for attempting to create a God, and the Bolsheviks for attempting to end faith. The Fascist state approves of religion. In the Fascist state, faith is defended and respected. Fascist states are empirical ones, not only territorially, but spiritually as well. Fascism manifests it's vitality through the empire. The Fascist empire must always grow or it will inevitably fall. Empire is the highest form of human expression of power. The Doctrine of Fascism by Benito Mussolini is an influential document which has changed the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It is my conviction that this document is largely responsible for the deaths millions innocent people. Having read the doctrine, it is frightening to think if a state of men as driven, as ruthless, and most of all as dedicated as Mussolini had described could ever be assembled again. Fascism is not only a form of government, it is a system of manipulation. It transforms human beings into mindless utensils at the bidding of the state. It lessens the value of individual human life and achievement. By creating the facades of the state's supremacy, Fascism is able to create an atmosphere in which the masses of common folk voluntarily join in a supposedly spiritual and heroic mission. In it's drive to power, Fascism denies the individual's very existence outside the state. Peace and tranquillity are not options in a Fascist state. According to Mussolini, war is inevitable, often preferable. A state such as that, guided by the wrong man can only lead to disaster. "The great masses of people. . .will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one." -Adolph Hitler, student of The Doctrine of Fascism f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Domestic Violence Against Women A SocioEconomic Crisis.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Introduction Domestic Violence Against Women is a global issue reaching across national boundaries as well as socio-economic, cultural, racial and class distinctions. It is a problem without frontiers. Not only is the problem widely dispersed geographically, but its incidence is also extensive, making it a typical and accepted behavior. Only recently, within the past twenty-five years, has the issue been "brought into the open as a field of concern and study" (Violence Against Women in the Family, page 38). Domestic violence is not an isolated, individual event but rather a pattern of repeated behaviors that the abuser uses to gain power and control over the victim. Unlike stranger-to-stranger violence, in domestic violence situations the same perpetrator repeatedly assaults the same victim. These assaults are often in the form of physical injury, but may also be in the form of sexual assault. However the abuse is not only physical and sexual, but also psychological. Psychological abuse means intense and repetitive humiliation, creating isolation, and controlling the actions of the victim through intimidation or manipulation. Domestic violence tends to become more frequent and severe over time. Oftentimes the abuser is physically violent sporadically, but uses other controlling tactics on a daily basis. All tactics have profound effects on the victim. Perpetrators of domestic violence can be found in all age, racial, ethnic, cultural, socio-economic, linguistic, educational, occupational and religious groups. Domestic violence is found in all types of intimate relationships whether the individuals are of the same or opposite sex, are married or dating, or are in a current or past intimate relationship. There are two essential elements in every domestic violence situation: the victim and abuser have been intimately involved at some point in time, and the abuser consciously chooses to use violence and other abusive tactics to gain control over the victim. In some instances, the abuser may be female while the victim is male; domestic violence also occurs in gay and lesbian relationships. However, 95% of reported assaults on spouses or ex-spouses are committed by men against women (MTCAWA e-mail interview) "It is a terrible and recognizable fact that for many people, home is the least safe place" (Battered Dreams, 9). Domestic violence is real violence, often resulting in permanent injuries or death. Battering is a widespread societal problem with consequences reaching far beyond individual families. It is conduct that has devastating effects for individual victims, their children and their communities. In addition to these immediate effects, there is growing evidence that violence within the "family becomes the breeding ground for other social problems such as substance abuse, juvenile delinquency, and violent crimes of all types" (MTCAWA e-mail interview). Domestic violence against women is not merely a domestic issue; but, rather a complex socio-economical crisis that threatens the interconnected equilibrium of the entire social structure. Causes & Effects "Within the family there is a historical tradition condoning violence" (Violence Against Women: The Missing Agenda, 29). Domestic violence against women accounts for approximately 40 to 70% of all violent crime in North America. However, the figures don't tell the entire story; less than 10% of such instances are actually reported to police (The Living Family, 204). The causes of domestic violence against women are numerous. Many claim stress is the substantial cause of domestic conflict resulting in violence. Though stress in the workplace is a contributing factor, it is by no means the substantial one. Many people suffer from stress disorders, but most don't resort to violence as a means of release. It is apparent that the substantial causes have more to do with the conditioning of males culturally, and within the family of orientation than anything else. Historically, women have been treated more as belongings than human beings; Old English Common Law permitted a man to abuse his wife and kids, as long as he didn't use a stick thicker than the width of his thumb--"Rule of Thumb" (The Living Family, 201). Culturally, men have been conditioned to repress their feelings of emotion--always acting like the tough guy, the linebacker, the cowboy. But, when confronted with an emotionally difficult conflict, one which is impossible to shove down deep, they irrupt in volcanic proportions, often taking out years of repressed rage on those closest to them, in particular their own family. However, what seems to be the most significant cause of the male tactic of violent conflict resolution is violence within the family of orientation. Statistics show that 73% of male abusers had grown up in a family where they saw their mother beaten, or experienced abuse themselves (MTCAWA e-mail interview). Using the (relatively accepted) Freudian model, which claims that all mental illness stems from traumatic childhood trauma, one can see how there is a direct correlation between violence in the family of orientation and violence within the family of procreation. And, indeed, abusers are mentally ill, though the illness tends to be more subtle than others: many abusers display a Jekyll&Hyde personality, where they are nothing like their domestic selves outside the home. In most cases the cycle of violence starts slowly; it usually consists of a slap in the face or a hard shove. But the frequency and degree of violence escalates with time. The abuser will justify the abuse by pointing out his wife's inadequacies and faults. But, no matter how wrong the wife is, there is little, if no, justification for spousel abuse within a civil society. The real issue at hand is the neurosis within the male psyche. Just as in rape, the key issue is control. Male abusers are laden with fear about losing power. They inflict physical abuse on their spouse to prove that they have, still have, and will have control over their spouses (and/or children.) They won't stop there either. The pattern of abuse involves severe mental torture and humiliation--blaming, threatening, ignoring, isolating, forcing sex, monitoring phone calls, and restricting any form of social life. It is a vicious cycle of abuse, where the wife is almost literally chained to the husband. Her self-esteem has been obliterated. She is financially, emotionally, and functionally helpless. She is incapable of reaching out for help for herself or for her children. At this point the abuse gets more routine; the abuser sites his partner's pathetic state as more reason to beat her. And the victim sinks deeper, and more beatings ensue. She has been infected with psychological-AIDS; she has no defense ("immune system") to combat the disease of abuse. For women, escaping an abusive relationship is VERY difficult. And the abuse usually doesn't stop at the discretion of the male. An in-depth study of all one-on-one murder and non-negligent manslaughter cases in Canada from 1980 to 1984 found that 62% of female victims were killed by a male partner (Violence Against Women Homepage). It is painfully clear that victims have little but two choices: leave or die. Sadly, the latter is the easier one. Domestic Violence as a Health Issue The World Health Organization defines health as "a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity" (In the Health of Women: A Global Perspective, 78). Based on this, domestic violence against women is clearly a health problem. In 1984, the U.S. Surgeon General declared domestic violence against women as the number ONE health problem (Violence Against Women Homepage). Physical violence is the most basic form of domestic violence, leading to extensive injury, unsuccessful pregnancies and even murder. As mentioned above, in Canada 62% of women murdered were killed by an intimate male partner. These are deaths caused by a preventable social problem. Actual or threatened physical violence, psychological violence and the denial of physical and economic resources all have an enormous impact on women's mental health. "A history of victimization is seen as a strong risk factor for the development of mental health problems" (MTCAWA e-mail interview). These problems take many forms, all affecting women's ability to attain a basic quality of life for herself and her family. Abuse is strongly associated with alcoholism and drug use in women (Facts About Domestic Violence). It also can lead to "fatigue and passivity coupled with an extreme sense of worthlessness" (Violence Against Women in the Family, 78 ). These symptoms together remove any initiative and decision making ability from the victim. This lethargy, coupled with economic barriers, makes escape from the situation very difficult. The lack of initiative also thwarts women's abilities to participate in activities outside of the home. High levels of stress and depression are also extremely common mental health problems for victims of family violence, often leading to suicide (Facts About Domestic Violence). In the United States, one quarter of suicide attempts by white women and one half of attempts by African American women are preceded by abuse (In the Health of Women: A Global Perspective, 128). The World Bank's analysis found domestic violence to be a major cause of disability and death among women; the burden of family violence is comparable to that of HIV, tuberculosis, cardiovascular disease or cancer (Domestic Violence Against Women: A Global Issue, 29). In industrialized nations one in five healthy days of life are lost to women age 15 to 44 due to domestic violence (Fact Sheet About Domestic Violence) Domestic violence "diverts the scarce resources of national health care systems to the treatment of a preventable social ill" (Violence Against Women in the Family, 87). Medical costs for the treatment of abused women total at least 3 to 5 billion dollars annually in the United States. Battered women in the United States are four to five times more likely than non-battered women to require psychiatric treatment, and over one million women in the U.S. use emergency medical services for injuries related to battering each year. Finally, families in the United States in which domestic violence occurs use doctors eight times more often, visit the emergency room six times more often and use six times more prescription drugs than the general population (Facts About Domestic Violence.) A Socio-Economic Crisis Domestic violence against women is not an individual or family problem. It is an important social issue. Using the Systems Theory as a theoretical framework helps show the resonating effect of such violence. The family unit is one of many sub-systems. Together, all these different sub-systems make up the one big system (i.e., society). The human body serves as a good example: when one organ (sub-system) is malfunctioning, all other organs are effected (other sub-systems). This will have an effect on the whole body itself (society). Although the family unit is only one among the many sub-systems, it is considered to be the most important of them all--the heart, if you will. Since the family unit is responsible for the socialization of children who will later go on to participate in other sub-systems, than it is logical to assume that a deterioration in the crucial family unit can result in a deterioration within other sub-systems, and of course, the entire system itself. As mentioned above, the sub-system of health care is feeling the pressure. Something as preventable as domestic violence against women is diverting funds from an already under-funded health care system. There are people out there who need serious medical treatment, but will never, or at the very most, will get insufficient treatment. In the U.S., domestic violence against women ranks as one of the most expensive health problems (Facts About Domestic Violence). Monies allocated to the medical treatment of abused women (3 to 5 billion dollars annually) diverts much needed funds from such already under-funded institutions as education, law enforcement, social services etc. Therefore the possibility exists that adults of the future will be sparsely educated delinquents; crime will be on the increase; and important social services won't be able to look out for the welfare of the people--such as shelters for abused women. The result is long term decay within the entire system, which will add further to the decay within the family, which will cause the entire vicious cycle to continue. As previously mentioned, 73% of male abusers were abused, or saw abuse as children. Thus an epidemic of violence within the family of orientation is a primary cause of psychological disfunction--in specific, violent conflict resolution--which is responsible for the breakdown of the entire social order. U.S. Justice Department statistics show that at least 80% of men in prison grew up in violent homes (Facts About Domestic Violence.) And in at least half of the wife abusing families, the children were battered as well. And 63% of boys ages 11 to 20 who commit homicide, murder the man who was abusing their mother. As mentioned initially, violence within the family "family becomes the breeding ground for other social problems such as substance abuse, juvenile delinquency, and violent crimes of all types." The all important family unit is the centre of social universe. All other institutions revolve around it. If the sun were to blow up the entire galaxy would go with it. Conclusion Domestic violence against women must be perceived as a socio-economical problem rather than a private issue imbedded within family -- a domestic issue which can be easily ignored. It must receive appropriate attention from the various institutions within our society as an issue affecting the overall standard of living. It is not only a women's issue, but also a problem that threatens the harmony within our communities. Bibliography: 1. Carrillo, Roxanna, Battered Dreams, UNIFEM, 1992 2. Connors, Jane Francis, Violence Against Women in the Family, Toronto, 1989 3. Facts About Domestic Violence, "http://gladstone.uoregon.edu.violence.html" 4. Jarman, F.E., et al, The Living Family: a Canadian Perspective, J. Wiley&Sons, Toronto, 1991 5. Kantor, Paula, Domestic Violence Against Women: A Global Issue, UNC Press, 1996 6.Ed. by: Koblinsky, Marge, et al, In the Health of Women: A Global Perspective, Westview Press, 1993 7. Ed. by: Koblinsky, Marge, et al, Violence Against Women: The Missing Agenda, Westview Press, 1993 8. Metro Toronto Committee Against Wife Assault (MTCAWA), E-mail interview w/ Morag Perkens (Thurs, Nov, 15/96), mtcawa@web.apc.org 9. Violence Against Women Home Page, "http://www.usdoj.gov/vawo" f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Down to Earth.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Down to Earth Jon Lang Newsweek 4th hour October 7, 1996 Ever since children have dared to dream, they have always dreamt of going to the moon or to the stars. For the millions of children who dream this, only an infinitely small portion actually achieve this goal. In 1943 in war-torn China, a girl was born who had this same dream. Her name was Shannon Lucid. She was born in 1943 to a Baptist preacher, Joseph Oscar Wells and Myrtle Wells, a nurse. At 6 months of age she and her parents were sent to a prison camp by the Japanese. Only a year later were they safe in American arms after they were traded for Japanese POW¹s. After the war they went back to China, but in 1949 they were forced to leave when the communists took over. They then settled in Bethany, Oklahoma. She always had the dream that someday she would be a space explorer. People thought her crazy for this dream though, because the United States didn¹t even have a space program. After graduating from Bethany High School in 1960 she got her pilot¹s license. In regard to her dream she said, ³the Baptists wouldn¹t let women preach, so I had to become an astronaut to get closer to God than my father.² By this time America already had a space program. She could not believe that of the first seven Mercury astronauts, none were females. This is just one more instance she complained of discrimination of women in traditionally male held occupations. She experienced the same thing when she tried unsuccessfully to become a commercial pilot. So from Œ66-¹68 she worked at Kerr-Mcgee Corp. as a chemist. This is also where she met her husband Michael Lucid. After she was married she returned to school at the University of Oklahoma, where she earned her B.S. in Chemistry. One interesting occurrence after the birth of her daughter, the very next day she took a biochemistry exam, which her instructor had expected her to make up later. Three years later she finally had a chance to fulfill her dream by getting into the space program. The program was now allowing women. She ³scrambled² to get her application in and was accepted as one of the first six female astronauts. These women had to go through rigorous testing and they proved that it doesn¹t take a Y chromosome to have ³The Right Stuff². Her greatest accomplishment to date is she has spent the most time in space of any American. She spent 188 days and 65,454,841 miles in space. She is truly a tribute to sheer will power. When she came back to earth the effects of space usually make the bones and muscles grow weak from lack of gravity. The Russian cosmonauts have to be carried out on stretchers. Her ability to walk can be accredited to her 400 plus hours logged on the treadmill and stationary bike. That is almost 17 days or a tenth of her total time in space, working out. The space program has really changed in the past ten to fifteen years. Now it is predominately scientific. The space program really isn¹t into taking patriotic notches like they once were. Most of the missions deal with scientific experiments. For example, Lucid conducted experiments with quail eggs and the effects of zero gravity on them and how protein crystals are formed. On other missions scientists have created perfect spheres, a feat almost impossible on earth. It is truly a shift from the ³The Right Stuff² to the ³The New Stuff². Gone are the days of racing T-38¹s and here to stay are the days of science and for the good of man not the military. Shannon Lucid has been one of the people that has allowed everyone to dream for the stars. She hasn¹t had quite the effect of Neil Armstrong ³one giant leap for mankind² but she has made a great leap for everyone who dares to dream. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Easy Divorce Law.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Sociology Essay Mr. Walters 3rd Hour Although I do not agree with getting married until you are positive that you want to have a huge commitment to another person, I favor the easier divorce. I think that a divorce is not really anyone's fault. (unless it is) The divorce should be done as quickly as possible in either case. If you find yourself getting married to the person that you thought you loved-but later on in life you find that you weren't ready for marriage, then it's not really anyone's fault. You may have made a mistake by getting married to quickly, but people make mistakes. Sometimes, you may find that your spouse and you make better friends than husband and wife. That could happen and I'm sure it's probably already happened once or twice. In this case, it is not really anyone's fault. You just go on with life just as you always had before. I think that people shouldn't get married until they are totally positive that their spouse is the person that they want to have a lifetime commitment with. If they even think twice, then they are not ready for marriage. I know that not everyone will feel the same way that I do on this subject, but if everyone did, it could improve the divorce rate. I think that we should just get the divorce over with as quickly as possible and get to living our lives again. I know someone's dad who got into a relationship with another woman. This person's mother got married at a very young age. She thought she was ready, but she wasn't. After being married and having three children, her husband told her that he had a girlfriend. I would favor a quick divorce in this example also. Even though the marriage could have been avoided, the man isn't supposed to get involved with someone else. Getting married ties the couple down to one another. After you are married, there is no more dating, no more messing around with other members of the opposite sex. You are committed. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Economic Intervention.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Economic Intervention Every day our government makes economic decisions that affect our country and ourselves. Some of these decisions are good and benefit our lives greatly; however, many of our government's decisions, such as where our tax money should go, are not in our best interests. The Canadian government, although it is tightening up it's measures now, has been very lax with our hard earned tax money. Things like government officials receiving unreasonable benefits, government loans being given out like water, or government subsidizing of various companies and services that don't need it. These are all indications that Canada needs less government intervention. One large example of government over-involvement is in the case of our correctional facilities and prisons. Should a person who has broken the law be given better lodgings and better care than someone who is a law abiding citizen? We see examples such as prisons being outfitted for the care of inmate's children. This is an area in which government money is being improperly spent. Money that is being used in these areas should be being put to better use in areas such as health and welfare. People who are free and law abiding should be receiving this money to better their lives not someone who has had no previous respect for the laws of our country. Most inmates have free access to physical training facilities that would cost us three hundred to four hundred dollars per year. All inmates are guaranteed a meal, three time a day, when a large portion of the free population can barely afford one meal a day. The prison facilities get thousands of tax-payer dollars to upgrade and maintain suitable environments. Yet many Canadian citizens who are unemployed, who cannot get work, are living on the street or in unsuitable shelters. Why should someone in jail get better benefits than someone trying to make it legally in our society? However, it seems that our government has a certain affinity to people who break its set laws. This vast inappropriate spending of taxpayer's dollars should be stopped. In the near future we should see either proper controls being set on the amounts of subsidizing prisons receive, or we should see the privatization of prisons. Should the Government of Canada be less involved in economic planning between now and the year 2000? This one example of government overspending can be applied to many other areas of our government's economic intervention. As well, this example answers the question very well. Yes, our government should have less involvement in economic planning between now and the year 2000. I believe that we should have more say in where our money could best help our country. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Effects of Global Communication.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ With the development of civilisation and written languages came the need for more frequent and reliable methods of communication allowing messages to reach longer distances. This was essential to the control of trade and other affairs between nations and empires. Early man used cave walls as the media on which messages could be transcribed, this was common for many years, until the Egyptians discovered a special kind of rush (Papyrus) that could be woven to form a portable writing material. In about 105AD the Chinese discovered a way to make a similar substance from wood pulp. Over the next few centuries printing techniques advanced rapidly, especially through the use of steam power. The first typesetting machine, the Linotype, was patented in 1884 by the German-American Ottmar Mergenthaler. In the meantime, postal services and moved from being privately to nationally owned, and long distance postal services became an affordable option. For the first time, an ordinary person could correspond with people in other countries. A visual semaphore system was also implemented in both Europe and the United States, providing a way of 'echoing' messages nationally via large towers placed in strategic positions; however this proved slow as each method had to be verified to ensure message accuracy. Following the discovery and partial understanding of electricity in the 18th Century scientists looked towards a way of relaying messages electronically. This attracted great interest because of the speed and efficiency such a system would bring, nevertheless it was not until 1837 that the first practical telegraph system was produced. In the years that followed various offshoots were announced, modern telex systems are an improved version of this basic concept. Now that the basic frontiers of electronics had been broken, telecommunications moved into a new era, in 1876 Alexander Graham Bell patented the worlds first true speech telephone. Research into magnetism had also revealed the relationship between magnetic fields and electric currents, thus laying the technical foundation for wireless telegraphy. Twenty five years later the Italian inventor Marchese Guglielmo Marconi sent a wireless signal across the Atlantic Ocean, opening up new possibilities for communication systems. Satellite technology had been steadily increasing, with several already launched. America was the leader in this technology, with satellites programs such as the COMSAT and INTELSAT systems. These networks of geostationary satellites covered the entire globe, handling approximately 50000 voice/data/video lines. Global communication was now relatively cheap. From 1985 onwards the major growth area in technology has been with Personal Computers. Bringing with it new uses for old technology. The Internet has received so much media hype that the number of subscribers is increasing exponentially. Electronic mail is not a new concept, however it is only recently that people have started to use it on a large scale. Large computer networks spanning the entire globe allow communication between tens of millions of people. As the main form of communication is text based and transfer speeds are slow e-mail is not a dependable form of communication - but with the increase in cable networks it could be a viable solution in the future. These increases in communication have effected commercial and industrial markets, companies specialising in communications have emerged and thrived. The technology has a strategic role to play in the military, allowing soldiers, aircraft, and base units to communicate freely without the need for landlines. News agencies have also benefited from this technology, it is now commonplace to see live pictures from a particular news-story with the reporter using satellite technology to transmit the broadcast. SKY television provides around 100 video channels, and a handful of audio channels. This can be received in almost any part of the world and hence has a huge audience. SKY is currently owned by an American, Rupert Murdoch, who also has control over many other media companies including many American and British newspapers. Ultimately he has so much influence over what appears in the British media it would not be a challenge to exploit this power to sway public opinion. As we move into the next millennium communication systems are still under rapid improvement. Fibre optic phone lines are being installed throughout the country, and will allow faster digital communication expanding the possibilities of computer communication. Internet 'Phones' are under development allowing full duplex conversations between people over different countries and continents. With advances in satellite transmission it is now possible to purchase satellite phones from which you can also check your e-mail. They operate from anywhere in the world and are no larger than an average laptop computer. National and international boundaries are becoming more and more obsolete, it may be that in the future we are not run from London, but Europe is governed as one large country from a central point. In the words of Bill Wiley (vice president of PTT Telecom) "That long Distance feeling is finally disappearing". f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Egypt The People.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ EGYPT : The people Approximately 32,500,000 people live in Egypt. Peasant farmers called fellahin make up over 60 percent of the population. But less than 4 percent of Egypt's land is suitable for farming. Before the leaders of the 1952 revolution introduced land reform, less than 2 percent of the landowners owned half of the land available for farming. Most of the fellahin were tenants or owned very tiny farms. A man who owned 3 to 5 acres was considered well-off. Now no one is permitted to own more than 50 acres, and the average Egyptian farm is generally much smaller than that. An Egyptian farmer's main tools are the hoe, a simple plow, and the sakia, or waterwheel. The fellah, his wife, and their children all work together in the fields. The dreary routine of their lives is relieved only on a few occasions-the group prayer in the mosques on Fridays, religious feasts, and family events such as weddings or the circumcisions of young boys. A farmer's most valuable possession is the water buffalo, cow, or ox that helps him with the heavy farm work. The water buffalo or ox draws the plow, turns the waterwheel, and pulls the nowraj. The nowraj is a wooden platform mounted on four or five iron disks. The sharpened edges of the disks crush the stalks of wheat so that the grain can be separated from the chaff. The water buffalo or cow also supplies the fellah's family with milk and with calves that can be sold. Very often the fellah shares his house with his animals. This is unsanitary, but it is the farmer's preferred way of protecting them. The theft of an animal could mean economic catastrophe for the poor fellah. The fellah wears a loose, long cotton robe called a gallabiyea, loose cotton pants, and a wool cap, which he makes himself. For special events he makes a turban by folding a white sash around the cap. Flat, yellow slippers complete the fellah's outfit. The fellah, the wife of the fellah, wears dresses with long sleeves and trailing flounces and a black veil, which she sometimes uses to cover her face. On market days and other special occasions the women wear earrings, necklaces, bracelets, and anklets. These ornaments are usually made of beads, silver, glass, copper, or gold. They make a pleasant musical sound as the fellah walks along the dusty lanes of the village. Most of Egypt's fellahin live in the villages along the Nile. The villages invariably look gray because the houses are whitewashed only for important events suck as weddings. The houses are usually small and huddled together without planning. The typical house is made of sunbaked bricks, which keep the indoors cool during the summer. There are only one or two bedrooms, an animal shed and a small courtyard. The bedroom might contain a bed made of wood or iron, but the fellah's family usually sleep on mats made of reeds. The house of a wealthier fellah has a living room and an upper story with extra bedrooms and storage space. The living room is furnished with long wooden seats, a few chairs, and reed mats. In many villages the women still draw water from one of the Nile canals and carry it home in water jars balanced gracefully on their heads. But many other villages now have a clean water supply. In these villages there is a pump in the village square. Water from the pumps is carried home in the traditional jars or tin containers. Water pipes have been extended into a few homes. The houses are usually lit by kerosene lamps. However, since the opening of the Aswan Dam, electrical service is being extended throughout Egypt. The most important places in any Egyptian village are the mosque or the Coptic Church, the house of the headman, the rural social center, the police station, and the market. The mosgue and church are often used as schools as well as houses of worship. Weekly or biweekly, the fellahin flock to the village market, or souk. In the souk the farmers buy and sell cows, water buffalo's, donkeys, camels, sheep, and goats, as well as agricultural and dairy products. In the larger markets, food, clothing, jewelry, and farm tools are bought and sold. Water and soft drinks are sold by vendors who sing or shout their wares. The market is a noisy place as the fellahin continually haggle and bargain at the top of their lungs. No transaction is concluded without bargaining, or fissal. Prices are decided by a series of compromises. Religious vows are invoked and the words "by Allah," "by Mohammed," or "by Al-masseh" are heard everywhere as the bargaining reaches its climax and the price is about to be fixed. The market is not just an opportunity to buy and sell, it is an important social event. Friends and relatives meet and exchange news and gossip. People dress in their finest, and the monotonous lives of the fellahin become lively for a while. The umbah, or village headman, is usually a native of the village, over 25 years old, the owner of 10 or more acres, and in good standing with the community. He is nominated by the villagers and appointed by the Minister of the Interior. The umbah is the liaison in the collection of taxes. The first rural social centers were established in the 1940's, and they were so succesful that there are now centers all over Egypt. The primary task of these centers is to improve the living conditions of the fellahin. Traditionally the only government workers commonly seen in rural Egypt were the tax collector and the engineer who directed the control of the irrigation system. The staff of a social center usually includes a doctor, nurses, a veterinarian, an agricultural advisor, and the teacher of the local elementary school. The advice and help that these specialists provide have had a definite impact on the life of the fellahin. The government is attacking problems that were previously the burden of family and neighbors. The task of changing tradition bound rural Egypt is tremendous, but progress is being made. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\eliminating the capital gains tax.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ELIMINATING THE CAPITAL GAINS TAX One of the major obstacles facing all entrepreneurs in the United States when starting a new business or expanding an existing one is raising capital. Here capital refers to money that people invest in a business. Investment and entrepreneurship are the heart and soul of a lively economy. There is no other economic task more important than investing one's capital into new ideas and new enterprises. Therefore capital raised from one person or a group of professional investors remains a crucial source of funding for these type of enterprises. In the type of economic world which is present today the opportunity for good returns on a person's money must be in abundance to allure investments in such ventures. Capital gains taxes significantly diminish these returns, therefore reducing the incentives to invest. Eliminating the capital gains tax will spark entrepreneurship and new investments in the economy, which in turn will elevate economic growth and increase the number of jobs. In order to stimulate economic growth in the United States, taxes on capital gains should be eliminated. Members of Congress once considered a reduction in the capital gains tax rate from 28% to 19.8%. Combined with indexation, which is , reducing the capital gains tax by any amount would be a vital pro-growth step taken by Congress. However, given the fickle and high risk nature of investments and entrepreneurships, and the importance of maintaining a competitive economy in a global environment, capital gains should be exempt from taxation altogether. A zero percent capital gains tax would attract entrepreneurial risk taking, which is very important to economic growth. It would entice wealthy investors to invest in a certain enterprise, which in small numbers would immensely increase the economic growth in the United States. In the Wall Street Journal the U.S. Commission on civil rights said, "Reducing the tax on capital gains effectively increases the flow of financial 'seed corn' to budding entrepreneurs." Also, from a global perspective, the United States has one of the biggest capital gains tax rate. Depending on inflation, sometimes the United States has the largest capital gains tax rate in the world. In a competitive global economy a zero percent capital gains tax rate would make the United States a haven for capital, which in the long run will spark economic growth in the United States. Eliminating the capital gains tax altogether would not only promote a "boom" economy in the United States but will give the United States an edge that it needs to compete in the global world, not to mention create new jobs. The potential benefits for eliminating the capital gains tax are clear. Venture capital investment was on the rise as the U.S. capital gains tax declined up to 1986. This was followed by a dramatic downturn as the rate was hiked 40% in 1987 (Venture Economics). Eliminating the capital gains tax would augment the incentives to invest in new and expanding ventures. In a report from the Small Business Survival Committee's July 1994 newsletter, economists Gary and Aldona Robbins estimated the economic impact of eliminating the federal capital gains tax. By the year 2000, the Robbins' projected that a zero percent capital gains tax would lead to many new heights, some of which include: an additional $3.2 trillion in capital formation, a creation of 1.1 million new jobs, and extra $1.6 trillion in GDP to the year 2000, an annual GDP $391 billion higher than it would normally be, and additional 0.43 percentage points on the long-term annual growth rate for the economy. It can be seen clearly by the preceding that eliminating the capital gains tax would stimulate economic growth in the United States like never before. Proponents for a capital gains tax argue that a capital gains tax is merely a tax on the wealthy and this particular tax will not affect the economy too much. However, capital gains taxes are not only taxes on the wealthy but they are taxes on wealth creation. As argued here the benefits of eliminating a capital gains tax will be felt throughout the economy as economic growth accelerates. By relating this to economic markets, it can be said that there won't be any jobs without capital investments and entrepreneurs, and without jobs the economy will be in a bust. In addition, capital gains tend to be spread across a wider income spectrum than many believe. According to the IRS Individual Income Tax Returns, Preliminary Data, 1992 federal income tax returns, 56% of returns claiming capital gains were from incomes of $50,000 or less, including a capital gain. What this information boils down to is that the capital gains tax affects almost everyone, which affects the economy in general, contrary to f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Ennis Cosby.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Hier soire je regarde les nouvelles quand il y avait une histoire terrible. Le Fils de Bill Cosby etait tue quand il remplace une pnue flat. Le femme qui a trouver le corps de Ennis Cosby A donner une description au police. Elle a dit que c'etait une homme blanche. Les police dit que Ennis William Cosby etait peut-etre le victime d'un "roadside robbery" apres qu'il est arrete pour reppare le pneu de son Mercedes-Benz mais rien manquer de son auto. Le tueure etait la seulement pour quelque seconde. On ne sais pas de quoi il pensait dit le chef de police. Saufe pour la nom fameux Ennis Cosby ne seras pas si populaire Le seule ils de Bill avait une reve tellement different de l'un de son pere. Il Voulait etre une ensseignante de enfants avec des disabilities. Ennnis lui meme avez le dyslexia. Le reve a termine sur jeudi passe quand il etait tue par une bullet dans la tete. Avant entrer dans sa maisons Bill Cosby a dit "il etait mon hero". Les police on barre la maison de ennis cosby f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Equal Rights Amendment.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex." In 1923, this statement was admitted to Congress under the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). The ERA was a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution granting equality between men and women under the law. If the Era was passed, it would have made unconstitutional any laws that grant one sex different rights than the other. However, in the 1970s, the Era was not passed, and therefore did not become law. The idea for an equal rights amendment first became acknowledged in the early part of the twentieth century. In 1916, Alice Paul founded the National Women's party (NWP), a political party dedicated to establishing equal rights for women. Traditionally, women were viewed as weaker and inferior to men. The purpose of the ERA was to prohibit any person from acting on this belief. Alice Paul viewed that equality under the law was the foundation essential to full equality for women. In November of 1922, the NWP voted to work for a federal amendment that could guarantee women's equal rights regardless of legislatures' indecisions. The NWP had 400 women lobbying for equality. Despite strong opposition by some women and men, the NWP introduced and Equal Rights Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1923. In order to become law, the amendment needed a two-thirds vote in both houses of the congress of the United States, or a supporting petition of two-thirds of the state legislatures. Then the amendment would have required ratification by three-fourths of the states. However, it failed to get the two-thirds majority required to move onto the states for approval. The proposed amendment also failed in following sessions until 1972, when it won a majority vote in Congress. The main objectives of the women's movement included equal pay for equal work, federal support for day-care centers, recognition of lesbian rights, continued legalization of abortion, and the focus of serious attention on the problems of rape, wife and child beating, and discrimination against older and minority women. The ERA would have addressed all of these issues if it were passed. Had it been adopted, the ERA would have resolved the paradox of an oppressed majority, by adding to the Constitution a provision that says no person shall be denied any rights on the basis of sex. But ten years after being approved by Congress, the bill died three states shy of thirty-eight needed to ratify. Defenders in Congress and out of Congress believe that equal rights for women will be neither abandoned nor compromised, but supported until successful. Some of the more conservative supporters of the ERA included Senator Strom Thurman, President Richard Nixon, and Governor George Wallace. Today, President Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton are also strong supporters of equal rights for women. At the Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995, the main theme was effort to promote equal rights for women. A speaker for the United States, Madeleine K. Albright, announced that the Clinton administration is determined to bring down the barriers to the equal participation of women that take place in this country. She introduced a seven-point plan of commitments that the United States government plans to take. Although the ERA was denied in the seventies, the new administrations are trying to introduce plans that will exemplify equal rights for women in society. Opposition to the ERA in the 1970s was similar in some ways to opposition in the 1920s. Conservative politicians and organization voiced strong opposition to the amendment. Phyllis Schlafly, one of the amendment's most vocal opponents, founded STOP ERA, a group that worked to defeat the amendment. "Schlafly argued that the amendment would force women to take on roles normally reserved for the men and that equal rights meant women would give up "privileges" of womanhood." Th ERA was also opposed by many woman who feared the loss of alimony and of exemption of military service. Although there is no consensus to explain the ERA's defeat, there are several theories. "Many felt that it was a rejection of the feminist ideal of what women ought to be, an ideal that threatened to destroy the American family and sap the strength of a society already crippled by moral permissiveness and political weakness and indecision." Others felt that the Church of Jesus Christ spent great sums of money to defeat the amendment. Equality for both men and women included the draft. Although women wanted equality in society, they did not want to be included in the draft. One of the most damaging charges was that the ERA would force young women into combat. Children carried signs in front of Congress with the slogan "Please Don't Send My Mommy to War!" Many felt that if a woman went into to war, they were considered to be women-who-want-to-be-men - anomalous persons who rejected the kind of life that nature (G-d and sex) had ordained. In the January 1983 issue of Ms. magazine, Gloria Steinem and her coeditors argued that the ERA failed for three reasons: 1) too many people, both men and women, dislike women; 2) most of the majority expressing support in the polls remained contently expectant instead of becoming politically determined; and 3) the opposition was better organized. Other opposition to the ERA included how the Amendment was to be interpreted. It was felt that giving the Supreme Court and federal agencies authority to spell out the meaning of equal rights would be risky. Decisions made on such a level would be too far removed from the ideas and desires of the people. Opponents felt that equal rights should be dealt with on a local or state level where legislators can be voted out of position if the people do not like some of the decisions made. Although the ERA did not pass, all of the actions made by NOW, NWP, and any of the other women's movements, have greatly aided women in their battle against sex discrimination in the work place, in educational institutions, and in their roles as wives and mothers, and finally laid to rest the controversy over protective legislation and equal rights. Like the Fourteenth Amendment, we are inclined to forget that the ERA was designed not to change values but to modify behavior of mainstream citizens by changing the constitutional status of a particular group. The ERA's purpose was and is to provide equality of opportunity through the Constitution and legal system for those women who want to realize full personal and professional expectations within mainstream America f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Ethnography of the Yanomamo.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ This ethnography is about the Yanomamö. Most people will think of these people as 'primitive'. But we do not consider the fact that these people look at us and call us 'primitive' and 'subhuman'. This is why it is important to judge these people with an unbiased mind. The Yanomamö are Indians that live widely scattered in southern Venezuela and northern Brazil. They usually live in villages of 75 to 80 people. But there are villages in which there are as little as 40 people or as many as 250 people in a single village. The Yanomamö live by a combination of horticulture and foraging. Each household in the village clears their own land and cultivates it themselves. Chiefs, who have to produce more food to meet their obligation to provide hospitality, commonly receives help from others. A village can produce all of its needs from only three hours worth of work per person. One characteristic of the Yanomamö is that they are accustomed to violence. Violence is a part of their lives because of their values and culture. Because of this, the Yanomamö live in a constant state of warfare. Warfare appears as a main interest supported by a set of beliefs urging strong villages to take advantage of the weaker ones. A regular series of degrees of violence has been institutionalized. It ranges from chest pounding to side slapping. Both are likely to cause injury or death. The Yanomamö do not utilize much technology except in their weapons. The main weapon produced by the Yanomamö are arrows. They make arrows that are six feet long. These arrows are very accurate. Arrows not only serve as weapons but as valuable possessions that are commonly exchanged as gifts among the Yanomamö. Villages that are nearby may sometimes ally. One reason in which the ally is so that they can team up against another larger village. In order to demonstrate their friendship towards each other, the two villages trade and feast. The men drug themselves on a daily basis with a substance called 'ebene'. It causes for the eyes to become watery. Another effect of this drug is and excessive production of mucous. The recipient allows for the mucous to drip freely from each nostril. It is believed among these people that the usage of this drug will have an effect in which bad spirits are relieved of. The dead are highly respected in this culture. Once a person dies, it is forbidden to mention the name of the person ever again. It is considered an offense to mention the name of a family member that has passed away. Among the Yanomamö, men are allowed to marry more than one woman. And even after a man marries a woman, he is free to give her away as a gift or payment. During my studies of the Yanomamö, I was most interested in the fact that these people have survived as long as we have without the use of technology. When I considered this piece of information, my ethnocentric feelings were kept to a minimum level. But when I read about things that were very bizarre to me, I dealt with my ethnocentric feelings by reminding myself that we have people who do similar things in our own thriving society. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Family Values and How They Relate to Citizenship.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ America's family values are very important to our citizens. For many years the American family and its values have been one of the top priorities of our nation. The family is even an essential part of the "American Dream" that we Americans are so fond of. The basic idea of success in America is measured by how well one can provide for their family. But what does citezenship have to do with family values? It determines these values and set a standard for the whole of America's people. Family values are of the utmost importance to the American citizen. Family values are basically the core of our way of living. They have been important since, and even before, the very beginning of our civilization , and certainly since the founding of the United States of America. Theories suggest that even the primitive caveman was very loyal and respectful to his particular family unit. People of our time have followed these beginnings of the ideas of family values and citizenship up until the present day. Today however people are more diversified and separated in their ways but they all share similar values of the family. A nation, being of mostly socially compatible people, functions in a similar way as a family. The nation selects its "national family values" by legislation which becomes law. Civilization, over time, has brought about values which have become essential to all. Family values have brought considerable amounts of happiness onto us throughout the course of our history. Where would we be without love and compassion? We would probably be in worldwide chaos if there still even was a world left. People would only regard each other as just mild acquaintances, there would be no friends, lovers, or married people anywhere without such values. All people desire family values, such as love, care, intimacy, acceptance, commitment, and shared responsibility. This is why people from all religious, political, and social persuasions say our society needs family values. These are the arenas in which families interact, based upon their mutual commitment to the greater good, practicing, imparting, and celebrating true family values. Family values' attributes to citizenship are very meaningful. For the greater common good a society must have adequate family values to prevent chaos. America seems to be gradually losing these very important values which are of immeasurable cost. This loss is due to a reduction of morals by our society and a brainwashed acceptance of what we know is clearly wrong. It is one of a citizen's most important duties to uphold family values. Failure to do so may result in an incalculable loss such as the destruction of a society we have strived so long to build. This is one of the primary reasons for the downfall of the Greater Roman Empire. The loss of society's values gradually weakened and disassociated them to the point that they were overran by a weaker power. To preserve our society we, as citizens, must uphold our family values. Family values are the very fabric that holds our society together. We have had them since the earliest society on our Earth. They have provided a clear outline for religious, social, and moral values throughout history. They have formed a basis for our governments and cultures. It is of the utmost importance that these values are preserved for the sake of society and the common good of all men. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Famous People of World War II.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Famous People of World War II by Kevan Salisbury The Axis Powers World War II was started by the Axis Forces, which were comprised of Germany, Italy, and Japan. They fought against the combined might of almost the entire world, and, but for a supreme combined effort on the part of America, the USSR, and Britain, almost won. During the war, the Axis Powers were totalitarian states, controlled by their respective leader or leaders. These are their stories. During World War II, there were three men who were controlling the Japanese government, none of which liked each other. The first, Emperor Hirohito, born in 1901, was ruler from 1926 to 1989, the last divine imperial leader of Japan. During the first nineteen years of his reign he gave over power of the government to a militant party. The result of this was the war with China from 1937 to 1945 and adherence to the Axis Powers. At the end of the war Hirohito wanted peace and, in 1945, he unconditionally surrendered to the Allies. The second, Isoroku Yamamoto, born in 1884, was the reluctant Commander-in-Chief of Japan's naval forces during WW II. He had a clear grasp of the situation and predicted that against a country like the U.S. or Britain, Japan would quickly lose the war. He died in 1943, shot down by the U.S. 13th Air Force in a surgical assassination strike. The last, Tojo Hideki, was born in 1884, and was the most violent of the three. He was the leader of the militaristic party that controlled the government from 1926 to 1945, and the one who commanded the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1937. He controlled all government and military campaigns until 1944, when, as a result of bad military defeats, he resigned as Prime Minister. Tojo was later arrested, tried, and convicted by an international military court for conventional war crimes, crimes against peace, and crimes against humanity. He was later executed in 1948. These three men had control over the Japanese government, and allied themselves to Germany and Italy, thus forming the Axis forces. So, as the Pacific was being dominated by the Japanese, Europe and North Africa were being equally terrorized by Germany and Italy, who were under the iron fists of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, respectively. Adolf Hitler was born in 1889, the son of a very low-ranking official, and a peasant. He wasn't very well educated, never completed high school, and was also rejected from institutes of higher learning because of his lack of talent. Although he was a poor student, he read non-stop, and it was from books that he developed his anti-Semitic ideas. For most of his prime, he lived on meager pay, and this eventually led to his joining the army. Once again, a lacking of skills stopped his promotion to a higher rank, and he joined the German Worker's Party. It was later renamed the National Socialist German Workers or Nazi Party, and he was eventually elected as the chairman or Furer. Hitler wanted to try to overthrow the Weimar Republic, as Germany was then called, and, after a failed uprising in Munich and his imprisonment, he decided he would have to use legal means. During his incarceration, he wrote his book Mein Kampf, or "My Struggle," and planned his next moves carefully. Hitler's emotional speaking gave the most important thing to the poor, unemployed people of Germany that anyone could have given: someone to blame. He successfully took over the government by way of power politics, and nazified politics, business, the news, and all other cultural and social activities. Over the next few years (about 1934-1936), Hitler directly defied the unfair (to Germans) Treaty of Versailles by rearming Germany, and making pacts with the fascist Italian leader Benito Mussolini and the imperialist monarchy of Japan. None of the European nations tried to stop Hitler's actions, despite the begging and pleading of Joseph Stalin that Hitler planned to rule the world. Even after Germany annexed Austria-Hungary and Czechoslovakia the nations refused to do anything. After this the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact was signed by Hitler and Stalin, and in a secret deal they divided Poland amongst themselves. On September 1, 1939, the Nazis invaded Poland and ten days later Britain and France declared war on Germany. Hitler quickly overran Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France, too, but was prevented from overtaking Britain. In 1940, the formation of the Axis Powers (Germany, Italy, and Japan) was complete. One year later, in 1941, because of his desperate need for natural resources and disdain for communism, Hitler attacked the USSR, violating the non-aggression pact. Though successful at first, Hitler was stopped cold by a fierce Soviet winter and the Soviet tactic called Scorched Earth. As a result of this tactic, Hitler only got 1/6 of the natural resources that he needed, and was forced to retreat, thus marking a turning point in the war. While all of this was going on, more than 6 million Jews were killed in ghettos and concentration camps by Hitler's orders. The Allied forces did not even find out about the concentration camps until late in the war because of lack of intelligence as a result of reconnaissance missions being on the edge of the fronts. After the allies had overrun Berlin, on April 30, 1945, Hitler committed suicide in his bunker along with his wife, Eva Braun. The war against the Nazis ended ten days later. Benito Mussolini was born in 1883 to a lower middle-class family with radical socialist ideas. When he got older, Mussolini became the editor of an Italian Socialist newspaper, but as a result of his support for World War I and imperialist ideas, he was thrown out of the party. He then started a new newspaper which later became a tool for the spreading of fascism throughout Italy. After the war, Mussolini and other veterans formed a fascist party which was supported by the king and the army. After Fascists were going to march on Rome, the king formed a government with Mussolini, and after that Mussolini grabbed the power of supreme dictator, and made the country a totalitarian state. He also made peace between the Vatican and Italy. Also, Mussolini was originally anti-Hitler but when he defied the League of Nations by invading Ethiopia in 1935, he was forced to form an alliance with Hitler. Because of Hitler's dominance in the alliance, Mussolini was also forced to pass anti-Semitic laws, and invade Albania, which was not as well accepted by his people as the invasion of Ethiopia. After Hitler invaded Poland, Mussolini did not immediately enter World War II, because he was not ready for war. When he did enter the war in 1940, Mussolini did most of Hitler's fighting for him in Africa, invaded Greece, and helped to subdue the Czechs. After many defeats, King Victor Emanuel of Italy got rid of Mussolini in 1943, and called a truce with the Allies and allowed them to invade southern Italy. Mussolini, however was rescued by German forces. They set up a dictatorship in northern Italy, but Mussolini was a puppet of the Nazi forces. Near the end of the war, Mussolini made an attempt to escape to Switzerland with his mistress, but was caught and shot on April 30, 1945. Between these five men, perhaps one of the biggest and most destructive wars of all-time was unleashed on the world. Without it, who knows, perhaps we would have never learned the secrets of the atom. They were some of the most evil men of our time. They were the Axis forces. The Allied Forces During World War II, there were many countries that made up the Allied Powers, and even more that were occupied by the Axis powers that fought back against them. But, there were three nations that were the main Allied Forces in the war, those being Britain, the United States, and the USSR (even though the U.S. and the USSR didn't enter until 1941). As with the Axis Powers, there were three men who were key in their respective nations war-time actions, Joseph Stalin, absolute ruler of the USSR, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, President of the United States of America, and Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, Prime Minister of Great Britain. Joseph Stalin was born in 1879 as Ioseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, the son of peasants. A Marxist and nihilist at a young age, he helped Vladimir Ilyich Ulianov, also known as V.I. Lenin, take over the Russian government from the Tsars in 1917, and after an extremely bloody rise to power, had dictatorial control of one sixth of the land on earth. Stalin was one of the first to recognize Hitler's growing power, and pleaded with other nations to stop him. When they did not, Stalin made a Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact with Hitler which, in a secret stipulation also guaranteed Stalin control of the eastern half of Poland. Hitler later turned on Stalin, and the Soviets repelled the German attacks using the "scorched earth policy, which would leave the invaders not a kilogram of grain nor a liter of gasoline." This tactic originated in Russia during the time of Napoleon, and Stalin introduced Hitler to it. Stalin also added his own twist on it by dismantling factories in the Ukraine and reforming them in the Urals. Stalin's simplistic, yet effective military planning pushed Hitler out of the USSR, and finally, on April 30, 1945, brought the Soviets into Berlin itself. After the war, Stalin negotiated with Churchill and Truman, and more or less succeeded in getting the USSR the most at the least cost. In the end, though he completely politically brainwashed the Russian people and killed thousands of the Soviet peoples in his paranoiac "purges," he succeeded in educating and industrializing the nation to a point that it was almost equal in standards to America. After post-war negotiations, Stalin not only helped China to establish itself as a socialist-communist nation, but also started the Cold War and started the Russians in the space race. Unfortunately (for the Soviets) his work was cut short when he died on March 5, 1953 of a massive brain hemorrhage. No one was able to help him because he had killed or imprisoned all of his personal doctors because of his paranoid fear that they were all trying to kill him. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born on January 30, 1882. He married Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, a distant cousin, and eventually got into politics. Then, in 1921, he was stricken with poliomyelitis, a form of infantile polio, and after a long struggle with the disease, Roosevelt lost usage of his legs. In 1932, Roosevelt started his first term of office as the President of the United States of America. During this term, he helped to negate the effects of the Great Depression. Roosevelt also won second, third and fourth terms with victories in 1936, 1940, and 1944. When the war in Europe broke out, Roosevelt quickly declared the US's neutrality, and began building up the nation's armed forces to protect our neutrality, should it be necessary. When Nazi-Germany forces invaded France, though, Roosevelt started the lend-lease program, which provided aid for any country fighting Germany or Italy, and he also started the first peace-time draft. Then, on December 7, 1941, the Japanese made their surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. As a result, the United States declared war on all Axis Forces, and became the third big player for the Allies, which included Britain and the Soviet Union. Roosevelt managed to form the United Nations after the U.S. entered the war, which meant that the nations fighting the Axis Forces pledged not to make separate peace agreements, and it later replaced the League of Nations, as the organization for keeping international peace. Six months after the invasion of Normandy, which was planned at the Quebec Conference, the Allies were storming Berlin. Unfortunately, Roosevelt did not see the end of the war, because he died on April 12, 1945 of a stroke. The most important decision of the war, the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was made almost four months later by Harry S. Truman, thus ending the war in the Pacific in one stroke. Sir Winston Churchill was born on November 30, 1874, the son of an American heiress and a British lord. He started out in the military at an early age, and rose through the ranks quickly, but had to resign out of the admiralty after several disastrous campaigns. He was sometimes kept out of Parliament and other high-ranking positions because Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain (the two men who controlled the British government from 1924 to 1940, with the latter succeeding the former) disliked his positions on certain topics. In the end, Churchill was the wisest one, because when Britain declared war against Germany in 1939 for the invasion of Poland, his campaign for rearmament and dislike for Chamberlain's appease of Hitler at Munich in 1938 were much more agreeable. Churchill succeeded Chamberlain in the middle of 1940 as Prime Minister, and rallied the British people around him telling them to continue fighting. Churchill frequently collaborated with both Stalin and Roosevelt in what he called "the Great Alliance." Although Churchill was extremely active in shaping the post-war world, he was frequently left out of secret talks between Stalin and Roosevelt. After the finish of the war, Churchill was still a large figure in the shaping of the world, despite the fact that the British's military might had become subordinate to the U.S. and Russia's, and he was defeated in the British elections because of his antiquated ideas on social reforms. Churchill finally died at the age of ninety in 1965. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Fantasys integral role in the creation of a killer.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Fantasy's integral role in the creation of a killer Through out history seldom has an individual been able to hold a city in fear. Most times people will just either ignore the individual, let the police handle the situation, or call them wacko or crazy. But then there are the extreme cases. On this end of the scale people may have extreme mental problems or very strong motives, so extreme or so strong that they captivate an entire city or even nation. Jack the Ripper did it by killing and murdering five prostitutes. In recent times it has been people like Charles Manson and the Boston Strangler, who assaulted and murdered thirteen women keeping the entire city captivated in a state of fear. Serial Killers... Fantasy plays a very important role in creating and or modeling a serial killer and it is shown through remorse, uniform and weather or not they have or follow a trademarked style. All of these elements combined expose the fantasy portrayed by a serial killer. Pain, does a serial killer have or feel pain for their victims? Sometimes the killer may depending on the psychological state they are in. But then regarding the fact most serial killers grow up in violent households one might say that the killer does not or even can't feel remorse because violence is what they were brought up in and to believe is true so it is what they have been conditioned to believe. Or you could take the approach that the killer feels they are being threatened by their victims so they had to be removed from the picture altogether. Or finally it might be the killer is so mentally unstable that they have very little to no consciences awareness of what they are doing. But what if they do feel sorrow? Can a serial killer feel sorrow? One researcher says no. "The inner workings of the mind of a serial killer cannot grasp the feeling of any kind of sorrow or remorse". Therefore a serial killer is hate manifested into a physical state and may or may not have motives to kill. Serial killers may be killing For many reasons weather it be for revenge or whatever but one thing remains as a standard among killers you have to be smart to stay alive. Once you have that intellect comes avoidance from the law and your capture. One of the best cases of a extremely intelligent killer was the case of the Zodiac Killer in California. His uniform was to kill couples parked in cars, by shooting through the window with a .44 gun. Then he changed his uniform victim to single women who were walking. Then once again he changed uniform this time back to couples but only if they were not in a car. Thus showing he had a particular type of victim, although he changed it, it still followed suit he was just smart enough not to become a pattern killer and changing his uniform was so that the police would have little chance of catching him. Many killers have a uniform, a favorite way of killing if you like, Sort of a pattern. This pattern mostly applies to the victim though. "Serial killers tend to go after women and children. However some homosexual killers enjoy hunting gay men." The motivation of these killing spree's are to some extent unknown but it is speculated that "Their methodical rampages are almost always sexually motivated." Yet there are some killers who kill at random with little to no motivation and no uniform victim. These killers travel around and kill whoever and whenever the feel it necessary, "This human predator claims more than three victims with a cooling off period in between each killing." Some people attribute a killer not following a uniform the reason their killing rampage can continue for so long, yet also there are some killers who follow uniform and still get away with a lot for instance Pedro Alonso Lopez. Enter the most prolific and successful killer of all time. Pedro killed 300 estimated on the low end and 450 on the high end, all were teenage girls. Pedro's killing spree took him on a tour over three nations. He would have gone free except a flash flood unleashed the bodies from their graves. Pedro like so many others had his way of killing his on trademarked style. In this part of the essay certain serial killers will be introduced and a description of their styles will be given. Warning: this part contains graphic material. First of all there is the Green River Killer Who "using a stolen ambulance and police car would lure his victims inside and then brutally beat them and rape them their corpse he would then leave beside a river. He is believed to have killed 48+ victims . Next is "Gilles de Rais". An ally of Joan of Arc in fifthteenth century France Gilles started out as a war hero but then turned to torture and murder. "He enjoyed killing mostly young boys, who he would sodomize before and after the decapitation. When he wasn't feeling up to the task he enjoyed watching his servants butcher the boys and masturbated over their entrails." Then comes "Andrei Chikato: The soviet Hannibal Lecter." He lived in Rostov Russia, about 500 miles from Moscow, where he lived a quiet married life as a teacher. What the town didn't know was that Andrei preyed on small children. He stalked many of his victims in train and bus stations and had a penchant for disembowelment and mutilation. He was also a cannibal and a sadist. And last is "John Wayne Gacy". John liked to dress in a hand made pogo the clown outfit to entertain children. This lonely and sadistic contractor also liked to young boys privately in a very different fashion. The prototypical organized killer, he had all the aspects of the murder worked out before each kill. Once he entered murderess fantasy there was no turning back. He enjoyed handcuffing his victims, anally raping them, beating them to a pulp, then offering them a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, finally he would recite passages from the bible and strangle them to death." With this it brings to mind the saying "to each his own" show each different killers mind workss in its own unique way having it's own pleasure. "Serial killers similar enough to put into one category, but different enough to make them difficult to study." Although we may look inside the mind of a serial killer and in a medical sense understand how it works we cannot yet grasp the mental concept Behind why a serial killer kills. It cannot be denied that a serial killer kills however we can try to understand how to subdue these mad rampages displayed by a another human being. In that sense we don't really understand why anyone kills for "A mere slip of the hand on the steering wheel can turn a normal person into a killer." So until we can fully understand the motives and workings of an individuals mind we cannot stop them from thinking the thoughts they think or conjuring the ideas they want. So until then the world has to move on. BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. Dubner Steven J. Portrait Of A Serial Killer New York: Signet 1992 2. Haines, Max Multiple Murderers Toronto: The Toronto sun publishing corp. 1994 3. Marilyn Kim Killing Spree Honolulu: Signet 1989 4. "Genesis Of A Serial Killer" On-line. Internet. December 4 1996 5. "Serial Killer Hit List" On-line. Internet. December 11 1996 f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Fitting in.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Essay: "Fitting in" Fitting in is an important part of life because it has almost everything to do with turning out in life. Knowing the right people will directly effect a persons life later on, job wise and high school reunions. Part of fitting in is rejection. This happens because when someone does not reject a particular person then they might be rejected for not rejecting that person. "... waking up in the morning and wondering if anyone would really miss me." this is a thought that might course through someone's mind after being rejected. Most people respond differently, Some people might dress and act totally different just to try to "fit in" that way. Most will just forget about that group or single person. I have often observed that people often times try to find out why that person or group rejected them and try to make it better. Being rejected is like someone saying "You do not fit in with us so leave us alone" its a nasty feeling. Some people let others down easy and that is nice of them. Why is it so hard to fit in? There is so much social pressure now that it is getting harder and harder to "fit in". When I say social pressure I mean how to act, look, sound, walk, and so on. Clothes play a very important role in fitting in with the crowd. People say that a first impression is the most important one so people try to make the best first impression by dressing up or showing someone there not. Some people try to stay in fashion, they do this to stand out or be noticed. A huge role in fitting in is changing or, in other words, being someone you are not. To describe this I think of putting on a mask over your whole body. Some people just spend all day "lying there and thinking about all the stupid things I've done today." Lastly, being liked by other people is what "fitting in" is all about. Like I said before, you change yourself, dramatically sometimes, just to fit in. Changing yourself might include dress, hair, self. Changing yourself might just make it harder to fit in so people just stick to what they have changed themselves since they do not know what else to do. Often people wonder "What if I say this to them, well if I say this then they might not like me. Even though...." Emotional stress can damage a person so much they just do not care anymore. Individuals will do amazing things just to achieve "Fitting in" after studying human behavior I have learned that people will change so much they just forget just about everything else and focus all there energy on "fitting in". I have found that doing actions you usually do not do just to fit in is very damaging and should not be stressed over. Unfortunately I have not come to any conclusions that have any positive aspects about fitting in, besides the fact if you fit in then you have to find ways to fit in with other groups. In my personal opinion you should not base your life decisions about wether or not you will fit in but wether there morally correct decisions. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Forgotten War Crimes.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Forgotten War Crimes "The holocaust was such an unthinkable horror, the Nazi dictatorship so uniquely evil, that the calculated firebombing of more than half a Milan defenseless civilians in the dying days of the war had just fallen by the wayside."1 History is defined as all recorded events of the past, but with textbooks, historical journals, and other respected documentaries all denying, or refusing to acknowledge and give responsibility, the ruthless and criminal bombing of Dresden does not change the fact that it occurred. Thus history is biased by those who write it, and should not be taken as the whole truth; after all, over two hundred thousand innocent civilians lost their lives and do not deserve to be forgotten simply because America does not want to take responsibility actions and admit to what happened. This tragic event is simply swept under that carpet and neglected and termed a strategic bombing with military objectives. This bombing may have been strategic but it certainly did not have any military objectives which are stated throughout much of American history. It was, however, the strategic bombing and slaughtering of a quarter million innocent civilians. American history textbooks and documentaries state that the official objective in the bombing of Dresden was to destroy railway yards, thus delaying or preventing the deployment of German troops to the eastern front. To destroy rail-lines and rail yards, precision bombing is used. Contradicting this statement is the fact that the American planes flying over Dresden were not armed with precision bombs but instead with high explosive incendiaries used to create firestorms. What is also ironic is that after the bombing, not a single rail-line or rail yard had been disturbed. Other historical journals provided via the American government claim that Dresden contained a number of bunkers being used to house German Troops. Although Dresden did contain bunkers, they were being used to house American and British prisoners of war. By using such high explosive incendiaries and such elaborate bombing patterns, Allied bombers were successful in creating one of the most devastating firestorms claiming upwards of two hundred thousand innocent lives and utterly destroying on the most culturally historic centers in the world. This bombing should be termed a failure since the stated objectives were not accomplished; or should America admit to what the real objective was, to break the will of the German people by killing innocent civilians? Despite the way Dresden has been recorded throughout American history, America committed one of the worst war crimes to date and should take responsibility for out atrocious actions. "You can't have a situation where national histories continue to persist, and each country picks out the good things it did."1 f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Fraternity Life.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ College fraternities have always struck me as being an organization of guys who spend their time drinking beer and having their "social gatherings" (parties). Just moving to Austin recently (which is by no doubt a "college city") has made me want to know more about the sole purpose of these fraternities. For these reasons I chose to select this culture for my essay. The definition of a fraternity is defined as " chiefly social organization of male college students, usually designated by Greek letters". (Morris 1982:523) This definition is not true to all where most fraternity members are seen as drunks who accomplish nothing scholastically or socially . Unfortunately, the definition and portrayal of the people fails to mention the fact that membership in a fraternity is a life-long experience that helps its members develop social, organizational, and study skills, and also teaches true, everlasting friendship. As a matter of fact most of our presidents were members of a Greek organization. 'The first fraternity was founded for literary and social purposes at The College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia on December 5th 1776.(Klepper 1937:24) Throughout the nineteenth century many new fraternities were founded, but none of these were permanent. By the end of the nineteenth century there were over thirty general fraternities in the country. Today's fraternities still have the characteristics of past fraternities. These characteristics include "a ritual, oaths of fidelity, a grip, a motto, a badge , friendship and comradeship (Klepper 1937:56) . During membership one must learn leadership skills. For this reason fraternities embrace these offices held by members: President, Vice-president, Treasurer, Scribe, etc. Since membership is seen as a great achievement by other organizations, every brother must be able to uphold that office at any time. Organization is a must for every member. Fund raising activities and community service are priority in every chapter, and each member is required to take part in these activities as an act of pledge, and a brother. This helps a member to develop organization and planning. Living together in what is known as a fraternity house adds to the development of social skills and being able to live with different kinds of people in different situations. Fraternities are famous for their social gatherings (parties) which requires all members to be socially active and also develop social skills. It is normal for fraternities to organize study groups during the school year and before exams. Most fraternities keep test files and other study aids available for the benefit of their members. A lot of members are able to receive scholarships and awards based on academic excellence, leadership and personal achievement, this helps members build a better self-esteem. It is common for fraternity members to stay active after graduating from college . "It is a positive experience for the graduate member to keep in contact with new and old members of his chapter There is no better way to keep young than to associate with young people." (Abramson 1995) The number of alumni can range from a few dozen to several thousand. There is a clear feeling of comradeship not only within the fraternity but between all members of Greek organizations. In a field study of the Tau Epsilon Phi fraternity from Florida International University, Brian Abramson found that you can find a catologue of services which that organization provides for the benefit of the greater community through service projects it conducts every semester. Every fraternity has its own special public service projects. For example Tau Epsilon Phi participates in "Bowling for Kids Sake" every spring, a tradition that began several years ago. To keep the feeling of brotherhood every member must be trustworthy and be able to trust every one else, which makes the bond of brotherhood even stronger.(Abramson 1995) Unfortunately a lot of people overlook fraternities because of the ever-present rumors about hazing. Hazing is an action taken or situation created intentionally to produce mental and or physical discomfort, emberassment, harassment, or ridicule.(Fraternity Executive Commission 1937) "While some organizations may choose to haze and humiliate the people who try to rush them, that is in no way an accurate portrayal of all Greeks." (Nykolaizsyn:1996:48) He goes on to point out that "Greek life is not just about partying and drinking , it helps build character, self-esteem, and life- friendships(Nykolaizsyn:1996:12) College fraternities have always struck me as being an organization of guys who spend their time drinking beer and having their "social gatherings" (parties). Just moving to Austin recently (which is by no doubt a "college city") has made me want to know more about the sole purpose of these fraternities. For these reasons I chose to select this culture for my essay. The definition of a fraternity is defined as " chiefly social organization of male college students, usually designated by Greek letters". (Morris 1982:523) This definition is not true to all where most fraternity members are seen as drunks who accomplish nothing scholastically or socially . Unfortunately, the definition and portrayal of the people fails to mention the fact that membership in a fraternity is a life-long experience that helps its members develop social, organizational, and study skills, and also teaches true, everlasting friendship. As a matter of fact most of our presidents were members of a Greek organization. 'The first fraternity was founded for literary and social purposes at The College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia on December 5th 1776.(Klepper 1937:24) Throughout the nineteenth century many new fraternities were founded, but none of these were permanent. By the end of the nineteenth century there were over thirty general fraternities in the country. Today's fraternities still have the characteristics of past fraternities. These characteristics include "a ritual, oaths of fidelity, a grip, a motto, a badge , friendship and comradeship (Klepper 1937:56) . During membership one must learn leadership skills. For this reason fraternities embrace these offices held by members: President, Vice-president, Treasurer, Scribe, etc. Since membership is seen as a great achievement by other organizations, every brother must be able to uphold that office at any time. Organization is a must for every member. Fund raising activities and community service are priority in every chapter, and each member is required to take part in these activities as an act of pledge, and a brother. This helps a member to develop organization and planning. Living together in what is known as a fraternity house adds to the development of social skills and being able to live with different kinds of people in different situations. Fraternities are famous for their social gatherings (parties) which requires all members to be socially active and also develop social skills. It is normal for fraternities to organize study groups during the school year and before exams. Most fraternities keep test files and other study aids available for the benefit of their members. A lot of members are able to receive scholarships and awards based on academic excellence, leadership and personal achievement, this helps members build a better self-esteem. It is common for fraternity members to stay active after graduating from college . "It is a positive experience for the graduate member to keep in contact with new and old members of his chapter There is no better way to keep young than to associate with young people." (Abramson 1995) The number of alumni can range from a few dozen to several thousand. There is a clear feeling of comradeship not only within the fraternity but between all members of Greek organizations. In a field study of the Tau Epsilon Phi fraternity from Florida International University, Brian Abramson found that you can find a catologue of services which that organization provides for the benefit of the greater community through service projects it conducts every semester. Every fraternity has its own special public service projects. For example Tau Epsilon Phi participates in "Bowling for Kids Sake" every spring, a tradition that began several years ago. To keep the feeling of brotherhood every member must be trustworthy and be able to trust every one else, which makes the bond of brotherhood even stronger.(Abramson 1995) Unfortunately a lot of people overlook fraternities because of the ever-present rumors about hazing. Hazing is an action taken or situation created intentionally to produce mental and or physical discomfort, emberassment, harassment, or ridicule.(Fraternity Executive Commission 1937) "While some organizations may choose to haze and humiliate the people who try to rush them, that is in no way an accurate portrayal of all Greeks." (Nykolaizsyn:1996:48) He goes on to point out that "Greek life is not just about partying and drinking , it helps build character, self-esteem, and life- friendships(Nykolaizsyn:1996:12) f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\friends.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Azzari 1 Chris Azzari Prof. Peterson ENGL 1201 BB 11 October 1996 Friends In life one may come across many people. Some will hate and while others will adore. The ones who hate can be referred to as enemies and theones who show adoration will be called friends. People may say the word friends is to broad. In the opinions of many, there are three types of friends. They are the aquaintinces he/she makes in school, the friends he/she looses as one grows, and bewt friends who may stray, but never too f ar away. First of all, there are those friends that are only seen in school. Seeing them on the street is like they are not even there. One may have known them throughout their whole school career, but have never talked to them outside of school. These school aqquaintinces are nice people to talk to , but there is never an effort to do anything more than that. These friends are good because there are never any chances to take with them. One just talks to them and then they go on their merry way. These school aqquaintinces are the peopl who are talked to about different hoobies and class studies. Not ones personal life. School aquaitnices are the people that one will not see for the first time until the schools ten year reunion. Second, there are former friends. These are the ones taht grew up in ones neighborhood and moved away. These are the friends who will bring back memories that people thoght were forgotten. One might be embarassed at first about seeing their former friend, but as soon as conversation begins all the embarassement will be a thing of the past. Former friends are the ones that little secrets about meaqningless ideas were told to as a child, or the person who spent countlerss nights at ones house sleeping over. These are the people that knew ones parents very well, almost as well as the friend was known. Te\hen all of a sudden out of nowhere this former friend is never spoken again to for years. Former friends give a sense of oldness to a person. In the long run they are good to have and to talk to. Finally, there are best friends who are the people that have been known all their lives or even just a few years. These friends regardless male or female can talk to a friend about anything on their mind. Many experiences have occured between two best friends or even a group of best friends. These kinds of friends share a common bnd that will last forever. Intimate secrets and special favors are all traits in which best friends can rely on each other for. All these examples are whypeople not only neebest friends, but should want them as well. These friends are future best men, bridesmaids, godfathers, and godmothers. They are the brothers and sisters ones parents never had. They are a part of oneself, if not all of that oneself. These friends mold the way of life one is going to live. Ones traits, beliefs, hobbies, jobs and even personality may come from the types of friends one encounters throughout life. Choosing friends wisely is a good habit to get into, for there are many bad influences in the world today. Friends come in many ways, but in the opinion of many the come as aquaintinces in school, the friends people wil lose as they grow older, and best friends who may stray, but never too far away. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\From Welfare to Workfare.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ From Welfare to Workfare TABLE OF CONTENTS THE ORIGINS OF WORKFARE 1 THE BASICS OF WORKFARE . 2 PC POLICY DIRECTION OF WORKFARE 2 WHY? A CONSERVATIVE POINT OF VIEW 4 WHY NOT? AN OPPOSITION'S POINT OF VIEW 6 CONCLUSION 8 WORKS CITED THE ORIGINS OF "WORKFARE" There's an old joke that goes something like... Where do you hide a welfare recipient's cheque, where he'll never find it? Under his work boots. When Mike Harris was campaigning for the Progressive conservative party in 1994 he promised a "common sense revolution". This mixed with the huge unpopularity of Bob Ray's policies, made him a favourite for the upcoming election. With this new "common sense revolution", came Ontario Works, or workfare. (a program designed to help recipients find their cheques) The workfare topic was a huge issue to voters, and will effect not only the thousands of Ontario welfare recipients but every Ontarioan in one way or another. When the election was close, Mike Harris often called workfare his "hand up" on the other candidates, (Legislative Assembly of Ontario, Nov. 17, 1995, 846), arguing that the current welfare system is just "hand outs". The decision on behalf of the conservative party to introduce Ontario Works in Ontario is an interesting one, with respect to traditional, and modern day Conservative party beliefs. This issue will be discussed in depth further into the essay, but much research and (case) study went into the prospects of workfare by the Tories. To better understand workfare, one must understand the basics and reasoning of welfare. John Romanyshyn wrote "Free men living in a community of free and equal men is the democratic ideal", (Armitage, 59) which describes the ideals of welfare. Welfare is a liberal and/or democratic program and policy and is intended to allow equal opportunities of success to all. Other welfare goals include giving temporary assistance for people who are living below the poverty line and are basically implemented by using the insurance principle: pay premiums when you're able in order to reap benefits when you are unable. These are principles consistent with the liberal democracy point of view. Nowhere does welfare help the community or society. (Conservative beliefs) Welfare should help people in their time of need until they get back on their feet. This was becoming less and less the case in the late eighties and early nineties, when welfare abuse became such a major issue. According to the Progressive Conservatives, this gave way to workfare. "UNDERSTANDING THE BASICS OF WORKFARE" As earlier stated, the subject of workfare was first introduced in the 1994 campaign of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party. After the election of Mike Harris and the PC party a committee was set up by the Minister of Community and Social Services, the Honourable David Tsubouchi, comprised of MPP's to study how the promised of workfare should be executed. Communities and MPP's of all parties were encouraged to give their suggestions on how to better implicate workfare. (Legislative Assembly of Ontario, March 28, 1996, pg. 1966.) Ontario Works policy direction taken by the Ontario Progressive Conservative Government Workfare is intended to put "able-bodied welfare recipients to work in exchange for their welfare benefits". (Legislative Assembly of Ontario, March 29, 1996, pg. 1650) Here are some main points of Ontario Works program: • handicapped, elderly, injured, full time students, and single parents with young children will be excluded from mandatory workfare. • recipients will be required to work, or volunteer, seventeen hours per week, in order to receive assistance. • municipal social services will work directly with charity and community organizations for volunteer and employment services. The main intention of workfare is to help the welfare recipient become self-sufficient and ultimately get him/her employment. The full plans were introduced in the Ontario legislature on June 18, 1996 by the honourable David Tsubouchi, when he discussed the three major ways that Ontario Works will be a success. 1) Contracting out job agencies: These agencies will be paid two hundred dollars up front to find the recipient a job. If employment for the recipient is not found, the two hundred dollars must be paid back. The agency can then receive two more payments; one after three months employed, and one after six months employed. The agency can only receive a maximum of twelve hundred dollars per recipient. 2) Welfare recipient entrepreneurs: Many of the welfare recipients today have bright ideas of starting their own businesses. Ontario works will hook the recipients up with other agencies specializing in entrepreneurship. If the recipient's business is established, the agency will be paid accordingly. 3) Ontario Works will provide recipients with access to tools necessary in getting a job in the nineties. ie. Computers, printers, fax machines, etc. This will also include basic education and training as necessary. (The above cited from the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, June 18, 1996.) Ontario Works has been started gradually, with 20 municipalities in summer '96, after more experienced, more communities will be affected by the fall, and eventually, Ontario Works will be implemented province wide by 1998. The PC government is extremely positive about the program, and is confident about it's success despite the other strong downsides to the plan. WHY? A CONSERVATIVE POINT OF VIEW The progressive conservative party has changed considerably. From conservative thought of the old English Church to dealing with today's issues, such as video lottery gambling. Traditional Conservatism believes that "Society should be viewed as a moral community with shared views, values and beliefs". (class notes, lectures) Conservatives believe in family values, and nurturing, etc. Therefore, welfare is right up their alley. Helping single mothers, and family's with income until better times. Classical conservative thought is also thought to have a gradual change with extreme caution. If today's conservative party wants to survive, they need to sacrifice some of that extreme caution, and show new ideas. Ontario has problems, and needs them resolved. Mike Harris and the Torries believe workfare is the answer to a number of problems. Workfare may be a drastic change, (especially for a conservative government), but this change is not to be regarded as "kicking the welfare abusers off their butts". Instead the Ontario Works program is thought of as improving on the welfare system and improving communities around Ontario by returning to traditional Conservative views of the community as a "whole". How can workfare help the community? Workfare helps the community by putting welfare recipients to work not only in the private sector, but also the public sector. ie. community. (http://www. gov. on.ca...ge/ news/ owack. html) It is the Conservative political thought that a Conservative government believes in families and communities as vital for the wellbeing of society. (class lectures) The Tories are working with community groups such as local Kiwanis, and Lions clubs, which help hundreds of communities province wide, to provide employment and volunteer opportunities to welfare recipients. The PC's feel that Ontario Works will give welfare recipients the experience and tools to help them find employment, and in the process help the environment and the community. Ontario works requires either seventeen hours a week of employment, or seventeen hours a week of volunteer service. This is where the community groups as earlier mentioned will benefit. Some examples of volunteer work the Tories believe can help the communities are eg. • cleaning up garage and old logs from area rivers and streams to help ensure the future survival of fish and wildlife. • develop and maintain snowmobile trails in the area. • help out at charity events, perhaps a drop-in centre for seniors or helping at a breakfast program at local schools. The other main issue is the economic reasons. The cost of welfare for provincial governments in the nineties, has ballooned to over forty billion dollars. The focus point in every Canadian election seems to be balancing the budget and/or cutting costs. One of the biggest and best ideas for the Tories to cut costs, is Ontario Works. If the main objective in workfare is to stop the dependency cycle of relying on welfare, having thousands of these welfare recipients find jobs will take a huge chunk out of the welfare cost in the budget. Take the Regional Municipality of Waterloo for example. (includes Kitchener, Waterloo, and Cambridge). With a population of approx. 370,000, approx. 10,015 people are currently receiving General Welfare Assistance (GWA) Of the 10,015 recipients, 7,705 people are considered employable. That means that over seventy-five percent of recipients are considered employable. In the month of February, 1996, over $5,447,872 was paid out to all recipients. Best case scenario: All 7,705 find jobs and no longer need GWA; a saving of over four million dollars, in one month, in one municipality of the province. It should in theory be quite a bit cheaper for the government, but as you'll see later in the cons of workfare, it can be extremely costly to implement such a program. (The above was taken from MCSS News releases, http://www. gov. on. c ...ge/ news/ owgack.html, 8/1/96) WHY NOT? AN OPPOSITION'S POINT OF VIEW There are a few huge benefits of workfare, but there seem to be many more negatives. For every supporter of workfare there are dozens that condemn it from every political party and way of life. Take the liberal point of view for example. They believe in leaving the people to manage their own estate. (class lectures) They believe that governments should let the public live, with as little involvement possible from the state. There was obvious conflict when the Tories come to power and force this burden on welfare recipients. That's not the only burden on workfare recipients; workfare candidates are forced to accept training and/or job placements if offered. (Monitor, July/August 1996) (Anything forced upon society is not the liberal point of view) On top of it all, working welfare recipients don't even get paid for their seventeen hours a week. Because of these reasons, the largest problem facing welfare are the employment problems. The biggest downside to workfare, is how it will affect the private sector jobs. Companies are forced with the dilemma of hiring new employees at full pay, or getting as many free labourers for seventeen hours a week each from Ontario Works welfare recipients. This has many liberal MPP's, unions, and workers up in arms over workfare. The liberals argue that the best cure for unemployment is employment. (Monitor, July/August 1996). After the Harris government took power, he scrapped Jobs Ontario, which was one of the few NDP projects that was working, and plan on implementing Ontario Works as a "make-shift substitute". Another problem is the training of the recipients. As earlier mentioned, candidates could be forced to pick up garbage in forests, and/or make snowmobile trails. Does this sort of training actually prepare them for the real world? One of the goals of workfare is to stop the dependency of welfare by putting these people to work, and ultimately making them self- sufficient. Instead of being self sufficient the workers continue to get cheques from the government, and not the private sector. (An administrative nightmare, 4) That is definitely not self sufficiency. The money-saving is not as the Tories planned. Critics state that from past experience, it always ends up costing more than anticipated. As previously described, the government sponsors job agencies to help welfare recipients. This costs a great deal of money, along with the many other civil servants needed for the further responsibilities of the Ontario works program in society. Case history should also be taken into consideration before deciding to implement workfare in Ontario. Workfare has been tried in many states, and other provinces in Canada. New Zealand is famous for its social reform and penny pinching governments, but in all previous attempts at workfare is a failure. (Workfare Watch Bulletin, June 11, 1996) The main reason for the program's unsuccessfullness is the tremendous economic burden and not resolving the "deeper" issue of unemployment first. Critics of Ontario Works state that seventy percent of people on welfare are single mothers and more than forty percent of the people affected by welfare are children. It is simply unhealthy for single mothers in society to be worrying about mowing lawns and cleaning up garbage in a forest, with little children at home. (Nicole DeKort, www. jdkthor. interlog. com) Workfare will affect the people that need the welfare assistance. It may give a wake up call to the one or two percent abusing the system, but it hinders the most needworthy recipients of welfare. CONCLUSION Workfare is an interesting and modern issue. Mike Harris and the provincial Progressive Conservative party swear by workfare, yet its success is sceptical. It is unlike traditional Conservative Party thoughts to implement such a drastic change in the province. The change though is one back to Conservative beliefs. Helping communities by making employable welfare recipients volunteer and work in and for the community. At the same time, workfare helps give these individuals the tools, education, and training necessary to be self-sufficient in the workforce of the nineties. It may look good on paper, but the workfare program will likely cost a great deal more than anticipated by the Tories. Liberal and Democratic opposition are strongly opposed to workfare because of their party beliefs that no single person should be forced to do something, and should be entitled to live their live as they please. By far the greatest downside of workfare is on you and I, the working public. Our jobs may be replaced by a seventeen hour per week welfare recipient that doesn't get paid. This has unions up in arms. Do "make-shift jobs" help welfare recipients break the dependency cycle on welfare? These answers and more will soon be answered after the results are in from the first wave of welfare reform in Ontario. WORKS CITED Armitage, Andrew. (1988). Social Welfare in Canada. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart Inc. Canadian Council on Social Development. (1975). Social Services in Canada: An Introduction. Ottawa. The Canadian Council on Social Development press. Crane, John. (1994). Directions for Social Welfare in Canada. D.W. Frieson & Sons. Hansard. Ontario Legislative Assembly of Ontario. (1995-1996). Office of the hansard. (various dates specified in essay) C. McCormack (personal communication, Nov. 7, 1996) ...Workfare Watch News ("CCPA Monitor," July/August 1996) ...Backgrounder ("Community of Social Services home page", "http://www.gov.on.ca", Queen's Printer for Ontario, 1996) Henderson, Gord (Apr. 9, 1996) Give Tories' workfare plan a chance in Ontario. Windsor Star. ...Ontario Works makes ("Community of Social Services home page", "http://www. gov. on. ca", 1996) Workfare Watch ("bulletin posted on Internet", "www. worldchat. com/ public/ tab/ wrkfrw/ bul1.htm") (various dates specified in essay) f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Generation X Less Happy Why .TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Generation X, Less Happy, Why? Nowadays divorce is so common it's hard for people to try hard, fight through their problems and make a marriage last when there's such an easy way out, divorce. Marriages of earlier generations were sometimes happier, because divorce wasn't the immediate anecdote to family or marital problems. I come to this conclusion from hearing about my moms childhood. My grandparents have stayed together to this day regardless of their problems which made my moms childhood happier. One incident which illuminates my moms childhood being happier is when my grandpa had to take care of the kids because my grandmother was in the hospital. It was great for my mom to have her own father take care of them instead of being left with an aunt or a close family friend. My grandmother was told she'd be in the hospital for a couple of weeks , it ended up being three. This was the first time she was separated from her children, and the first time my grandpa, the businessman, had to take care of the house and kids. All the household duties changed and it was hectic, my grandpa had to take on the mother role. He had to make breakfast for the kids, pack their lunches, go grocery shopping, help with homework and take the kids to school. My mom who was only nine was the only girl so they made her make the beds and clear the table. Those three weeks were hell, for all of them. For my grandpa it was difficult to take care of everything and work over forty hours a week. For the children it was hard to be separated from mom. All my grandmother did was worry the whole time about the kids, the house and my grandpa probably having a nervous breakdown. It was very difficult, but this incident brought all of them closer, in a way. My grandmother missed her family as much as they missed her. My mom and uncles also became a lot closer to my grandfather. Overall this experience showed my grandparents how much they loved, missed, and needed each other but it was better when they handled things together and then they knew they made the right decision by staying together. This experience, in a way, showed them what it would be like if they were divorced or separated, lonely, sad, and very unpleasant. Maybe divorce wouldn't have been as bad as they thought but I'm glad they thought that way for my moms sake and my own. It may be naive but in the end it opened their eyes and my mom thinks her childhood was happier because of it, and I believe her. In conclusion, earlier generations may have thought divorce was a crime and may not have known as much as we do but if they were happier like that maybe we should have never learned. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Geronimo.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Geronimo's grandfather, Maco, had been the chief of the Nedni Apaches. He had been of great size and strength. When Maco had been chief his principle wars had been against the Mexicans. They were seldom at great length of peace with the Mexicans. When Maco's son (Geronimo's Dad) became a warrior, Maco died. Geronimo's father could not become the chief of the Nedni's, because he married a woman from the Bedonkohe Apaches. The two had 8 children- four boys and four girls, including Geronimo. The possibility that one of the boys would become chief of he Bedonkohe was very slim. His mother taught him the legends of his people; taught him the sun and sky, the moon and stars, the clouds and storms. She also taught him to kneel and pray to Usen fir strength, health, wisdom, and protection. When the children were young they would play with each other and sometimes with their mother and father. When they were grown up enough to do real services they went to the field with their parents: not to play, but to toil. They did not cultivate tobacco, but they found it in the wild. All of Geronimo's tribe smoked, both men and woman. No boy was allowed to smoke until he could hunt alone and kill large game such as; wolves, bear, deer, etc. Geronimo's father died when Geronimo was at a young age. They wrapped his father in his finest clothes, painted his face, wrapped a rich blanket around him, saddled his favorite horse, bore his arms in front of him, and led his horse behind, repeating in wailing tones his deeds of valor as they carried his body to a cave in the mountain. They then slew his horses and gave way all his property, as was customary in our tribe, after which his body was deposited in the cave, his arms beside him. Geronimo's mother never married again, which was not a custom to the Bedonkohe Apache. In 1846, when Geronimo was 17 years of age, he was admitted to the council of warriors. If a war had started between tribes he could go on the warpath with his tribe. Geronimo had long desired to fight with his warriors. What he was the happiest about was that he could marry Alope, the daughter of No-po-so. The two had been with each other along time before. So when he got the news that he was in the council of warriors, Geronimo went straight to No-po-so concerning their marriage. No-po-so asked for many ponies in exchange for Alope. Geronimo made no reply, but in a few days Geronimo appeared at No-po-so's wig-wam with the herd of ponies, and took Alope with him. That was all the marriage ceremony needed in his tribe. Geronimo built a teepee, not far from his mother's, made of buffalo hides. They followed the traditions and had three children. When Geronimo was 29,(1858) him and almost all the other warriors left to go trade with a Mexican town, Kas-ki-yeh. When the warriors were heading back a few women and children met and told the warriors killed the warriors that were guarding there camp, destroyed their supplies, captured all of their ponies, and killed many of the woman and children. They quickly separated, concealed themselves as best they could until nightfall, they then assembled at their appointed place of rendezvous- a thicket by the river. Silently they went in one by one: sentinels were placed, and, when all were counted he found his old mother, young spouse, and three children slain. Without being noticed, he silently turned and stood by the river. When the warriors were arranging he took his place. With only 80 warriors left, without arms or supplies, and in the center of Mexican territory, the chief, Magnus-Colarado gave the order to start at once to their homes in Arizona. For 2 days and 3 nights they stopped only for meals. They then made a camp near the Mexican border, where they rested for two days. Geronimo talked to other warriors who had lost something in the massacre, but none had lost as he had , for he had lost all. When they arrived in Arizona he burnt everything Alope had made, the children's toys, and the teepee. The warriors of his tribe were all willing to wage war against the Mexicans. Geronimo was appointed to solicit the aid of other tribes in the war. When he went to the Cohkonen (Chiricahua) Apaches, Cochise, their chief, called a council at early dawn. While the warriors sat on top a mountain dell, Cochise signaled Geronimo he rose and said as follows: "Kinsman, you have heard what the Mexicans have recently done without cause. You are my relatives-uncles, cousins, brothers. We are men the same as the Mexicans are-we can do to them what they have done to us. Let us go forward and trail them-I will lead you to their city-we attack their homes. I will fight in the front of the battle-I only ask you to follow me to avenge this wrong done by these Mexicans-will you come? It is well-you will all come. "Remember the rule in war-men may return or they may be killed. If any of these young men are killed I want no blame from the kinsman, for they themselves have chosen to go. If I am killed no one need mourn for me. My people have been killed in that country, and I, too, will die if need be." Geronimo returned to his settlement and reported the success to his chief. He then went south and made the same speech to the Nedni Apaches. It was the summer of 1859, almost a year from the date of the massacre at Kaskiyeh. The three Apache tribes lined up along the Mexican border with their faces painted, the war bands fastened on their brows, their long scalp locks (The scalps were rewarded if a Mexican got one. 100$ for a warrior scalp, 50$ for a squaw scalp, and 25$ for a child's scalp, all the money was paid in gold) ready for the knives the Indians would have to fight. They were separated into three divisions: the Bedonkohe Apaches, Chokonen Apaches, and the Nedni Apaches. Each warrior had 3 days rations, they usually marched for 14 hours per day, making 3 stops for meals, averaging 40-45 miles a day. Geronimo acted as a guide into Mexico. When they were almost at Arispe, they camped. 8 men rode in from the city, the Indians captured, killed, and scalped them, to draw troops from the city. At about ten o'clock the next morning, as they had expected, the whole Mexican force came out. There were two companies of cavalry and two of infantry. He recognized the cavalry that killed the people at Kaskiyeh, he told the chieftains and they let him lead the army. He arranged the army in a hollow circle, the Mexican army closed in up until the Apaches and the Mexicans were 400 yards apart when the enemy opened fire. Geronimo ordered the army to charge, but sent some braves to attack from the rear. Geronimo fought with fury, the battle lasted about 2 hours. At the end of the battle their was only four Indians left including Geronimo. Their arrows were all gone, their spears were broken, stuck inside their dead enemies. They had only there hands and knives with left to fight, but all that stood against them were dead. Then two armed soldiers came upon them from another part of the field. They shot down two of the Indians, and Geronimo and another Indian charged toward the enemies. His companion was struck down by a saber. Geronimo picked up a spear he found and turned. The one who pursued him missed his aim, and died by Geronimo's spear. With the dead man's saber he met the Mexican who had killed his companion, they grappled and fell. Geronimo killed him with his knife and quickly rose over the corpse. The Apache braves surrounded Geronimo, and they made him the war chief of all Apaches. Geronimo all of the slain enemies be scalped, the Apaches avenged the massacre of Kas-ki-yeh. At about 1873, they were attacked by Mexican troops once again in their own settlement, but the Apache defeated them. Geronimo and the Mexicans fought for years, bought once they were settled down, the white man bickered the Apaches. Geronimo got the right to write his book by the President in the early 1900's. He lived in peace until he died in February 1909. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Gettysburg.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The War at Gettysburg By Nick Jones Getting There On the way to Gettysburg was tough. It was a long hard and tough journey getting there because there was no other way to get there for the army besides walking. It was so hard that some people died, and some got sick. The trip there was very long. Only about half all the people going there survived. The most of all people that died were Confederate men. The Population There was a lot of people involved in The War at Gettysburg. Major Joseph Hooker had 115,000 men in his army. Major Robert E. Lee had only 70,000 Confederate men in his army. Brig. General John Buford had opnly 4,000 men in his section of the confederate army. 9,000 of the Union died, 5,000 of the men scattered, and some 40,000 of the men held the ridge. Their Life The sodliers had a horrible life. Almost all of the soldiers worked night and day.They all risked their life to defend their armys and Union. Most of them got scared. Most died because they either got shot or the war was to hard for them. Some ran away, because they got scared, Their goal was to defend their Union. What Happened The Confederate went to war with the union in a small town called Gettysburg. The Union majorally beat the Confederate. 28,000 were wounded, captured, and killed from the Confederate. Major General George Meade some 23,000 Union Men, that was nearly a quater of his men. The war was over on July 3, 1863. The Union had won the war. Supplies The men nedded alot and I mean alot of supplies. Most men needed Clothes, Blankets,food, medicine, gun supplies, horses, wagons, cattle,and scores. They needed sauerkraut, thought to be remedy for diarrhea that plagued thousands of soldiers. They basically needed everything. Important People There was alot of people in The War at Gettysburg. Her are all of the names of the army people. Union: The Army of the potomac Major General George Meade Commanding Major General Joseph Hooker Previous Commander Maj.Gen. Abner Doubleday Maj.Gen. Winfield Hancock Maj.Gen. Oliver Howard Maj.Gen. John Reynolds Maj.Gen. John Sedgwick Maj.Gen. Daniel Sickles Brig.Gen.John Buford Brig.Gen.Henry Hunt Brig.Gen.Gouverneur Warren Col. Arthur Devereux Lt. Alonzo Cushing Major General Ulysses S. Grant commanding at Vicksburg Confederate The Army of Northern Virginia Gen. Robert E. Lee Lt.Gen. Richard Ewell Lt.Gen. Ambrose Hill Lt.Gen.James Rangstreet Major General Richard Anderson Major General Jabal Early Major General Henry Heth Major General John Hood Major General Lafayette McLaws Major General George Pickette Major General Robert Rodes Major General J.E.B. Stuart Brig.Gen.William Barkdale Brig.Gen. James Pettigrew Col. E. Porter Alexander Col. William Oates f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\global social change.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ History repeats itself. This concept applies not only within the realm of a singular nation's history but throughout and between nations. That is to say, that what one nation endures, throughout its economic and political history, may be compared to and be strikingly similar to that of many other nations. As we analyze social change thought the world we have noticed a cyclical pattern of histories, both economic and political, in the countries of Spain, Holland, Britain, and the United States. I. Historical Periodization: Throughout history and during alternating time periods, countries have grown from feeble entities, defeated by or ruled by the governing structures of foreign nations, to powerful nations. Between the fifteenth and the sixteenth century, SPAIN ruled as a great power among other nations. Its empire began when, in 1492, Spain financed Columbus's expeditions and explorations to conquer territory in the New World. Once it held its new established territory, Spain relied on the influx of gold and silver from the New World. Spain was the first country to start an empire and consequently started a trend. Once HOLLAND gained their independence from Spanish rule, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, it moved on to become a great power. Holland had relied on seafaring and the economic success of Amsterdam until around 1620. "By mid-century, however, they had used their technical sophistication and control of vital raw commodities to build successful industries . . . and supported by Holland's bourgeois virtues, trading preeminence and credit, Dutch manufactures soon dominated a number of European markets" (BP 198). Holland remained in power until its decline began in the middle of the eighteenth century. In 1750, the Dutch started losing European markets but continued as the number one market country in Europe. The British moved in where the Dutch had been. GREAT BRITAIN reached great heights in the middle of the eighteenth century. Starting out as the home of the Industrial Revolution, Britain was considered the workshop of the world. However, by the 1890's Britain was losing ground in the global market of manufacturing, specifically to the United States and Germany. The UNITED STATES, is the youngest of the nations studied in this essay, which became a major power at the end of World War I, and since then has experienced both increases and declines in power. Since the 1920's until present day The United States has moved from an agricultural society to an industrial society as many moved from the rural areas into the urban areas and the cities. II. Geographic Scope: When it was an empire, SPAIN had control over many countries, including South America, Mexico, Latin America, and the Philippines. Not only did Spain conquer new land during its zenith, but it combined much of Europe under one rule as the Hapsburg Empire when it united the crowns of Castile, Leon, and Aragon. "Besides opening much of America, sixteenth-century Spain was also ruling a Hapsburg empire that extended beyond the Iberian Peninsula to Flanders, Germany, Austria and Italy," during its rapid internationalization (BP 216). After the union of the Spanish crowns and the rise of the Hapsburg Empire, Madrid experienced a major increase in its population, as what often occurs when a new world political capital comes into existence. "The new imperial capital mushroomed from a population of 4,000 in 1530 to 35,000 in 1594 and at least 100,000 in the mid-1600's before fading again when the great days were over" (AC 31). While the Dutch was in war with Spain it accepted various kinds of people, such as the Jews and the Huguenots, and eventually acquired a vast empire. Although HOLLANDS realm was comparably smaller to that of Spains, its domain included the United Provinces, New York, New Amsterdam, and the East Indies. "The purest governmental culture was in the Hague, which, after quadrupling its population, was the only major Dutch city to continue growing during the nation's decline in the mid- and late-eighteenth century" (AC 64). The empire of GREAT BRITAIN is unparalleled by any other in that it encompassed one fourth of the world. Its numerous English-speaking colonies, which come from around the world, include Canada, British Australia, India, and New Zealand. The Realm of the UNITED STATES is vast and was acquired when the land on the continent was taken from the Native Americans and redistributed. III. Impact of The Political Order on The Economic Order: IV. A political order is composed of those institutions within which people gain, wield and influence distributions of power and an economic order is composed of those institutions within which people organize land, labor, and capital for the production and distribution of goods and services (Flint). "In nations, the political and economic aging processes are not the same and do not go at the same pace. Great economic powers have often grown in waves--early emphasis on agriculture, shipbuilding, fishing, or mining, then a move to manufacturing, then a shift from manufacturing to financial services" (AC 21-22). "A significant part of what overtook each of these nations was the emergence of finance, debt and an investor or rentier class within their respective societies,as the boureois emphasis on manufacturing and trade diminished" (BP 203). Manufacturing potential was undercut when an influx of Gold and Silver from the New World bombarded SPAIN in the sixteenth century. As its wealth steadily increased, Spain relied on other countries to produce the goods it needed and caused it to lose sight of hard work. Spain went from being supportive to parasitic as "reformers in early seventeenth--century Madrid put the ratio of parasites to actual productive workers as high as 30:1" (AC 39). In the end, "narrow monetary wealth, irresponsible finance and an indolent rentier class were important in the decline that was taking hold in Spain one hundred to one hundred fifty years after Columbus's voyages" (BP 205). Due to its thrify methods HOLLAND quickly emerged as a center of world commerce. Engineering, manufacturing, and fishing industries gave way to ever increasing export markets and financial institutions that dominated the European market. However, this disrupted the economic and social polarization. Foreign investments, such as the East India Company, took capitol away from Holland and did little to ameliorate its unemployment problems. Hollands financialization, like that of Great Britain, caused it to go from supportive to parasitic, as well. As a result of its Industrial Revolution, GREAT BRITAIN dominated the steel and textile industries and its merchant marines was the largest in the world. As it accomplished its world wide trade and manufacturing climax it witnessed the appearance of a considerable rentier class. Britain, too followed its predecessors and as its yearly foreign investments increased it turned to stocks and shares as opposed to an earned income. Most of its capitol was invested overseas in countries that competed with Britain. Britains financialization did not cause London to lose its place as the center of world commerce and in fact, "it was not transformed into a governmental parasite complex" (AC 64). After World War II, "the annual figures nominally returned to prewar levels, but adjusted to inflation they were much lower- and Britain also staggered under the weight of $13 billion of new external liabilities" (BP 208). Between 1790 and 1990 The UNITED STATES transformed from an agricultural to an industrial to a financial society. Most recently, the United States has disregarded its manufacturing industries, eliminating many jobs, and relied upon financialization, which unfortunately, only benefits a small elite. Moreover, overseas investments cost the United States citizens their jobs and increases economic polarization. V. Optional: VI. Households and Social Stratification: All of the aforementioned countries had fell "from their middle-class zeniths when manufacturing, trade, nationalism and bourgeois spirit gave way to "financialization"-- the cumulating influence of finance, government debt, unearned income, rentiers, overseas investments, domestic economic polarization and social stratification" (BP 193-194). By the early 1600's SPAINS economy had polarized when the gold from Mexico and Peru ran out. The middle class that existed in Spain was very small as the polarization resulted in basically a solely elitist and peasant society. With concern about the defeat of the Spanish Armada, a plague, and failed harvests, Spains economic reformers attempted to "rebuild manufacturing and the middle class while cutting government jobs and dispersing the parasites of the court" (AC 84). HOLLAND'S financialization brought about both economic and social polarization. "As for the Dutch, their mid--eighteenth century ruling cliques were confronted by a movement called the Patriots, which attacked nepotism, corruption, and moral decay and called for a full return to old liberties and values" (AC 92). The middle class ordinary folk of both Spain and Holland were left with nothing from their country's zenith. As financialization occurred in GREAT BRITAIN the gap between the middle class and the rich increased. The middle class in Britain deteriorated as the manufacturing declined and the wages decreased. During the 1890's the average family's purchasing power was entering a two-decade period of stagnation or decline while the financial sector boomed and the rich grew ever richer" (AC 82). During World War I, manufacturing boomed again but once postwar reality set in British manufacturing began to decline again. In Great Britain polarization was reversed by redistribution of income, socialism, and welfarism. This benefited the middle and lower--middle class citizens but hurt the elite. In the UNITED STATES at the end of the "Roaring Twenties", when the stock market crashed, the major financial institutions were left to fail and die out. When the bubble of the 1980's burst, however, the United States government bailed out the companies and caused the country to go into economic decline, deficit, and ruin the budget. The "Roaring Twenties", and the "Anxious 1980's" are examples of rises and later declines of economic and political prosperity and power. Decline in the United States is occurring on both an economic and social level. America has witnessed a rapid centralization at the seat of federal power and a capital more influenced by interest groups than by voters. "Imperial capitals don't become notorious until they display wealth and develop serious, parasitic elites, not true of Washington until it came of age in the late 1960's and 1970's" (AC 29). "There is no point in mincing words. Aging great-power capitals often become parasitic cultures"(AC xix). f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Government Funding For The Arts.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The National Endowment for the Arts is a government sponsored foundation. The duty of the National Endowment for the Arts is to foster the growth of the arts evenly through the national, state, and local levels of the country. With all of the budget slashing that is now taking place the arts is the first place that people look to take money from. This not only happens on the national level but also in our schools. Many people don't see the arts as important. It is the most important thing that our society has. Art, in each and every form that it comes in, shows us who we are. Our pictures that we paint, our songs which we compose, our theater for which we write, act, and dance for, our buildings which we design, as a whole, explains our culture. Future historians will look back at these things and judge us by our accomplishments in these areas. When we look back in history, we recall it through the greatest past achievements in art: the Sistine Chapel, the great pyramids of Egypt, Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture, and the works of Plato. Shouldn't we be able to show feats just as grand? Most Americans do agree with me. In 1992, a study called the "Americans and the Arts VI" was conducted; it ended with these results: * 60% of the people support the federal support of the arts. * 63% of the people support the state's support of the arts. * 84% of the people regard art as a reflection of life and times of a nation. * 75% of the people think that the government can be helpful to artists in funding their work and in helping them gain recognition. * 69% of the people would raise their taxes $5 a year if it were to go to the arts. 64% a $10 increase and 56% a $15 increase. * 90% of the people feel that the arts should be a regular part of a child's education. * 54% of the people would cut spending on school sports programs before the arts programs (Philp 5). Another survey shows that 73% of the population would favor arts support even during a recession (O'Steen 229). In 1965, when the National Endowment for the Arts was brought into being, President Lyndon B. Johnson said, "Art is a nation's most precious heritage. For it is in our works of art that we reveal to ourselves and to others the inner vision which guides us as a nation. And where there is no vision, the people perish" (Philp 5). The National Endowment for the Arts, returns its money from the people, back to the people. Many of the organizations and people supported by govern- ment grants might otherwise be bankrupt and out on the streets. The government's arts endowments to the NEA in 1995 was a measly $167 million and was barely helped by the $56.4 increase to all arts foundations (Grimes C19). With a still majority of Republicans in Congress, the outlook of the NEA and other nationally funded arts agencies is bleak. The House Budget Committee is chaired by John Kasich (R-Ohio) who co-authored the Penny-Kasich Amendment which calls for a ten percent cut in support for the NEA, the National Endowments for the Humanities, the Institute for Museum Services, the Smithsonian Institute, the National Gallery of Art, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (Janowitz 56). Dick Armey (R-Tex), the National House Speaker, says, "My own view of the matter is [that] the NEA offends the Constitution of the United States. My own view is [that] there is no constitutional authority for this agency to exist" (Janowitz 56). The only hope is with President Bill Clinton (D-Ark). Mr. Clinton calls for small increases in some of the arts foundations. He also assigned three goals to the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities, which he revived: * to increase public understanding of the arts and the humanities and build grass- roots support for them; * to identify new sources of funds, especially from individuals, foundations, and corporations; and * to use public meetings and publications to address urgent issues in the nation's cultural life (Brademas 804). The NEA and other government sponsored foundations are essential organs to the life of us as a society, nation, culture, and civilization. With the destruction of these agencies, the government is destroying our ability to show our inner vision. Government Funding for the Arts Works Cited Brademas, John. "Valuing Ideas and Culture" Phi Delta Kappan. June 1995 v76 n10 p804(3). Grimes, William. The New York Times. May 1, 1996 v145 pC19. Janowitz, Barbara. "Is the NEA's Number Up?" American Theatre. Feb. 1995 v12 n2 p56(2). O'Steen, Kathleen. Variety. Feb. 22, 1993 v350 n4 p229(1). Philp, Richard. "The True Mandate: Fund the Arts" Dance Magazine. Jan. 1995 v69 n1 p5(1). f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\government regulation.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Government Regulation Throughout history there have been many different opinions about government regulation. Some believe the government regulates business too much others feel that the government does not do enough. I believe the government is regulating business far too much and furthermore putting businesses out of business and causing many workers to lose jobs. In this paper I will point out the common problems dealing with government regulation. I will also focus on three major aspects of government regulation which include: 1) regulation interferes with production by halting innovation and discouraging risk taking, resulting in declining employment, 2) government over regulates by setting standards for every aspect of manufacture when it could allow businesses to set overall objectives for their business, 3) regulation cost too much in business compliance, which is passed on to the consumer and finally forces the company out of business. The objectives of safety and health will better be achieved in the absence of government regulation. Government regulatory agencies have spent billions of dollars and there is little evidence that the world is any better off than it was without the agencies and costly reforms. When reading further ask yourself the question, does the costs or regulation out weigh the benefits, I believe they do not. Regulatory programs normally are started by a group of people with a single interest and pressure the government and people to believe that there is a major crisis, creating panic to an alleged problem. When this happens it pressures Congress to pass a reform law in fear of not being reelected. Media groups also aid in creating panic by focusing on the bad and not the possible solutions to fix the problem. What happens is Congress passes a reform that they have little thought over and create costly new standards that could make little difference in the world. A good example of this happened during the adoption of the auto emission standards of 1970. When Congress passed a bill with little debate and few people having any idea on what the bill was about, creating costly reforms and forcing cut backs on business expenses. In all of the cases of 1970 the Congress chose to regulate instead of the alternatives; court penalties for polluters, tax penalties for employers with poor safety records, or government-funded information programs. " If the health and safety regulators were created in response to nonexistent crises, it is not surprising they have made little impact on morality rates."(Crickmer 1980) Sam Peltzman, University of Chicago economist, did a cost-benefit analysis of the drug regulations that followed the thalidomide tragedy in Europe. In his analysis he focused on the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) which is alike the older single-industry regulators and some of its problems are typical of most health and safety regulation. He found that the new drug laws were costing far more than the benefits achieved. In Britain more lives were being saved than in the U.S. due to the fewer restrictions on new drugs unlike the U.S. which have conservative policies towards new drugs. Regulation interferes with production and halts innovation and risk taking resulting in declining employment. This is to say, because of regulation costs, the businesses do not have enough money to invest in taking risks with new ideas and technology. This does not allow the company to expand and hire more workers. Regulation over regulates by setting standards for every aspect of manufacture rather than setting overall objectives that businesses could meet in whatever ways they devise. This would allow companies to focus on the problems at hand rather than spending money for the mandatory regulatory reforms that do not apply to their business. Regulation costs too much in business which is passed on to the consumer, and in increased government payrolls. If the regulation costs were cut back it would allow businesses to lower their prices and allow a fair price for the consumer. In some cases government regulation will drive weak companies out of business and the standard of living of those affected will go down. As you can see, the objectives of safety, health, and productivity will be better achieved in the absence of government regulation. With less regulation businesses will offer more and better technology, improved drugs to care for the sick, and allow a greater employment rate. In government regulation the costs do not out weigh the benefits and unfortionatly do more harm than good. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Gun Control 2.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Gun Control Abortion, euthanasia, and capital punishment are all controversial issues in today's society. Just as important of an issue to many people is gun control. Gun control lobbyists believe that there should be more control over firearms while anti-lobbyists believe there is already enough. Although many people are killed or seriously injured by firearms which are improperly stored, statistics show that assaults with firearms have been progressively lowered since 1975. Therefore, Justice Minister Alan Rock, the person imposing more restriction, is running on scare tactics. I thoroughly believe that if more gun control laws are imposed upon Canadians, there will be more havoc than necessary. One of the problems that many people have concerning their opinion on gun control is that they are not fully informed. Therefore, the people who are not fully informed are making decisions on only the information they know. Many people do not understand what exactly is being changed in Charter 85. The existing lat states that in order to purchase a firearm, the buyer must possess a FAC (Firearm Acquisition Certificate). The buyer also must go through a home schooling course and pass a test. If anybody owns a firearm, it has to be stored properly, by means of a cabinet or trigger lock. Under the proposed law, police officials can enter a premises without consent if they suspect an illegal gun is being hidden there. These new laws conflict with the existing laws and most people make a decision on only what they are told. The proposed law that Alan Rock has created has many people upset. Anti-gun lobbyists believe that more restrictions breach personal freedom. In 1993, statistics were taken in Edmonton concerning assaults. The statistics showed that firearms were used in six percent of all assaults while knives were used in eight. Therefore, knives were the "weapon of choice". Most people are upset over the laws because doctor/patient confidentiality privledge will be revoked. These new laws are improper and offend many people/ On the other hand, gun lobbyists believe that the social welfare of an area is more important than the freedom of the individual. therefore, they believe that more laws should be made. These fun lobbyists are usually people who have lost loved ones due to firearms. Justice Minister Alan Rock has no proof that more restrictions are needed and is running from his personal opinion. Gun lobbyists and anti-gun lobbyists have opposite opinions on gun control. Even though gun control is a touchy situation, many people believe there should be more restrictions while others oppose the idea. Many people do not understand why they have to suffer for the actions of others. Gun control is a two sided issue and the outcome will show one winner and one loser. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Gun Control an issue that effects us all.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The issue of gun control has been debated for a long time, probably ever since they were invented. The gun is a small, rather easy to obtain, weapon that is lethal if used in the right (or wrong) way. This makes the gun an extremely dangerous factor in our lives. If used improperly, a gun could be lethal to not only the target, but the user as well. The availability of guns has sky rocketed in the past decade or so, and the immense population of guns in our society make it a dangerous place to live. Gun violence claims approximately 38,000 lives in the U.S. each year, including 5,000 children and teenagers.(1) In the past few years, many steps have been taken to help reduce the risk of fatal accidents or intentions. One of these steps was the ban of assault weapons. Two years ago, congress passed a landmark bill, banning the sale, manufacture and, importation of semi-automatic assault weapons and large capacity ammunition clips. Due to this ban, the number of crimes traced to assault weapons has decreased almost 20% from 1994.(2) This ban was repealed by the House of Representatives. On march 22, 1996 another big legislation in the fight against guns was the Brady bill, which demands a 5 day waiting period for all handgun purchases. These legislation's are some what effective and in different ways. The only real way to eliminate most gun violence is to eliminate the availability of guns. Surely making guns illegal would do this but this raises a very important issue. If you outlaw guns, only the outlaws will have guns. Simply put, no matter how many bans you put out, there will always be the black market to support the criminals in the U.S. Needless to say the law abiding citizens of our country would be defenseless. The NRA has made sure that this will never happen. What the United States needs is some one to pass a bill that will protect all our citizens. Some men and women in Washington think they are that some one. Some think that there should be more availability of guns. Let's see what they both think. Two years ago, as I mentioned, Congress passed a ban on the sale, manufacture, and importation of all semi-automatic assault weapons. Soon after the 104th Congress resumed power, The House of Representatives repealed the ban as a pay back to the National Rifle Association (NRA) who had funded thousands of dollars to Congressional candidates through their Political Action Committee (PAC). According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the NRA has spent over $3 million in 1993 and 1994 alone on campaign commercials. The NRA is one of the major organizations and the biggest in the fight for pro-gun ownership. According to polls, 65% of Americans say they would be more likely to vote for a Congressman who would not vote to repeal this. 18% said they would vote for some one who would repeal this ban and 15% said it would not effect their vote. It is important for Americans to know how their Congressmen stand on the issue.(3) In 1981, the current president Ronald Reagan and his assistant, James Brady, were both shot in an assignation attempt on Reagan. Brady was paralyzed and has been ever since. The man who shot them had bought his gun no longer than a day or two before the shooting. On March of 94' a bill, quite appropriately named The Brady Bill was passed demanding a mandatory waiting period on all hand gun purchases. The period is used to do background checks on the customer. Each state has the right to regulate restrictions as to what on this background check would prevent a customer from purchasing a gun. In Massachusetts, the restrictions are as follows: The person must be over the age of 18. The person must be a United States Citizen The person must never have been convicted of felony The person must never have been convicted of a drug charge, even a misdemeanor. The person must not have any reported mental illnesses. In other states these laws are different but, they are very similar. This bill was signed by President Bill Clinton. Although this is a federal bill a problem arises with states not willing to accept this bill for some reason are using the 10th amendment to ignore the Brady Bill. The 10th amendment gives the powers, not given or prohibited by the constitution, to the states. It is a slim chance, if any, but some lawyers in these states are fighting the Brady Bill. Another restriction on the purchase and owner ship of guns is a mandatory permit or License to carry firearms. These permits are issued by a citizens local police department and must be presented when buying a firearm. These must also be shown when a police officer request a gun owner to display his/her license. If you do not have a permit and carry a gun it is a mandatory sentence of one year. Politicians feel this bill will help prevent people from getting mad with some one and going out, buying a gun and killing them the next day. This also reduces the convicted criminals sources to the black market. Recently, there was a suggestion for a increase of 100,000 police officers. This is still being decided but it certainly couldn't hurt. What does the future hold for gun control? It all depends on who we vote for. President Clinton during the past four years signed two major bills for gun control. The Brady Bill which I discussed earlier and the ban on semi-automatic weapons. Both actions were criticized by the NRA and other pro-gun ownership organizations. In fact the NRA's lobbying efforts are the reason it took thirteen year to pass the Brady Bill and the why the ban on semi-automatic weapons was repealed. The NRA say's "Bill Clinton has had the most anti-Second amendment Administration in our history, and he's proud of it."(4) They believe that if Clinton achieves his goal for another four years in the house, he will eventually license, tax, and ban the second amendment out of existence. President Clinton's administration believes that he will bring many pro-gun control supporters to the 105th congress. The NRA takes a direct approach to the second amendment. The Right to Bear Arms, period. Clinton, an the other hand, takes a different approach, that of a more complicated nature. He has passed different bills with different regulations on buying a gun and has said to, by the NRA, the have created gray areas of the law. But if the NRA were president, then this country would bleed to death. We simply can not let anyone and everyone have the power to kill another human being by twitching their index finger. On the other hand, the absolute ban of guns would not successfully disarm the criminals while it would disarm the civilians of the country. The NRA has sent many complaints to the Clinton administration about the destruction of guns. Clinton's gun buy back program destroyed countless firearms including collectors items and valuable guns that had never been fired. They complain that historians, collectors and, target shooters are not happy. They claim the reckless destruction of historical artifacts is inexcusable. However it is said that the rate of gun violence has gone down since the passage of the Brady Bill and the gun buy back program. This program however was very costly but, not as costly as 38,000 American lives each year. Maybe a different approach to the gun control question is that of Canada. Canada's crime rate and gun violence are impressively lower than the U.S. Lets take a look at how they do things. Aside from just guns, bow and arrows, crossbows, and just about any harmful projectile is subject to licensing in Canada. Any .25, .32 caliber pistol, or guns with barrels shorter than 4.14" are completely banned. Everyone must buy there own gun, meaning not to give them as gifts or anything. Bill Clinton praises Canada's system of gun control highly. All guns there must be registered by make, model, and, serial number. A new law in Canada will soon ban 58% of there guns, even non-firing replica's of these particular weapons. (I don't think this is necessary). This maybe extreme but registering your gun is not difficult to do. I think if Clinton is reelected, some or even lots of these laws will be implemented in this country. Not as much can be said about Bob Dole's views because he has not been as much of a spot light however, he has done allot for gun control as a U.S. Senator. On November 23, 1993, the Brady bill was considered dead for a year. It was killed by bipartisan filibuster. On Nov. 24, Bob Dole agreed to stop the filibusters and pass the Brady Bill. However, he opposes a seven day waiting period for gun purchases. Bob Dole's big claim to fame on the gun control issue is that when only three senators were on the floor, and all others were home for Thanksgiving, only he could have rejected the vote and the future of the Brady Bill conceivably laid in his hands. He allowed the bill to pass. Bob Dole quote's on his actions: "I know the Gun Owners of America, another group, have a little different view. They are blaming me for the Brady Bill that passed because I sat there with the majority leader and everybody else had gone home, and we made an agreement. We let the bill pass. I was picketed, and they called me a traitor and everything else... because that happened."(5) On November 19, 1993 Bob Dole voted for the crime bill. This bill contained the Feinstein gun ban, proposed by a California Senator, on more than 180 firearms. Two weeks earlier Dole broke an agreement a prevented a filibuster on the Feinstein amendment from ever happening. Dole urged Clinton while on national TV to support this senate crime bill. On February 94' Bob Dole introduced the S 1815 a bill that made the government pay people for turning in guns. Another of Bob Doles ideas is mandatory sentencing for criminals who use firearms in committing crimes. A study conducted by two Ohio coroners and two professors from Case Western reserve University conducted a study proving the ineffectiveness of a gun for protection. Their result was surprising. It is seventy percent more likely for a gun in the home to kill some one you know than an intruder. They can out to the fact the for every one intruder killed by a gun, four family members are killed. To put it simply, if you come for a large five person family and you shot a burglar coming into your house, statistically, you have killed your entire family. Another study has proven that seventy percent of murders in the U.S. were committed by family members or acquaintances. People allegedly get so angered they use the protection gun to shot a family member. This contributes to the percent of family members killed. Would people think twice before killing or committing if they had to use a knife or a bat? Some people think so. I agree. Researchers have proven also that area's of the country that have high gun control, have lower crime rates. If no one has a gun, you need not protect yourself with one, true? Toledo used to be the highest gun populated gun city in America, they passed a gun control law and successfully dropped the crime rate 22%.(6) Countries with gun control as liberal as the United States' are hard to come by. This may contribute to the nearly 85 times more gun deaths per year than England, who have a strict gun law. Japan has the lowest murder rate of all. Standing at a low, .02 percent per 100,000 people Japan is a country to learn from. In 1972, Japan suffered a astoundingly low 28 gun deaths. The U.S. on the other hand incurred 10,017 deaths. Japan has completely outlawed the possession of hand guns for civilians. This may not be as bad of an idea as I though. Although Japan holds the idolized lowest rate, they are closer to the rate of other countries than the U.S. They, in fact, are not at the extreme end of the spectrum the U.S. is. England, France, and the Netherlands are all examples of major countries with low murder rates. They all have one this in common, they require citizens to register all guns. Point being, if you won't protection, protect yourself by keeping guns out of the house.(7) My practical thoughts on gun control in the U.S. are this, one can not follow the Second amendment literally and give the country complete freedom to bear arms or, completely take away a citizens right to protection. Because not all citizens are fit to own a gun and, not all guns are fit to be owned by common citizens. My thoughts one the matter lie in the middle, most near the ideas of the Canadian system of gun control. I think that a mandatory waiting period for the purchase of a gun is an extremely good idea in that it will not allow minors, criminals, drug users, or mentally ill people to buy guns. A permit is good idea so that police may check to see if a gun owner is legally certified. Since protection and hobby are the main (and should be the only) reason for a civilian to buy a gun, guns that are made for killing, for example all assault weapons, should be banned. There is simply no need for them. This would put only protective guns into the hands of law abiding citizens. Now what about criminals. They get guns by making them, buying imports or let's not forget stealing them. First off, In my opinion it should be illegal to import guns or gun related material to anyone accept the U.S. government. The black market would surly suffer. For those who make guns, there should be a restricted supply of materials to make guns. This supply should be government regulated. All firearms should be registered by make, model, and serial number, and police should be able to run checks on this mass catalog of guns and owners. While I am on the topic of police, the number of police should be increased to help increase the number of confiscated guns. Not much in my opinion can be do about stolen guns. If a criminal takes a gun from a citizen who should have a gun, there is no way any bill or law can stop him. Since it is obviously already illegal. The only way to stop that is more police. Simply put, an intense amount of regulation should be put on guns. It's like having a fire. If you keep it in your fire place, know exactly were it is, and control it, it will heat your house and cause no danger. If you randomly spread fire everywhere forgetting where you placed it, lighting it where it doesn't belong, you then have a problem and you may get hurt. Well, the fire is spreading fast and people are burning everywhere. The government has no idea where the guns in this country are or where the next piece ,of what once was our home, will burst into flames. If we don't act quick, this country will burn to the ground. We need a giant fire extinguisher and a responsible person operating it. We have to put the fire back in it's place. My person al views on gun control are a bit different. Ideally I would become the Japanese as far as gun control and outlaw guns for private citizens. I think that if your want protection, get a security alarm. 1 out of every 4 burglaries occur when the home owner is not even home, and in no danger. A toddler looking around in her daddy's bedroom however should not have to be. If you want a gun for leisure or hunting that is a different situation but take my word for it, getting a gun for "protection" is a false sense of security. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\gun control.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ GUN CONTROL With the possible exception of abortion, no other current issue has split the country in two like the debate surrounding gun control. Both sides are equally adamant. The pro gun side, as represented by the National Rifle Association, continues to oppose all gun control measures primarily on the grounds that any law restricting gun ownership is unconstitutional. Proponents of gun control argue that gun violence is an epidemic out of control across the country, and call on federal lawmakers to stem the flow of blood with anti-gun legislation. This side won a crucial battle in the debate two years ago with the passage of the so called "Brady Bill," Federal legislation that banned the production and sale of some semiautomatic rifles and initiated a waiting period and background check for gun buyers. However, more recently than now Republican-controlled Congress, with the backing of the NRA, has reignited that battle with plans to repeal the Brady Bill. The second amendment to the constitution guarantees Americans the right to keep and bear arms without government interference. gun control advocates seem ready and eager to disregard this right which is currently being exercised by 70 million Americans. (METSKA) I believe that the governments struggle to keep guns out of the hand of juveniles and criminals is a worthy one, but when it comes to unconstitutional interrogation then its getting out of control. The government is currently trying to implement laws that will keep weapons out of the hands of every one. The people on capital hill say that they want a safer America, they want the youth of America to grow up in a caring non-violent environment, yet all they really want is a more productive best in its class nation. History proves that criminal behavior cannot be controlled by the government attempting to regulate inanimate objects. In other words, criminals will always find a way to get a hold of drugs, guns, what have you. Proof: drugs may be illegal yet we still have one heck of a problem with them; thus, if guns of some sort are made illegal then, we will probably end up with one heck of a gun problem. I believe that its not that they need a gun or think its cool, I think its just the thrill of breaking the law and rebelling. Take into consideration this hypothesis; punishment should be a sort of "after market" type deal, where you should not be punished for having a gun. The punishment should be overly severe for using a gun in a improper manner. People should not fear guns, they should fear using a gun. Finally in essence to my thesis, guns are what make Americans AMERICANS! f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\HATE CRIMES.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ I. What are Hate Crimes A. Definitions for Hate Crimes B. Counting Hate Crimes 1. White Power 2. Black Power II. Examples of Hate Crimes A. Hate Crime penalties III. Reasons for Hate Crimes Even though Hate Crimes have been around in the past, and have been most certainly been more violent in the past. Hate Crimes are most certainly still a problem in today's society, but it is not dealt with the same violent manner as previously performed in the past. There are still violent acts done out of hate, but the battle has been a lot more words. Hate crimes are a serious problem in today's society. In this paper, three topics will be discussed. (1) What are Hate Crimes, (2) Examples of Hate Crimes, and (3) Reasons for Hate Crimes. Hate Crimes are crimes done out of severe anger, ignorance, and lack of knowledge about other's ideas and beliefs. Racism is a belief that one or more races is superior to others. Prejudice is prejudging others. "Gordon Alport, a professor at Emeritus of Psychology at Harvard University and an expert at prejudism defines prejudice as.. `a hostile attitude toward a person who belongs to a group, simply because he belong to that group, and therefore presumes to have the objectable qualities ascribed to that group'(Lang)23" The most common way prejudice works is by stereotyping people, that is putting everyone form the same ethnic group together and assuming they all have the same negative characteristics or behave in the same way. This does not only apply to ethnic groups but also applies to race, religion, and other minorities. Hate crimes are so hard to count because it is not certain whether a crime is being committed out of hate. In 1989-1991, a study done by Southern Poverty Law Center in Birmingham, Alabama, recorded an increase of hate crimes in those three years. The number of murders went up 100%, Cross burnings went up 200%, and vandalism went up 50%. These acts were said to be committed by a group of "skinheads" in the Ku Klux Klan. Ku Klux Klan started out as a secret club in 1866, just after the war, claiming "superiority of the southern white man." (Lang)20 Basically the KKK is a group of extremist individuals stalking, intimidating, hanging, and hurting anyone that was not a straight puritan white male. Many of nowadays extremists stemmed form these "Knights" of white terror. (Lang)32. Hate Crimes are not only against Races (Blacks, Whites, Hispanic, Chinese...) they are also against religious beliefs, sexual preferences, and other minorities in today's society. There are what they call far left extremists and far right extremists, and both have had there leaders. The far right extremists are the ones who want change and want it now. They want to have Black power. Not equal rights for all as preached by the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who was a minister that spoke out for the equal right of African Americans. Far left extremists want to rid the country of anything that is not "Pure" (the white Anglo/Saxon Puritan Male. [Lang]24) Here are a few of the many examples of hate crimes. In 1980 a man shouted that he hated "fagots" and sprayed gunfire at a gay bar, killing two patrons (Out Now). In Maine, a gay man was thrown to his death off of a bridge by three teenagers, in 1984 (Out Now). In June of 1982, Vincent Chin, a 27 year old Chinese/American was fatally beaten with a baseball bat outside of a Detroit bar by two white automobile factory workers who called him a "Jap" and blamed him for the loss of their job in the automobile industry (Jost)8. There are also laws against hate crimes and punishments that are questionable. The question is "Should hate Crimes penalties be stiffened?" The yes side of this argument says "enhancing a criminal sentence for any hate crime in no way creates a thought crime or penalizes anyone's conduct based upon a non-prescribable viewpoint or message that such conduct contains or expresses." (Tribe)17 "In it's present form HR 4797 (Hate Crime Penalty Enhancement Law) is unconstitutional has this both content based and view point based. It directly violates the First Amendment of the Constitution. It violates the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment , because it is impermissible vague in several respects giving inadequate notice of what it prohibits and inviting arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement"(Gellman)17. About one half of all americans(about 50 million to 60 million) own at least one gun. More than half a million subscribe to survival or pre-military magazines that are full of articles on survivalism, weapon use and guerilla tactics(lang(69). Meanwhile paranoia is growing as the Budget Deficit skyrockets, A.I.D.S epidemic threatens health and health care systems. These times can cause fear, insecurities, frustration, and anger which in turn inflames scapegoating and racial stereotyping and in turn results in resurgence of racism. Freedom of Speech is one of the most significant rights given to all Americans but it is by far one of our biggest problems. The price we pay for Freedom of Speech and the ability to talk our mind is that we have to tolerate other person's beliefs and opinions. In the final analysis, one can frankly acknowledge that hate is taught. If each new generation were more tolerant of those who are different, perhaps hatred and prejudice would someday disappear from our world. (Lang)155. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Henry the VIII and Louis XIV.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Henry VIII and Louis XIV were both men whose accomplishments on a national level for their respective countries of England and France were great, but whose very different personal problems gave them a negative impression in history. The two leaders had very different ruling styles, but with a few similar themes throughout. Perhaps the best thing to look at first is their very different attitudes toward God and God¹s power in monarchy and state. Henry VIII on England grew up as a very strong Catholic, at the insistence of his mother and father. He was known to be ³a man of daily devotionals, setting an example for his people² (Canon 76). His own writings, most especially a book of Catholicism entitled The Sanctoreum earned him the title from Pope Leo III the title ³Defender of the Faith.² His book had served as an answer to the teachings of Martin Luther, a man whose principals Henry later put into effect in his very own country, in the Protestant Reformation. France, however, was a very strongly Catholic country where the Roman church had a great deal of influence. Louis, although supposed not to be a very fastidious devote of the religion, or any religion, took part in a minor reorganization of the Roman Catholic Church inside France. It is apparent now that Louis basically went along with the reforms dictated by the pope in regards to religion. In economic matters, the two rulers perhaps differed even more greatly. Henry was a fastidious economist, often commenting about the expense of things at the royal court, and taking action to have whatever the latest offense to the treasury happened to be. Louis, however, spent extravagantly, sparing no expense for himself or his nobles. His ultimate goal was once again to make the court of France the center of fashion and art once again. He created Versailles, a monstrosity of Baroque art, most of it gilded with pure gold and other precious metal. It is a sprawling country estate with an even more spectacular exterior than interior. Louis bankrupted the Treasury of France through another extrvangance as well: his wars. Louis fought four major wars. His great aim was to make himself supreme in Europe. As a start, he planned to conquer all lands west of the Rhine River. He gained several important territories, but was always checked by the alliances that other countries formed to oppose him. In the War of Spanish Succession, England took an important part in defeating him, leading to animosity between the two countries and their respective rulers. This war, which ended in 1714, left France exhausted and weakened. Both men had a common ability to see the goodness in other men as royal advisors. Both hired surprisingly intelligent and wise men to run their affairs for them, perhaps Henry even more than Louis XIV. One of Henry¹s chief advisors is immortalized in Shakespeare¹s ³The Life and Times of Kind Henry VIII². Cardinal Wolsey is spoken of there as ³a man such as history had never yet laid their eyes upon, a man who could have others get his own will enforced² (Shakespeare 78). Wolsey spent little time at the British court, but the time he spent was valuable. He served as chief advisor to a young, newly crowned, and impressionable King Henry. He formed Henry¹s ideas about government, spoke for the monarch in assembly, and reputedly taught Henry everything he knew about economics from an early age. Two other advisors are also known to history as serving in Henry¹s later life, Thomas Cromwell and Thomas More. Likewise, Louis XIV, in a mark of true genius, was wise enough to appoint someone wiser than himself to run the government. He had many, and oddly, most of their names have been erased from history. Jean Baptise Colbert, advisor to Louis in his formative years as a monarch, later wrote in prison, ³The man was a fool, but would not surround himself with other fools² (Olivier 178). In their personal lives, the monarchs had a great number of similarities. Both Henry VIII and Louis XIV were fond of women, drink, and debate. Henry is perhaps most famous for his six wives, and the bloody ends that most of them came to. Out of six, only two were not banished, publicly executed, or otherwise humiliated. A quick rundown: Katharine Aragon of Spain, Henry¹s first bride. She was banished from royal view and stripped of her title after she failed to produce sons and Henry fell in love with a young lady in waiting named Anne Boleyn. Anne Boleyn: was executed for adultery and charges of witchcraft. Jane Seymour: recorded in history as the only wife Henry truly loved. Died a few weeks after giving birth to Henry¹s much wanted son. Anne of Cleves: Princess of Germany who was not beautiful in Henry¹s eyes, and was sent away. Catherine Howard: Commoner executed for adultery. Catherine Parr: Outlived Henry. Henry jousted in many tournaments until a leg injury prevented this type of activity. He also grew quite ill and obese in later life, but never lost his love of sports and other athletic activities. Louis XIV liked to watch the tournaments more than he liked to actually participate in them. But his libidinous habits did not differ much from those of his neighbor across the Channel. He was married to Queen Marie Therese, but reportedly had at least ten other mistresses at one time. He had three children by his wife, but supposedly twelve other illegitimate children by his mistresses. It was, in fact, some of these personal habits that led to the downfalls of the monarchs. Henry VIII, who had been the great ³Defender of the Faith² in his earlier years, was in a bit of a dilemma. He no longer wanted to be married to his aging wife, devoutly Catholic Katharine of Aragon. He was in love with a young lady named Anne Boleyn. Any Catholic knows that divorce is frowned upon. But in order to marry Anne, Henry needed this divorce. He broke from the Catholic church, and, with the help of Thomas Cromwell, another top advisor, created the Church of England. Unfortunately, to wipe out all cells of opposition, Henry was forced to destroy many who did not support this break with the Church. Another thing contributing to Henry¹s downfall was his illness. Legend has it that Anne Boleyn¹s spirit took revenge on the one who had ordered her execution. It is more likely, according tomany modern historians, that Henry had a virus much like that which his father died of. He suffered a painful end: constantly coughing up blood, and crippled by a flaring leg injury. For the last few years of his life, he was unable to govern his country well, and power fled from England. Louis XIV had a very different problem. His difficulty was simply that he spent more than France could afford. Not only had the building of Versailles severely disabled the Treasury, his extravagant spending on his various mistresses and illegitimate children got out of hand. He was to the point, by the end of his reign, of setting up a well-appointed and furnished estate for each of these families. Not only that, but the Spanish War of Succession severely crippled the treasury, and Louis never could truly raised the taxes enough to cover his love of these ³little wars² and women. Louis was known in Europe for being the longest reigning king in all of modern history. He kept court at his various palaces and fought in his wars for almost 72 years. After his cheif advisor Jean Baptiste Colbert died in 1685, the reign of the Sun King became less glorified. He forced the noble families to stay at court at Versailles, creating the problem of absentee landlords for the commoners, who lived in relative poverty compared to the great splendour of Versailles. Louis died gradually of disease, and after his reign, political influence in France declined greatly for a number of years. However, France remembers him in a much better way than history admires Henry the VIII. Both monarchs suffered troubled lives, and still managed to accomplish great things for England and France. Henry VIII raised scientific awareness and appreciation for art that had previously been absent from England. Louis XIV added a new dimension to the arts such as the world had never seen. His reign was known as ranking above all others in art and literature, as well as dancing. And yet, even today they are remembered for the most part their failings, Henry for his matrimonial troubles and Louis for his economic extravagances. It might do better to weigh the pros and cons of history instead of blind judgment on the basis of few facts when thinking of Henry VIII and Louis XIV. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Holocaust.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The Holocaust means a lot to many people today, and to an equal number of people very little. It shows we are still a young civilization in knowledge for the way we treat each other, whether it be for race or religion. To some of us in society who are Jewish the Holocaust means the death of many of our people. It stands out as the most current opposing action against a religion, and to memory the worst to anyone. And from this comes the most notable phrase from the Jews, "never again." Meaning that they will never let themselves as a religion be tortured, and enslaved again, at least not if they can help it. To many of us non Jews, whether it be Christian or Muslim or whatever, I think it is taken in a much more broader light. We see that the total destruction of a religion was at hand, but also see that it is not the first to come so close. But rather the most current. It is a simple and bold reminder that some people are just not very smart, and for that same reason we must look out for all to be at peace with all. To the few people who deny the occurance of the Holocaust and rather call it the Hocsacaust. The Holocaust just means exactly what is in the dictionary, "great or total destruction especially by fire." And by no means is the genocide of European Jews, and other groups by the Nazi Germany during WWII. To me the Holocaust means the most current gigantic thing to happen to a group of people. In my opinion, not the last either. To those of you who say that there is no way this is going to happen again, I laugh at you. It is a fact that there is a religous war going on right now in the middle east, and has been going on for as long as people can remember. For those who say that what is going on in the middle east is not a genocide, I'll just say that you are right so far but I would call a nuclear bomb which is the hottest thing on the black market since the USSR fell a genocide tool. And finally for those who say that it won't happen to the Jews, the countries who are buying the nuclear weapons consist of mostly muslim populations who have an oath to anialate the Jews and take back there homeland (what they consider homeland is what almost every religion does) Isreal. The Holocaust has many meanings today, but the meaning could be different tomorrow. Because we never know when a "sweet talker" like Hitler can talk ignorent people into killing their freinds. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Home for the Aging.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Recently, I had the pleasure of having a personal tour of the Lutheran Home for the Aging located in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin. I chose this area of study because it happened to be convenient in location for me as well as easily accessible to a source of an interviewee that I felt comfortable with and who is also very comfortable with myself. I find it much easier to conduct an interview and get more relevant information from a source that I've already had former contact with and also established a friendship with. I interviewed, age 48, who was a social worker at the Lutheran Home for the Aging for 12 years until she changed career paths that would benefit herself more as well as her family. graduated from the University of with a Social Work degree and is presently pursing a two year Dental Hygiene degree(Associate Degree). She explained to me that at the time she was hired at the nursing home it was not necessary for social workers to have to take a test in order to obtain a license and a position in the social work field, a position that she held for twelve years explained to me how she was "Grandfathered" into her social worker position and did not have to take a test for a license until it was required after years of responsible and professional work in the Home for the Aging. The Lutheran Home for the Aging was founded in 1906 by John C. Koch, with the motivation and desire to promote residential care for his fellow aging Lutheran constituents. Along with the supportive interests of other Lutherans, he purchased approximately eight acres of land. A large house on the property served as the Home's first building and within a year of its founding, it had reached a capacity of twenty members. Today the same desire and motivation has increased the residential population to 313 members, age 65 and over. The founders of the Home did more than provide a place to live for the Aging. They founded a tradition of excellence and quality care that continues even to this day. The mission of the home is to "take a leadership role in resident satisfaction by providing superior services in a Christian atmosphere that meet or exceed the expectations of each resident and his or her family" ("Lutheran Home for the Aging" 1). Through the years, with renovations and expansions, the facility has evolved into a nursing facility providing skilled nursing care and related therapeutic care to all the residents 24 hours a day. The Lutheran Home for the Aging is a non-profit organization and is a recognized service organization of the Missouri Synod Lutheran Church. The Home is governed by The Board of Directors, which consists of men and women from various congregations located throughout the Milwaukee area. They constantly review and evaluate the quality of care in relationship to the purpose of the Home and are also in control of delegating a responsible and competent administrator who is the leader and manager of the Home. There is a full array of highly trained and competent staff that keep the Lutheran Home for the Aging running smoothly and up to standard. As I researched what quality nursing homes should offer to those in need of a variety of daily and sometimes complex assistance, I was surprised that this Home for the Aging met most, if not all the criteria of a "model" nursing home. Some of the services offered include personal , dietary, therapeutic, social, recreational and nursing services. There are also meals, laundry facilities, housekeeping, and 24-hour medical services provided by professional nursing care and attending physicians. In addition, as most non-profit organizations homes, there are religious services and counseling programs provided. Some of the daily responsibilities and individual aspects of the diverse staff include the following: · The activities coordinator is a trained therapist or someone designated to help and assist residents' individual needs and create programs that provide recreation, entertainment and therapy for the residents. · The social service staff consists of social workers, counselors, and , in some nursing homes, a psychologist who assist in coping of the emotional and psychological aspects of aging, the transitional problems that may arise when first entering an aging home, and daily problems and frustrations. · A food service director oversees nursing homes' daily meal program. Many homes including the Lutheran Home for the Aging, have a Dietitian that meet the individual daily requirements of each resident, whether therapeutic diet or normal, and try to ensure that meals are appetizing also. · The Pastoral care staff consists of ordained, professional, or lay persons trained to meet the spiritual needs of residents through worship, study, and counseling. At the Lutheran Home for the Aging there is a Chaplain on hand that conducts Sunday services, Bible classes, and directs a support group for family members that meets and discusses the difficulties of adjusting to the separation of their loved ones from the family. · Volunteers and members of the community assist the staff by spending many hours interacting with the residents and helping them as well as the staff perform their daily activities. There are often groups that are well known for their participation with the people at the Aging Home and continually come back year after year to help and visit the new friends they have met through their volunteer work. Some original and surprising activities and therapies were discovered during my research that not only entertain residents, but also rehabilitates those with disabilities or mental deficiencies. Some therapies I found interesting were the Pet, Music and Art therapies that are common in Aging Homes. The Music therapy consists of a musician that sings with the residents several times daily for entertainment purposes and is found also to be a good source of rehabilitation for those who have slower motor skills, the easily confused (cognitively deficient), and people that have trouble remembering things (Alzheimer's patients). Art therapy gives the elderly a chance to paint, do craft work, woodworking, and explore dance and drama if interested. Pet therapy consists of either "live- in" pets or a hired person that brings animals in to enhance the feeling of companionship among the residents. The Lutheran Home for the Aging has a cat, iguana, several parakeets, and a Golden Retriever named Pawlet that share the home with the residents. There is also an Intergenerational Program that involves the Child Day Care facility located within the Home for the Aging. The child day care was built in 1991 and consists mainly of employees children, but is also open to the public when space is available. The children learn to benefit from the social interaction with the residents and are included in some of the therapies and activities such as going to the zoo, baseball games, movies , malls, and even Bible study once a week. The residents have the opportunity to have the delightful presence of the children and be involved in their care also by reading to them and participating in activities especially designed for the children. Many nursing homes, including the Lutheran Home for the Aging , are non- profit organizations which have long been recognized as having a tradition of serving the needs of older persons. Non- profit organizations are usually community-based agencies and sponsored by religious organizations and fraternal groups. As mentioned earlier, theses homes are governed by a volunteer board of trustees who are committed to caring for the needs of older people. An important aspect of non- profit organizations is that any income generated is put back into the facility to either improve or expand the services they provide. As in the case of the Lutheran Home for the Aging, the generated income from resident pay and contributions has been used in expansion of the Home, the building of the Child Day Care, and the coordination of special activities for the residents. The main concern in non - profit organization is the continuum of care that offers many options to the elderly residents of the facilities. The range of offerings can include those who need somewhat simple care to those who need a high level of care. The nursing care facilities consist mainly of long- term facilities that integrate custodial care with nursing, psychological, social, and rehabilitative services on a continuing basis. At the time of admission, each individual's potential and problems are evaluated and their care and treatment is designed to their individual needs. Regardless of the care needed and the advancements made in therapies, nursing homes enable residents to capitalize on their strengths and compensate for their weaknesses in an atmosphere designed to look as home- like as possible. Nursing care facilities are licensed by the state and are overlooked by the federal government. An interesting program that I found at the Lutheran Home for the Aging was the Interdisciplinary Team or often called Resident Care Management in other nursing homes. This team consists of a social worker, nurse, dietitian, physical and speech therapist, recreational therapist, a resident and their family. This team reviews the residents' status to ensure that all the needs are being met and treatment is not lacking in any way in any area. This work load can be very large for a social worker, especially. As in case load, she reviewed between 96 -100 people monthly and had to use very professional judgments in each case because of strict regulation of the State. In nursing homes, there is a State Yearly Review in which the State picks residents names at random and does their own evaluation of the patients as well as of the nursing home. There are numerous interviews with residents, staff, and even family to ensure the Nursing Home is living up to standard. If problems are found, the facility can face financial penalties or even lose its license unless the situation is corrected in an allotted time period. As can be expected with all the care and rehabilitative efforts needed by many in nursing homes just to maintain daily comfort in their lives, comes an incredible expense to the resident or their families. In many nursing homes, residents are required to have a need for professional medical staff and cannot accept applicants whose basic need is custodial care or who are developmentally disabled. Thus, payment sources must be reviewed before initial entry is considered. I found that the costs of living in nursing homes can be incredibly expensive, especially if the resident is in need of daily therapy and medical attention, which increases the amount each resident pays as medical attention is needed more often. The average daily rates can be from $90 to $140 for only their bed - stay, not including any special treatments that are often required by many. Costs may exceed over $4,500 monthly and from $35,000 to $45,000 yearly. There are not a lot of sources for covering such large expenses and those that are offered are limited to financial need of the patient. There are three basic methods of funding long- term care in nursing facilities that require patients to need medical assistance. The "Private Pay" method is for residents who are financially able and pay a daily rate from their private funds. As mentioned before, the rate is based upon care needed and is determined prior to admission. Another method may be through Medicare which will help pay for a portion of an individual's care when certain criteria are met. Some of these requirements may include that the resident requires skilled care on a daily basis by nursing and therapy which can only be provided in a skilled nursing facility. Medicare will pay up to 100 days of 100% coverage in the nursing home as long as the patient is making advancements in treatments and therapy. As soon as the patient is at a "plateau" in their medical condition, Medicare is no longer provided. It should be mentioned that Medicare is a federal program "that underwrites health insurance for persons 65 and older and some persons with disability and also covers limited home health and hospice care" (Sager 459). Another popular payment method may include Medicaid which is a "joint federal and state program that helps hose with disabilities pay for nursing home care and health care at home after they can no longer afford the expenses themselves" (460). There are other payment methods, such as nursing home insurance, offered to the elderly, but are rare in comparison to the payment methods mentioned above. The role of the social worker is included in helping the assistance of some residents find or obtain payment methods that may benefit themselves. For instance, if a patient has no family it is the job of the social worker to have to go and fill out the Medical Assistance papers at designated buildings so that the residents are eligible for financial assistance towards their stay at the nursing home. They are also responsible for coordinating and participating in discharge planning when a resident may return home to live in the community. Social workers set up health care, physical therapies, or occupational assistance for the patients if needed. They sometimes refer residents that need psychological or psychiatric counseling to outside agencies and monitor the results. I found it interesting while when interviewing of the Lutheran Home for the Aging, how much she had related the role of her work as a social worker to what we had learned in class about the Code of Ethics. When I first asked her for a brief description of her duties as a social worker there, she said," I was an advocate for Resident Rights. It was my job to protect the individual rights of each citizen, protect their worth and dignity, and make sure they weren't taken advantage of." I told her that it sounded like she was reading the same book I had and giving me the answers I wanted to hear. Some other things that amazed me in the professionalism of social workers to their job of working with people and maintaining the best interest of the client became evident for the first time during this research project. All the things I learned in class seemed to come together after just researching one institution. Another aspect of social work that Mrs. Hippler stressed was the importance of documentation for everything . She stated, "If it isn't written down, it didn't happen." This is especially important if there is a legal problem with a resident or if the State Review Board would like to see certain charts and documentation on a certain patient. Also mentioned was the importance of confidentiality and the need to provide accessible resources, especially to those in nursing homes who cannot always care for themselves. There are many nursing homes today that do not always meet the needs of the residents that occupy them and often violate many ethical standards of proper living for people. Some homes have been found to exploit people financially, ignore proper medical care, and engage in a variety of residential abuses. After my research, I truly believe what separates "good" nursing homes from those who are involved in unethical practices is based upon individual morals, community involvement, and religious guidance. At the Lutheran Home for the Aging, I found the staff to be incredibly friendly and competent in the performance of their job detail. I was also impressed by the professionalism of the social worker I interviewed in regard to her job and the stress and frustration that comes with it. The nursing home was very involved with the community for rehabilitative purposes for the residents, and provided a learning experience for a wide range of volunteers that take time out of their lives to help others. The Home has been a clinical site for interns in therapy and social services as well. Although the institution is based upon the " spirit of Christian caring," the Home for the Aging does not discriminate from other races. There is a Chaplain available to the residents and staff for counseling and spiritual support. Bible classes are offered as well as Sunday Lutheran services, weekly communion, and monthly Catholic services. I came across a good quote that would serve as an example of the unique characteristics and motivation needed in order to maintain professional excellence in non - profit and religious - based nursing homes. This was from a pamphlet that stated: "The Lutheran Home for the Aging has been blessed from its inception with insightful leadership, a committed staff, and a supportive Christian community. By the grace of God, we look to the continued dedication of those resources to the tasks ahead" ("Lutheran Home for the Aging" 8). BIBLIOGRAPHY Applegate, William B. "Journal of the American Geriatrics Society." Online. Internet. Available http://www.wwilkins.com/wavcat- bin/journals_ops/ID0856948/0002-8614/prod. "Code of Ethics." Online. Internet. Available http://www.umanitoba.ca/faculties/...tml#Ethical Duties and Obligations. Lutheran Home for the Aging. Wauwatosa: Lutheran Home for the Aging, 1996. "Long-Term Care and Nursing Homes." Online. Internet. Available http://freenet.uchsc.edu/2000/senior/nurshome/menu.html. "Nursing Home, Home Health and Hospice." Online. Internet. Available http://www.math.utah.edu/~c-pkse/medfile/hhh.html. "Nursing Homes and Long Term Care Facilities." Online. Internet. Available http://www.medaccess.com/locator/nursehome/nsgh01.htm. Sager, M. Measurement of Activities of Daily Living in Hospitalized Elderly: A Comparison of Self-report and Performance-based measures. Wisconsin: Geriatric Society, 1992. 457-462. "Senior Care Insurance, Medicare, Medicaid." Online. Internet. Available http://seniors-site.com/ads/medicare.html. Lutheran Home for the Aging: "A warm, caring place where life always has quality, value and dignity." November 25, 1996 f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Homeless.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Homeless What has been done to decrease the problem? One of the largest growing concerns in Toronto is the constantly increasing number of citizens who are finding themselves living on the streets. With the decrease in the number of available jobs, the population of homeless people has literally boomed. My questions are not as simple to answer as they may appear. Why is a large portion of our community forced to live on the streets? What has be done to decrease the problem? These are the questions I will confront in my essay. With the economical wealth attributed to the name "Canada", one would have to wonder why there is a homeless situation at all. This problem is especially evident in Canada's wealthiest city, Toronto. When it comes to the affairs of the people, it is the government who should intervene. When I look at what the government has done with regard to the homeless problem, I have to doubt that everything is being done to eradicate it. The United Nations implemented a universal declaration of human rights. Article 25 Section 1 of this declaration states: Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing, and medical care and necessary social services, and to the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control. This is a step in the right direction. However, this is not enough. These rights are subject to the discretion of the government of the country who decides to obey these universal rights. How much is "adequate"? The government, both at the federal and municipal levels, is currently working on new spending cuts. These cuts also include spending on welfare, unemployment and social services that are geared towards helping the homeless. Spending cuts can be seen as a necessity to maintain the country economically, but the reason for having a government in the first place is to take care of the people. How can this be done when money is being taken away from those services that are necessary to uphold this obligation? Simply put, it cannot. Those obligations are served by nonprofit organizations who depend on government grants to maintain a standard of care for those who need the services. The blame cannot be placed only on the government. Such a system of assistance depends on its beneficiaries to be honest and have some integrity. Many recipients of these services attempt to "cheat the system". With no will to search for work many of these recipients remain at home and reap the benefits of their weekly cheques. This causes the government to create other services to control the amounts of money being distributed to those people. This process is costly and would be unnecessary if all of the recipients decided to take an honest approach to this service. What can the government do to decrease the homeless population? Although there is no quick and easy answer to solve this difficult problem, Toronto has the means to attempt economical ways to research and come up with ideas to solve it. Here in Ontario we have many excellent universities and colleges with equally excellent students who are taking courses in the political sciences. If the government were to cooperate with these universities and colleges and have them work in conjunction with the current research groups, then the answer to decrease the homeless population would be effectively answered. The government would encounter little expense and at the same time give the students a chance to implement what they are learning into real life situations. Everyone benefits from this idea and there are no losers. In conclusion I think that our homeless problem could eventually be rooted out entirely if everyone were to take part in the care of their fellow neighbour. If we were to stop being self-centered and start thinking about the other person who has less than us, I am sure that we would benefit from it. It isn't all that hard. A few advertisements on the television and radio, a little push from our society's leaders and we would be off on the right track. That worked for the recycling program. Now we should try employing this idea for even better reasons. I doubt that I will be around to see this idea in use all around the world, but I do hope that I can one day see it used here in Toronto. To assist all the homeless here in Toronto would be a very nice thing to see. The best part of it all would be to know that we, as a society, would be able to work together despite all the barriers created by racism and our naive nature when it comes to other heritages. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\homelessness in England.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Introduction I decided to study the homeless' situation before we went to England, so I tried to get information about it via the internet, but it was so much information that I soon gave up... When we got to England I thought about changing subject to the pub culture because it seemed easier to write about, but after a few days I had seen so many homeless people that I got used to it and therefor dared to talk to them and ask them questions about their situation and why they where homeless. Many people just walked right by the homeless without even look at them (rather the reverse, look another way), but other people stopped to talk to them and buy their paper. I've used the homeless people as sources and also their paper. When I came home I searched on the internet to get information and there was a lot of it, so I choosed some headings and took a closer look at them. Who's homeless? I thought, before I went to England, that every homeless person was that by his/her own choice, but after talking to them and read about it I know that some of the homeless is that by their own choice. They choose to be homeless for different reasons, like a protest against the society or just to try the homeless life. 25% of the homeless are war veterans and most of them from Vietnam. They are mentally traumatised by their war experiences, some of them are disable and others are just unable to find work so they can pay a rent. 25% of the homeless are children and many of them are alone. They're maybe run-aways who left home because there was no food at home, or because they're victims of rape, incest or violence. Many of them are "throwaways", whose parents tell them to leave home or won't allow them to return home once they've left. Many of the homeless are elderly people with fixed income, and I guess that's not the traditional image of homeless people. They receive about £450 a month in benefits and if they pay £350 for rent it's pretty logical that they can't live a decent life. Many elderly people are living in poverty in an apartment with no proper heating, no water etc., and many of the elderly homeless are afraid to go to soup kitchens or shelters, so they aren't seen on the streets. Myths There's a lot of myths going around about the homeless. Very often these myths are told by someone without any or with just a little knowledge about the homeless people and their life. Here's some of the myths: Myth: They want to be homeless. Fact: Some of them yes, but less than 6% of the homeless are homeless by their own choice. I spoke to a man who told me he used to live in Scotland, and that he had a house of his own, a TV, a VCR and so on, but after a concert in London about a year ago, he decided to stay in Brighton to try "the homeless life". Now he tried to earn money, so he could get home to Scotland again. Myth: They are heavy drug users and mentally ill. Fact: About 25% of the homeless are emotionally disturbed, but that has a lot to do with that many of them has suffered from child abuse or violence. About 25% uses drugs, but many of them are included in them who suffers from mental illness. Myth: They don't work. Fact: 25% of the homeless work full- or part- time. The problem is that people earning a minimum wage doesn't earn enough to support a family of three or rent an apartment in the inner-city. There's also many of the homeless people who aren't able to work and there's many reasons why. Paper The homeless in England has their own paper called The Big Issue. They write about things that might interest themselves, but also about homeless people, so that the people buying it can read about the homeless' situation. The homeless people buys the paper for 40p and sell it for 70p, but to earn more money they say they don't have change for a pound. In The Big Issue I bought I read about a girl who cut herself and walked in the streets with bleeding arms. Nobody seemed to care, she said, or maybe they were afraid... How to help? On the internet I found a lot of ways to help the homeless, but some of the things were not realistic...at least not in my opinion. There was a page called "7 meaningful things you can do to help the homeless": 1. Show the homeless respect.(Talk to them or give them a smile. This helps to break down the sense of worthlessness and isolation that a homeless person easily gets.) 2. Don't give cash. ("It can be used to buy drugs or alcohol, so it doesn't solve the problem" according to this page, but I think it's OK to give money so the homeless can buy food and other necessary things.) 3. Pray for them (as a non-believer, I find this useless, but for people believing I guess it helps.) 4. Realize that the homeless are not all the same. (As I wrote before, I discovered that when I spoke to the man from Scotland.) 5. Encourage them to get help. (Like the elderly I wrote about before, who are ashamed of going to a shelter or a soup-kitchen.) 6. Get informed! (To help the homeless and prevent yourself from being just an observer, but also to prevent all the myths.) 7. Give! (You have more property than a homeless person, and a lot of it you probably don't need, so give for example your old toys to a homeless child.) These 7 things were just a few of all those on the net. I also found something called "54 Ways You Can Help The Homeless". It was, as it says, a list of things you can do for the homeless, but it was a little different from the things listed above. Here's a few of them: What to give Clothing. Money. Toys. A bag of groceries. Children Tutor homeless children. Take homeless children on a trip. Educate your children (and yourself) about the homeless. Collect toys and games for donations. Play with children in a shelter. Other things to do Volunteer at a shelter. Use birthday parties to help. Employ the homeless. Authors notes As far as I know, we don't have anything like the English homelessness here in Sweden and I'm glad we haven't, because wherever I went in Brighton I saw homeless people lying in the lanes or standing in the streets, begging for money or selling their paper. This has been an interesting work to do and I've learned a lot about the homeless situation, but the most interesting thing I discovered was that many homeless people was that by his/her own choice and many of them can get out of it if they struggle enough. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\homosexuality.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Social Acceptance A child goes to school, the teacher asks, "Have your mom come in for a 'teacher mother conference'." Suddenly, the child is confused. For the first time he thinks about his home setting and wonders, "Which mom is supposed to come in? I have two moms." The example given is not an unusual one. It is something that happens all the time in today's society in which homosexual couples live with and rear children together. Where most children have a mother and a father, children of gay or lesbian parents have either two moms or two dads. While some may look at this as a "taboo" or , being in the Baptist belt, "a sin", in today's society more than 15% of families are with same sex parents who are raising one or more children. Legally, homosexual marriages are not binding, thus causing difficulty in adopting or fostering children. Due to society it is often difficult to birth a child, as well, without a "husband" or a "father" in a mother's life. Therefore, those who have children, via pregnancy, foster, or adoption have conquered a very difficult task. So, is this family an abnormal family because there are no opposite sex parents. Or is it a normal family because of the love its' members share? Can we say what it is that makes a family. Perhaps, if we can answer these questions, we will find the solutions we need to fulfill the doubts in our minds. Should we ever condemn someone for loving? When we judge, is this what morality is?? I think not! If we would teach our children to accept "love" as that which it is, a mutual feeling of love and respect, perhaps the prejudice and conclusions that society sees will change. We must teach that "gay" is not a "bad" word, it is merely the same love as others feel, but done in a special way. Because we are different, does this make u f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\How Did The Transcontinental Railroad Affect Western Expansio.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Thesis: The transcontinental railroad greatly increased Westward expansion in the United States of America during the latter half of the nineteenth century. The history of the United States has been influenced by England in many ways. In the second half of the 1800's, the railroad, which was invented in England, had a major effect on Western expansion in the United States. "Railroads were born in England, a country with dense populations, short distances between cities, and large financial resources. In America there were different circumstances, a sparse population in a huge country, large stretches between cities, and only the smallest amounts of money." ("Railroad" 85) The first American railroads started in the 1830's from the Atlantic ports of Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, Wilmington, Charleston, and Savannah (Douglas 23). Within twenty years, four rail lines had crossed the Alleghenies to reach their goal on `Western Waters' of the Great Lakes or the tributaries of the Mississippi. Meanwhile, other lines had started West of the Appalachian mountains, and by the mid-1850's Chicago, St. Louis, and Memphis were connected to the East. Still other lines were stretching Westward, beyond the Mississippi. An international route connected New England and Montreal and another one crossed Southern Ontario between Niagara, New York, and the Detroit River. During the 1850's, North and South routes were developed both East and West of the Alleghenies. It was not until after the Civil War, however, that a permanent railroad bridge was constructed across the Ohio River. After the Civil War, the pace of railroad building increased. The Pacific railroads, the Union Pacific building from Omaha, Nebraska, and the Central Pacific building from Sacramento, California, had started to build a transcontinental railroad during the war to help promote national unity. They were joined at Promontory, Utah, on May 10, 1869, completing the first rail connection across the continent. Before the transcontinental railroad, the Eastern railroads had lines running only as far West as Omaha, Nebraska. The Western railroads had a few lines running North and South in California, far West of the wall of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. In between these two networks was a huge gap of about seventeen hundred miles of plains and mountain ranges. Closing this gap was a dream shared by many Americans. Businessmen thought of all the money they could make by having an entire continent full of customers and using the railroads to serve their needs. Romantics dreamed of the discoveries of wild Indians, scouts and hunters, and, of course, gold. Gold had been a desired find throughout the exploration of America. The California Gold Rush of 1849 again created much excitement about the search for gold. The Pacific Railroads were founded when the Civil War was in progress. Until the war was over, the transcontinental railroad was a giant enterprise stalled by much bickering between a reluctant Congress and the Army, who had clamored for it (Cooke 254). If it had been left to the government, it would have taken another twenty years to complete the transcontinental railroad. However, it was a commercial venture, and it was fortunately fed by the adrenaline of competition. There were two railroad companies building the transcontinental railroad, the Union Pacific from the East, and the Central Pacific from the West. The two companies struggled to beat each other in slamming down a record mileage of track. At first, Congress avidly pursued the project and they had stipulated that the Central Pacific should stop when it reached the California Border (Congress was full of Easterners). In 1865, after much argument about the aid the government was providing to the two companies, the actual construction of the transcontinental railroad was started. Then in 1866, Congress decided that two companies should build as fast as possible and meet wherever they came together (255). First, the Union Pacific sent out location parties, tracing the line and clearing the path by killing the Sioux and the buffalo in the way of the railroad. Then came the construction gangs who, working in shifts, graded (flattened) the land by as much as a hundred miles a stretch. Behind them came the track- laying crews, each consisting of ten thousand men and as many animals. For each mile of track, the government was loaning the railroad from $16,000, for flat land, to $48,000, for mountainous land ("Railroad" 86). The supplies needed to lay a single mile of track included forty train cars to carry four hundred tons of rail and timber, ties, bridgings, fuel, and food, which all had to be assembled in a depot on the Missouri River. But the Union Pacific had the twin advantages of comparatively flat land and a continuous supply line back to the factories of the East coast. It was quite different for the Central Pacific, which had to fetch most of its materials, except timber, by sea, twelve thousand miles around the tip of South America. Another difference between the two companies was their work-forces. The Eastern work gangs were recruited from immigrant Irish, poor Southern whites, and poor Southern blacks, while the Western crews came mostly from China. The Union Pacific was said to be sustained by whisky while the Central Pacific was said to be sustained by tea (Douglas 110). While the Easterners were racing through the prairie, the Westerners were stripping foothill forests, painfully bridging, tunneling, and inching up the mountains. Working summer and winter, it took the Central Pacific two years to hurdle the barrier of the Sierras. A thousand miles back East, the Irish workers frequently fainted in the midsummer heat, but their employers were kept going by the money they would receive from the government upon completion of the transcontinental railroad. With the Westerners over the Sierras, and the Easterners over the Rocky Mountains, the two armies slogged along the sage toward each other. When the two crews came within sight of each other, the Irish turned to their fists to slow down the Chinese. The Chinese resorted to pick axes, which in turn brought the Irish to use their guns. The Chinese finally gave in and the fighting was stopped (Merk 456). On May 10, 1869 the two rails met at a spot in Utah that was named Promontory Point. The crews had laid 1,775 miles of track in just over three years. Five days later, a special Central Pacific train arrived carrying company executives, engineers, and state dignitaries. Three days later, the Union Pacific train came with it's own load of dignitaries, three companies of infantry, and a regimental band. "It promised to be a gallant and decorative ceremony. But in the course of their labor the crew had collected a more colorful assortment of interested parties: saloon keepers, gamblers, whores, money lenders, odd-job rovers. And these, with the cooks and dishwashers from the dormitory trains, made up the welcoming party." (Douglas 121) Five states had sent along gold and silver spikes for the official ceremony. The chosen symbol for the ceremony was a golden spike which was to be driven in by the Governor of California, Leland Stanford. The band stopped playing and a prayer was said. The telegraph operator was connected with San Francisco and New York and was ready to send the first coast-to- coast commentary. It was a single sentence, "Stand by, we have done praying," (Merk 461). Then the Governor of California lifted the sledge hammer above his head and brought it down to meet the rail. He had missed the spike, but the telegraph operator had already sent the message and New York fired a hundred gun salute, Philadelphia rang the Liberty Bell, and a San Francisco paper announced the "annexation of the United States," (Cooke 218). "The country might take to the railroad as a novelty and a tourist fashion, but the companies saw it as a chain of missing links between the Great Plains and the people who would want, or could be urged, to settle it," (Cooke 229). The years 1870-1900 were a period of enormous growth in the United States. During these years, 430 million acres of land were settled, which was more than had been occupied in all preceding American history. A considerable part of this expansion was in the Great Plains ("United States of America" 472). This enormous expansion was the product of a combination of forces. One was the Homestead Act of 1862. The Homestead Act of 1862 was passed by the government to encourage farming in the Mid- West. The government offered any head of family or person over twenty-one, either citizen or alien who wished to become a citizen, a 160 acre section of land. The recipient paid a small fee and agreed to live on the homestead or cultivate it for five years (Merk 236). In addition to the Homestead Act, there was the realization on the part of informed people that the era of well-watered, free land was drawing to a close. A warning had been given in 1880 by the Director of the Census that the era of free land was closing (Horn 130). The swift expansion across the Great Plains was, in part, a rush of American farmers who wanted to take part in free and cheap land in areas that were well watered. A third factor was the sale of land by states at attractive prices. School lands, university lands, and other state lands were put on the market in competition with homesteads. The chief factor, however, in this swift Westward colonization was the railroad companies. All of them were eager to transport settlers to the vast prairie, to get it colonized as a matter of developing traffic. The land-grant railroads had their own areas to sell. But, they also aggressively advertised the free homestead lands of the federal government. The main objective was to build up settlement as a means of creating freight to carry. The prices at which railroad lands were sold varied according to location and soil from five to twenty dollars or more an acre with easy credit terms. Many settlers preferred railroad lands that were favorably located over free homesteads. Railroad companies, especially those possessing land grants, were colonizers of the Great Plains on a large scale. They carried forward on a vast scale the work that had been done on a lesser scale by colonizing companies on the seaboard during the colonial period. The Great Plains were advertised with extraordinary enthusiasm. The Northern Pacific Railroad kept eight hundred agents in various European countries distributing literature and assisting immigrants. Literature was spread in every important European language, especially to areas in which there were droughts or bad soil. Western railroads had agents in New York City to receive immigrants; they offered special immigrant rates to the West, and they gave new arrivals advice on where to settle and about the best methods of farming. The railroad enterprise was one of the most important aspects of the history of the West since the Civil War, and the reason the story is not emphasized more in summary accounts is that the story has so far been told only for individual railroads. "In and all-out campaign to lure settlers, railroad land offices churned out reams of propaganda that painted the prairies and plains as a veritable paradise." (Horn 194) Railroads were not always scrupulous in their colonization methods. They permitted their New York agents to use dubious means of enticing immigrants coming off steamboats to settle on their lands. Some were said to have stolen trainloads of immigrants from each other. High-pressure salesmanship was used in disposing of lands to prospective settlers. Rapturous tales were told about what the land would grow. The climate of the plains was misrepresented. Jay Cooke, the financier of the Northern Pacific had weather maps printed in the 1870's which were altered to show the region a place of warm winters in order to counteract the impression that the region of the Northern Pacific was a harshly cold country. The Northern Pacific was thereafter wittily referred to by newspapers as Jay Cooke's Banana Belt. Lack of rainfall was known to be a crucial problem on the Western Plains. The whole region is an area of semi-aridity and of climatic cycles. A series of wet years occurs when the annual rainfall is somewhat more that twenty inches; then a dry series will follow, bringing years of droughts. It so happened that the five years prior to 1887 were a wet series on the Great Plains, when Kansas, Nebraska, and South Dakota had fairly frequent rainfall. The propagandists of the railroads, as a result, either denied the assertion that the Plains were a region of semi- aridity, or contended that the climate was changing for the better. They advanced various theories to explain the change. Plowing the sod was said to produce rain. The stringing of telegraph lines was said to also produce rain. A theory was developed that the noise of civilization, the clanging of the locomotives, etc., lead to the rain. These theories were even repeated by state officials. "The scientists of the federal government were not allowed to counteract such propaganda. In the reports of the Geological Survey, Major John Wesley Powell was obliged, at the insistence of Western congressmen who were acting on the behest of railroad lobbies, to strike out, in his account of the Great Plains, every reference of `semi- aridity' and substitute the words `semi-humidity.'" (Merk 473) All this propaganda led to even more settlement. A prime example of the effect of the incredible rush of settlement in the Prairie is the growth of the state of Nebraska, specifically Omaha, before and after the coming of the transcontinental railroad. Nebraska was admitted to the Union in 1867, and despite an economic depression and a grasshopper plague, the State's population increased from about 120,000 to more than 1,000,000 by 1890. Much of this growth was due to the State's location along the transcontinental railroad. During the 1880's, Omaha became an important industrial and meat-packing center. The railroad connections made this growth possible. The beef industry was one of the many that were dependent on the railroad. When the transcontinental railroad went into service a twenty-nine year old livestock trader from Chicago named Joseph McCoy had an idea that would be the start of cowboys. He planned to herd cattle from Southern Texas to the railroad at Omaha, meanwhile having the cows graze on the grassland in between the two points (Cooke 229). With the refrigerated train car in 1870, beef became part of the diets of the millions in the East (232). Thus, the railroad created a sustainable industry for the cattle ranchers in the Mid-West and the city of Omaha. Many other small towns along the railroad also boomed during the last quarter of the 1800's. Without the railroad, the homesteads could have only been reached by wagon, which would have discouraged many if not most of the settlers going to become farmers. Unlike the gold miners of the earlier years, the farmers did not dream of getting rich quickly. They wanted to be self-sufficient, and they felt that the land on the Prairie could help them do it. The railroad was an incredible catalyst in the population of the Mid-West and without it the area might still be sparsely populated. The transcontinental railroad proved it's worth and had a tremendous impact on westward expansion. "In less than thirty years after the Civil War, all across the `enormous gap' spanned by the railroad, the interior was being conquered and domesticated." (Cooke 240) Bibliography Cooke, Alistair. Alistair Cooke's America. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977. Douglas, George H. All Aboard! The Railroad In American Life. New York: Paragon House, 1992. Horn, Huston. The Old West The Pioneers. New York: Time-Life Books, 1974. Merk, Frederick. History of the Westward Movement. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978. "Railroad." Compton's Encyclopedia. 1990 edition. "United States of America." The New Encyclop'dia Britannica. 1990 edition. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\How Identities are formed.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Garrett Bennicas Soc. 1 Portfolio Synthesis Identities and How they are Formed From this section of the course, Sociology 1, I have learned about different philosophies and ideas about how identities are formed. The philosophies that make the most sense to me are the ideas of John Locke, Jean-Jacues Rousseau, Charles Harton Cooley and George Herburt Mead. Also the ideas focused on in my exercise have as well helped me to form an idea where identities come from and what they mean socially. John Locke had the idea that people in a society truly want to live together in harmony and that people are not aggressive by nature. That people are born with a "blank slate" and that anything can be learned. I completely agree with this statement. How people are brought up and what they are exposed to defines their identity and intentions in society. I was brought up by loving parents that among others things taught me to be true to my feelings and to express them truthfully. Jean-Jacues Rousseau's theory about corruption relates to the "clean slate" idea. He stated that corruption come from society. So if one is not influenced positively they may end up corrupt and be a hindrance on society. If a child grows up in a "dysfunctional family" they may be at a disadvantage to a child like my brother who is getting the same social education from my parents and the society we live in. Charles Harton Cooley also touched on the idea of identities. He believed that identities are formed from interactions with people in society. This would mean that the more interactions one has the more choices that have to form there own identity. In a sense my upbringing and my brother's can be dangerous in a way because our parents have to be careful not to shelter us too much form parts of society. Otherwise we create one sided identities and opinions of ourselves and others. I feel that that is what college is all about. To be exposed to others and their ideas to help yourself and people around you to form ideas. In a way social interactions are a learning process and a part of higher learning. George Herburt Mead said that all group life is from social interaction. That humans can work together well for social reasons. But I believe this to be true only if people have been exposed to enough interactions, only then are we able to come together for common ideas and the good of society. Furthermore he said that we have the capacity to figure out the intentions of people, but again only after we have substantial exposure to society. Mead stated that we must use the same meanings for gestures and find a common understanding. This is the foundation of language and the process in which we learn how to communicate with others. Finally, my identity exercise not only help me to figure out my own identity but how I am perceived by others. Like Cooley said, we see ourselves in other people's eyes and we ponder the judgments being made about us. I feel that the only way to get around people judging others is to continue to interact in society. I think that I have made significant progress in coming to the point of "enlightenment", able to figure out people and their intentions. Only then will I be able to work for the common good of the society I live in because I will have to knowledge to do so. To become educated and to help society I feel that college is an excellent way of learning how to do this. College is more than just going to class and trying to get the grade, but it is there as a tool to help us open our minds. I feel once we all can "open our minds" to become "enlightened" then we are ready to work for the common good of our societies and the people in them. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\How Social Environment affects Lifestyle.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Social environment is influenced by one's power and wealth. This, in turn, determines success or failure in peoples' lives. If one were born with a "silver spoon" in his mouth, he would easily be able to attend a fancy school no matter how intelligent he is or have any luxury he wants just because of power and wealth. On the flip side, if one were born to a poor family in a bad neighborhood infested with violence and drugs, he would have a much smaller chance of succeeding in life, more especially, going to an upper-class school. It is hard for many poor to go to college because of such high tuition costs. Scholarships are available; but, even though one shows financial need, one still has to have a high grade point average and test scores. Even if one has a good mind, trying to study in a gang-ridden neighborhood with constant gunfire isn't easy. With both parents working two jobs, there isn't any parental guidance. Whereas, the affluent, even if busy or working, have the means to insure that their children are supervised and well taken care of. The rich also have the luxury of affording special tutors to help their children while other children are on their own. For example, there are three students, one from a clean, upper-class community, another from a small, middle-class suburb and the other from a graffiti-ridden slum. All three of these students have exceptional GPA's and scored very well on standardized testing. The student from the upper-class community will have the best chance of succeeding. Tuition will never be a problem and chances are that those parents have some pull because of who they are. The middle-class student won't have a great problem but there is still the fact of paying tuition, which would limit the options quite a bit. One may be smart enough to get grants but the family makes too much money. Also, if he sought admission into a prestigious school and it came down to the student or someone richer, the middle-class student would probably lose out. Some of the many reasons for this are that the affluent family will most likely have been an alumni to that particular school. If not, they will have better connections and will have a more impressive letter of recommendation written for the student. However, the lower-class student would have a much rougher time. Even with good grades, he might lack the opportunities that others may have. Tuition is definitely a problem and with an overworked guidance counselor, a problem of a poorer school system, scholarship information might be missing. Most importantly, there would be a decided lack of motivation on the part of the school, family and maybe even the student. I am not saying that social environment is the definitive factor in someone's lifetime accomplishments. It is common knowledge that it is difficult to get out of a bad situation such as growing up without any of the advantages others have, but many have managed. There is a way out, it just takes a strong mind and a strong will to do so. If someone is intelligent enough, they can try to go out and grab the recognition they deserve. Social environment as a determining agent is definitely a human-made force. In society, the poor are regarded with contempt or completely ignored while the rich are seen as having the authority over everything. The poor are seen as undeserving, therefore, not receiving much of an education, if any. In any society, there are always the strong and the weak; and, in this case, the weak are portrayed as the poor by the rest of society. Some feel that the weak in our society should be eliminated because they are no more than mere pests, irritating the rest of society. In my opinion, there isn't much to be done to change the way society thinks. As long as the elite control businesses and schools, they will still have the authority over what the public thinks and does. The best thing to have is a positive outlook on all situations and never stop trying. If one never gives up, one can achieve his goal no matter how unreal it may seem at the time. The most important thing is never to let society get in the way. One must not fall prey to society's evils and give up. If there were to be a solution, it would have to be bringing more jobs back into this great country of ours. Too many people are out of work because the greedy owners of companies are taking jobs away from American workers and giving them to foreigners who are paid next to nothing for intense labor. There is also a lack of good, well-educated teachers. Many of the bad neighborhoods, where the above-mentioned lower class live, are uneducated because there is a shortage of teachers to give them guidance. If schools were cleaned up and rid of all the violence, then more teachers would be willing to teach there. All of these goals will be difficult to achieve and will take much time and patience to complete. In not too many years, the generation of tomorrow will be the generation of the present. If everyone is open minded, then perhaps the ideas of the past will change and the poor will be considered human beings. But until then, society remains the same and will be very difficult to change. In conclusion, I have a very optimistic opinion of the future and the way the poor are treated. It will take concerted effort and cooperation on behalf of everyone but I think it can be done if everyone puts their minds to it. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\How to Communicate in a Relationship.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 Henry Roose Marion Fekete Writing 151 6 December, 1996 How to Communicate in a Relatioship The hardest skill to master in order to maintain a successful, loving relationship is communication. Being unable to express one's thoughts clearly and accurately is a heavy burden to bear when trying to hold a conversation. It often causes misunderstandings and unnessary arguments. Plainly expressing one's thoughts is a lesson that many do not learn. The staggering number divorces in recent years may be the effect of ill-communication. Even with all the conveyances of modern day (cellar phones, modems, pagers), important ideas, somehow are not being expressed. In a relationship one can easily misinterpret a statement and become upset. Openly expressing full thoughts, and carefully listening to what your mate is saying are two worthy and helpful tips on holding up the communication bridge. Many times, people become frustrated at their partner's lack of understanding. Unfortunately, no one can read minds. That fact makes it of the utmost importance to be able to let your mate in on what you are thinking. How can he or she possibly do what you want them to do if he or she does not know what it is that you are wanting. Always present thoughts and ideas as clearly as possible. 2 Sarcasm is often a pitfall for communication. When a person states an idea one way but means it in a totally different way, it is no wonder that he or she will be misunderstood. With just a slight change in the tone of voice, which many times may go unnoticed, the sarcasm might lose its' humorous connotations and accidentally become hurtful. This is also true with facial expressions. They can be misinterpreted and then become a stumbling block for the rest of the conversation. When talking with your partner keep in mind that 75% of what we communicate is body language. Be careful not to imply anything with facial expressions or other body language that you do not intend. Expressing full, complete, ideas are extremely important. If you are mad, tell your partner that you are and tell him or her the reason of the aggravation. If you express an emotion, be ready to describe it and expose its' cause. It is important that you have enough trust in your partner that you can tell him or her anything. "There is much to be said about a good listener. They are kind, compassionate, and humble." The ability to listen to someone and fully understand him or her is definitely a talent. Such a talent is admirable. If a healthy and fruitful relationship is the goal its' members should strive to become better listeners. There is much benefit in such a skill. In order to be a good listener a person has to be willing to wait till the speaker is finished speaking to respond. A good listener cannot assume anything. This skill does not 3 allow the listener to formulate arguments while listening. You must give the speaker your complete attention. To Many times when people have arguments or even mere conversations they constantly interrupt each other. This makes it difficult to present complete ideas. When someone interrupts you with a statement you will probably respond to that statement because it has deterred your focus to a different point. When you respond to the other person's interrupting statement, it makes it much harder for that person to understand what it is that you are trying to say. You lose the chance to explain yourself completely when you are interrupted and therefore interruption becomes a break in the bridge of communication. Remember the saying, "Assumption makes an ass out of you and me?" That phrase is particularly true when it applied to communicating. Many times a listener will listen "between the lines" and misinterpret the speaker. Assuming a speaker's subject or purpose causes a collapse in communication that is painstakingly hard to correct, taking valuable tine and energy. Formulating arguments and/or responses to a speaker's statements requires time. The time, however should not be the time during which your partner is speaking. Your partner deserves your complete attention. If you wait to hear the speaker's full thought and can more accurately respond to him or her. 4 To successfully uphold the bridge of communication in a relationship, partners most both be willing to become better at expressing themselves completely and thoroughly, and to try harder at becoming a better listener. This will take time and practice, but with persistence the skills will develop. Communication is the key in relationships. Whether the relationship will be a success or a total disaster depends heavily on the partners' communication skills. I have presented a number of valuable tools that can drastically help communication in a relationship. I have laid out specific instructions on how to listen and how to express yourself in ways that do not confuse you or your partner. Please heed my advice and uphold the priceless bridge of communication. 5 Works Cited f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\How western Imperilism affects china and japan .TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Copyrights I am handing over the copyrights to Jen Shriver upon doing so you accept this . Thank you Mike Sorrentino Oct. 23, 1996 How Western Imperialism affects China and Japan China and Japan had very different experiences with Western Imperialism . Their reactions to western interference would lay a foundation for their destiny in a world that was rapidly progressing forward , leaving the traditional world behind . China viewed themselves as totally self sufficient , superior , and the only truly civilized land in a barbarous world. They were inward looking and were encouraged by the conservative Confucianistic beliefs of their emperors to cling to the ancient and traditional ways of the past . They slid rapidly behind in industrial development , refusing to acknowledge the need for shipbuilding or naval development , and saw no importance in European trade . Then in the 1800's , Europe thrust its way into the heart of the Middle Kingdom, shattering and destroying its isolation forever. China would then be involved in four wars during the nineteenth century ; Britain's opium war (1839-1842), a second war (1856-1860) fought by British and French , the Sino-Japanese war (1894-1895) , and a final western invasion involving British , French , German , Japanese and U.S troops (1899-1900). Chinese Emperors were compelled to sign unequal treaties and were forced to open a number of ports , as well as agree to other territorial concessions . China was also forced to open its seacoasts and its rivers to Western intruders . The Europeans also exploited China's land by securing rights to build railways and develop its natural resources . China had been unwilling to learn the ways of the West and so became the next victim to fall prey to Western Imperialism , Japan however, was more open to foreign influences , therefore its outcome to western imperialism was quite different. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries , Japan also turned inward seeking its own isolation from the larger world . Then in 1853 , Commodore Mathew Perry of the U.S arrived with a naval squadron and Japan signed its first unequal treaty . Soon other western countries would follow , but in 1868 a new ruler was put into power and Japans fate would soon change . Under the sixteen year old emperor - the Meiji , ("Enlightened Rule ") Japan began preparing to resist Western penetration and in the process engineered a remarkable transformation of its country . The Japanese emperor set out to Westernize Japan and adopt Western methods of education , transportation , communication , industry , agriculture , banking and most of all Japan's military was updated and modernized . Politically and economically , Japan was a nation in rapid growth and vigorous transition . Japan also won two victories over the world's two largest empires - China in 1895 and Russia in 1905 , which gave Japan Korea, the Liaotung peninsula in North China , and a new status as a world power . Between 1900 and 1940 , Japan's exports would triple , manufactured goods multiplied a dozen times , and it's population would climb to 78 million by 1940. Japan's expanding commercial , industrial and financial economy was due mainly through the small group of wealthy business families known as the Zaibatsu . These included industrial dynasties such as Mitsubishi , Mitsui , Kawasaki , and other major firms . The Japanese used the most effective way to maintain their national identity , which was to adopt Western techniques , become "civilized " in the Western view , and deal with foreigners on equal economic and diplomatic terms . Japan succeeded in understanding the basic political and moral ideas of Western civilization whereas China had not . Both had wanted to rid foreign intervention , however Japan learned the ways of the West to prevent Western intervention and control. Japan rose from an isolated nation to a world power able to control its own destiny and future of its people . China however, with its traditional and steadfast ways , succumbed to Western Imperialism , and was left behind by the ever progressing world and the power of change . f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Human Nature and the Declaration of Independence.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ...Human Nature and the Declaration of Independence... -by Jake Repp I would like to show that the view of human nature that is shown in The Declaration of Independence is taken more from the Bible and that that view is in disagreement with two of the three esays given in class. The Biblical perspective of man is that he was created by a divine Creator with a specific plan in mind and made in the image of his Creator. Men are entitled to the pursuit of happiness but also required by the Laws of Nature and Nature's God to be the just attendants of the land and of the governed. The Nature of man is sinful so that they must be governed but those who govern must be accountable to God just as the founding fathers were. God is Sovereign over men as the final Judge. The Declaration of Independence is a document co-written by the founding fathers in order to declare their independence of the Crown of Britain. They belived this to be within their rights indowed upon them by their Creator. Believing that they were under religious persecution and certain forms of "absolute tyranny" from Britian the founding fathers felt it was necessary to break the bonds that connected them to the monarchy. Not only did they feel they had the God given right to do that but they also based their arguments on the workings of governments of the time and contemporary theories of government of writers and political-social thinkers of their time. The three essays that were given to us in class, Politics by Aristotle, Of Commonwealth by Thomas Hobbes, and Of the Limits of Government by John Locke are all very intersting essays on how government is supposed to funtion. Although the founding fathers probably read all three of these essays and simialar philosphical thought went into the writing of The Declaration of Independence I think that the only essay of the really used by the founding fathers was Of the Limits of Government by John Locke. Unfortunately the version of this essay given to us in class was truncated and consisted actually of two different essays written by John Locke. . Thomas Hobbes [1588-1679] is the founder of the theories of Hobbism which calls on absolute monarchy in order to deal with what he calls inherently selfish, aggrandizing nature of humanity. Aristotle[384-322 B.C.] was a Greek philosopher who studied under Plato. Aristotlelian logic (Aristotle's deductive means of reasoning) especially sylogism_ dealt with relationship between proposistions in terms of their form instead of their content. By using this kind of deductive reasoning with a major premise, a minor premise, and a conclusion; for example, All human beings are mortal, the major premis, I am a human being, the minor premise, therefore, I am mortal, the conclusion Aristotle found all of his truth. I can't connect Aristotle's view of human nature with that of the Founding Fathers and since an omnipotent deity was not feasible for Aristotle (since he couldn't see it and therefor couldn't belive in it) he comes to a different conclusion that doesn't agree what the founding fathers said. Aristotle's begins by analyzing the political structure starting at what he see's as the most basic of human unions (man and woman). Aristotle writes, "In the first place there must be a union of those who can not exist without each other; namely of male and female, that the race may continue (and this union which is formed not of deliberate purpose, but because, in common with other animals and with plants, mankind have a natural desire to leave behind an image of themselves)..." The first difference between The Declaration of Independence and Politics is seen when you compare this quote with one from The Declaration of Independence , "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights..." The founding father's saw the deliberate purpose of a Creator in nature where Aristotle sees mankind on par with plants and animals. Aristotle explains that we have a natural desire to leave behind an image of ourselves. Man is an electrochemical machine that operates simply on what happens around him and, like an animal, finds a suitable mate and joins himself to her to make furthur offspring of himself. Following this kind of thinking, governments join themselves together just for the purpose of making war later making treaties and finally making more governments to further this very productive cycle. Aristotle goes to make other assumptions which are clearly in contradiction with the aspects of The Declaration of Independence that I discussed in the first paragraph. Aristotle's writes, "...The state is by nature clearly prior to the family and to the individual, since the whole is of necessity prior to the part..." According to the Biblical view of man, God cares more about the individual than about the state and man is created in the image of God in the first place. The Declaration of Independence states in order for the individuals to secure their unalienable (that is God given) rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, "Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." Of Commonwealth could only be related to the thinking of the founding fathers in a most basic way to their ideals. Thomas Hobbes also seems to be a syllogistic thinker like Aristotle one, because he never thinks above elemental, getting his most basic logical conclusions from observations of nature and number two, for thinking along phylisophical lines that don't agree with the Biblical perspective. Hobes sees man as an elevated creature capable of self-governing, self- evolving conduct. Hobes doesn't understand the Biblical view of fallen man, "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it? (Jeremiah 17:9)" Hobbes also fails to see the need for a separation of powers in Government when he talks about an absolute monarchy and the Commonwealth being the solution to government. The idea of seperation of powers is a biblical idea that come from Isaiah, "For the Lord is our Judge, the Lord is our lawgiver, the Lord is our king. (Isaiah 33:22)" This is the system that our forfathers set up and I'm sure glad that Cliton is not my Judge, Lawgiver and King all in one. Baron Charles Louis Joseph de Secondat Montesquieu [1689-1755] a French professor, author and legal philosopher who wrote the book "Spirit of the Laws" (which greatly impacted the American government, and was the source most frequently quoted by the Founding Fathers, next to the Bible_) on the subject of separating of powers in relation to human nature wrote, "Nor is there liberty if the power of judging is not separated from legislative power and from executive power. If it [the power of judging] were joined to legislative power, the power over life and liberty of the citizens would be arbitrary, for the judge would be the legislator. If it were joined to the executive power, the judge could have the force of an oppressor. All would be lost if the same...body of principal men...exercised these three powers." Also in comparison to the ideology of monarchy and commonwealth of Thomas Hobbes, Montesquieu wrote, "The principles of Christianity, deeply engraved on the heart, would be infinitely more powerful than the false honor of monarchies, than the humane virtues of republics, or the servile fear of despotic states." John Locke's view of human nature and politics greatly influenced the founding fathers in many of their other writings including The Constitution of the United States. In the his treatise "Of Civil Government" Locke writes, "For Men being all the Workmanship of one Omnipotent, and infinitely wise Maker_they are his Property_Those Grants God made of the World to Adam and to Noah, and his Sons...has given the Earth to the Children of Men, given it to Mankind in common... _ also given them reason make use of it to the best Advantage of Life and Convenience." John Locke's view of the perfectly governed body as one in which all men answer to God can is seen when in the same treatise he writes, "...It is also evident what liberty remains to men in reference to their eternal salvation, and that is, that every one should do what he in his conscience is persuaded to be acceptable to the Almighty, on whose good pleasure and acceptance depends his eternal happiness; for obedience is due in the first place to God, and afterwards to the laws." It seems pretty clear to me when I readThe Declaration of Independence and when I read quotes from the founding fathers and their contemporaries that it was the work of strong Bible believing men that first made the monumental leap in breaking union with Britian. Unfortunately their words and lives have gone by the wayside in our hearts and minds.Instead of learning about George Washington's famous words of Christian faith or how he emerged unscathed from battle with his uniform riddeled with bullet holes our History books teach us all about how he could not lie when he chopped down the cherry tree. If men such as Hobes and Aristotle could have even welled up enough courage in their cold and timid souls 200 years ago to break the tyrrany of the British, I strongly believe that our country would have quickly decayed in immorality and greed. "So whither you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God." (1Cor 10:31) _ - Christianity and the Constitution p.51,53 ; America's Providential History p.156 ; Myth of Separation p.195-96 f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Hunting and Foraging Societies.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ As in many societies different groups of people are connected by similar traits. People of hunting and gathering societies also share similar qualities. Although the Kung, Shoshone, and Mbuti live in unique environments they still share numerous common characteristics because of there life styles. The Kung San and Shoshone make critical decisions in similar ways. The people of the Shoshone and Kung are much like a modern community in that they live together but for the most part live separate lives. They come together to hunt, like we to work, but when the hunt is over they get paid, in the form of meat, and go home to their families. If they should choose to any group may leave the whole at anytime. The Mbuti choose to live as a whole. They act as one family. All decisions are made by the community as a whole. If the group cannot reach consensus on a problem then the group may split for that time but will rejoin once the projects are completed. Unlike the Kung and Shoshone the Mbuti stay together, for the most part, throughout the year and do not diffuse when supplies become more plentiful. The two most important things a person needs is food and water. Many different foods are consumed by the Mbuti. There diet consists of meats, fruits, berries, roots, fungus and insects. The Mbuti's food supply is always plentiful, this is due to the habitat they live in and the small number of people living off of any given area. The Shoshone on the other hand live more like a scavengers because of their environment. Meat is rare, they tend to live off the plant life in the forest. A large portion of the Shoshone's diet is plant life. The Kung have a fairly balanced diet of plants and animals but water is a limited resource. For the Kung the reason for moving is to stay where the water is. In the dry season the Kung will all live in close quarters near the permanent water holes. But as the rainy season comes they will be able to spread throughout the region. Foraging societies share three major traits. All of these societies share the work that must be done in the camp. They all live in camps, meaning they never stay in an area for an extended amount of time. The Kung come back to the same places but they don't stay there for very long periods of time. Finally, the people of these groups do not echo technologically driven societies, rather they depend upon the land and it's many attributes. Although these societies have many differences they are connected by a common trait. They are able to live off of themselves and the land. They do not need to trade with anyone for what they need. Foraging societies are the only people alive that are truly independent. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Immigration 3.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The 1990s have brought the largest influx of immigrants into labor force of the United States of any decade in this nation's history. A panel of social science scholars concluded their assessment of U.S. society with the observation that "America's biggest import is people" and determined that "at a time when attention is directed to the general decline in American exceptionalism, American immigration continues to flow at a rate unknown elsewhere in the world" [Oxford Analytica 1986, 20]. Unlike earlier mass immigration periods to the United States the present day wave of immigration to the U.S. show "no sign of imminent decline" [Bouvier 1991, 18]. "In today's world setting, international migration is a discretionary action that is regulated by the specific actions of the governments of individual nation-states." There is no international obligation for any nation to allow others to enter or to work, in fact, most nations do not admit immigrants for permanent settlement Mass immigration has played a significant role in the economic history of the United States, nevertheless the harsh fact is that what may be necessary and beneficial at one time, may not be so at another. The demand for labor is being affected by "restructuring forces stemming from the nature and pace of technological change; from the stiff international competition the United States that now confronts for the first time in its history; from major shifts in consumer spending away from goods toward services; and from the substantial reduction In the national defense expenditures brought about by the end of the Cold War in the early 1990's". (vernon m. briggs,jr. and stephen moore. pg 35.) In looking toward the future the twenty occupations projected to grow the fastest in the 1990s, half are related to the growing computer and health fields. The shift to a service based economy is leading to an upgrading of the skills and education required by the labor force. On the other hand the occupations that require minimal skills and education have declined and are presently forecasted to continue to do so. Immigration can be useful in the short run as a means of providing qualified workers where shortages of qualified domestic workers exist. But, the long-term objective should be that these jobs should go to citizens and resident aliens. "The 1990 Census revealed that the percentage of foreign-born adults (25 years and over) who had less than a ninth grade education was 25 percent (compared to only 10 percent for native-born adults) and whereas 23 percent of native-born adults did not have a high school diploma, 42 percent of foreign-born adults did not. Immigration, therefore, is a major contributor to the nation's adult illiteracy problem. On the other hand, both foreign-born adults and native-born adults had the same percentage of persons who had a bachelor's degree or higher (20.3 percent and 20.4 percent, respectively), but with regard to those who had graduate degrees, foreign-born adults had a considerably higher percentage than did the native-born, 3.8 percent versus 2.4 percent.( )" It is at both ends of the U.S. labor force that immigration has its greatest impact at the bottom and at the top of the economic ladder. "The overall unemployment rate of foreign-born workers in 1994 was 9.2 percent, while the comparable national unemployment rate at the time was 6.5 percent. The unemployment rate for foreign-born workers with less than a ninth grade education in 1994 was 13 percent; for those with some high school but no diploma, it was 15.2 percent. The comparable rates for native-born workers were 13.5 percent and 29.9 percent." Consequently, the greatest labor market impact of immigration is in the sector of the labor market that is already having the greatest difficulty finding employment. "The 1990 Census also disclosed that 79.1 percent of the foreign-born population (five years old and over) speak a language other than English (compared to 7.8 percent of the native-born) and that 47.0 percent of the foreign-born (five years and over) reported that they do not speak English very well.( )" The ability to speak English in an increasingly service-oriented economy has been definitively linked to the ability to advance in the U.S. labor market of the post-1965 era [Chiswick 1992, 15]. Considering the factors aforementioned "the incidence of poverty among families of the foreign-born population in 1990 was 50 percent higher than that of native-born families or that 25 percent of the families with a foreign-born householder who entered the country since 1980 were living in poverty in 1990 ( )." "Nor is it surprising to find that immigrant families make greater use of welfare than do native-born families" [Borjas and Trejo 1991, 195- 211]. "Even when legitimate labor shortages exist, immigration should never be allowed to dampen the two types of market pressures: those needed to encourage citizen workers to invest in preparing for vocations that are expanding and those needed to ensure that governmental bodies provide the human-resource-development programs needed to prepare citizens for the new type of jobs that are emerging." ( pg.44 ). We may need to reconsider " an immigration policy that annually encourages or tolerates the mass entry of immigrants with only minimal regard to their human capital attributes or places additional remedial burdens on an already underfunded and inadequate education and training system. It is not only the actual effects of increased competition for jobs and social services that are important, collectively we must consider the opportunity costs as well when considering immigration and its effect on our economy."(Pg,48) The phrase "a melting nation of immigrants" is popularly used to describe the people who settled the United States. Historian Oscar Handlin added to this statement by stating that "once I thought to write a history of the immigrants in America. Then I discovered that the immigrants were American history" [Handlin 1951, 3]. " The benefits of immigration, however are manifold. Immigrants are highly entrepreneurial. Their rate of business start-ups and self employment tend to be higher than that of United States born citizens. Immigrants contribute to the global competitiveness of US corporations, particularly in high technology industries. Perhaps the most important benefit is that immigrants come to the United States with critically needed talents, energies that serve as an engine for economic progress."(pg 78). Economist Ellen Seghal of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics did a study examining welfare usage in 1984 of several major federal programs of immigrants who entered the United States before 1982. She found that "the share of foreign born collecting public assistance including unemployment compensation, Food Stamps, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), and AFDC was 12.8 percent. The percentage for US born was 13.9 percent." (pg 93). "A study by the City of New York's Office of City Planning found that the public assistance rate was 7.7 percent for immigrants and 13.3 percent for the population as a whole. Hispanic immigrants are alleged to be especially heavy users of welfare services, but the research does not verify this stereotype. A study done by the Urban Institute found the "annual welfare benefits averaged $575 per California household, as opposed to $251, per Mexican immigrant household. Do immigrants compete with American workers for jobs? "There are almost always economic losers under such competitions, even though the society as a whole is almost always left wealthier. The pressure of competition is one of the engines of economic growth under a capitalist economy."(pg98). " When immigrants come to the United States, they immediately raise the demand for US goods and services (Greenwood and McDowell 1986)." "They shop for food in US grocery stores; they move into apartments or homes, as producers' immigrants fill jobs, but as consumers they create jobs"(pg106). Several studies have documented that the immigrants who come to the United States tend to be more skilled, more highly educated and "generally more economically successful than the average citizens in their home countries". (pg142) "Among Iranians who came to the United States in 1979, 57 percent were professional, technical, or managerial workers. In Iran , only 6 percent of all the workforce falls into those high skill categories. In that same year, 68 percent of the immigrants from India fell into these high skilled categories compared to less than 5 percent among the entire Indian workforce. Finally, 15 percent of the 6,000 Haitians who entered the United States in 1979 through normal immigration channels were professionals, administrators, or managers compared to 1 percent for the Haitian workforce (Gibney 1990,372.)" The children of immigrants also tend to reach exceptionally high levels of achievement as adults, in earnings and professional skills. "Economist Barry Chiswick has calculated that throughout this century, the children of immigrants have had earnings that are on the average 10 percent above those of comparably educated US born children (cited in McConnell 1988, 101 )." Americans are split on an issue that will likely remain on the forefront for some time to come. The subtle nuances interwoven within the issue of immigration are facets that require answers more akin to shades of gray than black and white. As we look toward the future and our economic stability we can be sure the battle will be for the scarcest natural resource, that of talent and brainpower. Bibliography Baumol, William J. "Sir John Versus the Hicksians, or Theorist Malgre Lui." The Journal of Economic Literature 19, no. 4 (December 1990): 1708-1715. Becker, Gary S. "An Open Door for Immigrants--the Auction." The Wall Street Journal, 14 October 1992, p. A-14. Borjas, George J. "The Economics of Immigration." The Journal of Economic Literature 23, no. 4 (December 1994): 1667-1717. Borjas, George J., and Stephen J. Trejo. "Immigrant Participation in the Welfare System." Industrial and Labor Relations Review 44, no. 2 (January 1991): 195-211. Bouvier, Leon. Peaceful Invasions: Immigration and Changing America. Washington, D.C.: Center for Immigration Studies, 1991. Briggs, Vernon M., Jr. "Non-Immigrant Labor Policy in the United States. " Journal of Economic Issues 17, no. 3 (September 1983): 609-630. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Immigration and Americas Future.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Immigration & Americas Future By Mark S. Minott DeVry, Telecommunications The world has gone through a revolution and it has changed a lot. We have cut the death rates around the world with modern medicine and new farming methods. For example, we sprayed to destroy mosquitoes in Sri Lanka in the 1950s. In one year, the average life of everyone in Sri Lanka was extended by eight years because the number of people dying from malaria suddenly declined. This was a great human achievement. But we cut the death rate without cutting the birth rate. Now population is soaring. There were about one billion people living in the world when the Statue of Liberty was built. There are 4.5 billion today. World population is growing at an enormous rate. The world is going to add a billion people in the next eleven years, that's 224,000 every day! Experts say there will be at least 1.65 billion more people living in the world in the next twenty years. We must understand what these numbers mean for the U.S. Let's look at the question of jobs. The International Labor organization projects a twenty-year increase of 600 to 700 million people who will be seeking jobs. Eighty-eight percent of the world's population growth takes place in the Third World. More than a billion people today are paid about 150 dollars a year, which is less than the average American earns in a week. And growing numbers of these poorly paid Third World citizens want to come to the United States. In the 1970s, all other countries that accept immigrants started controlling the number of people they would allow into their countries. The United States did not. This means that the huge numbers of immigrants who are turned down elsewhere will turn to the United States. The number of immigrants is staggering. The human suffering they represent is a nightmare. Latin America's population is now 390 million people. It will be 800 million in the year 2025. Mexico's population has tripled since the Second World War. One third of the population of Mexico is under ten years of age, as a result, in just ten years, Mexico's unemployment rate will increase 30 percent, as these children become young adults, in search of work. There were in 1990 an estimated four million illegal aliens in the United States, and about 55 percent of them were from Mexico. These people look to the United States. Human population has always moved, like waves, to fresh lands. But for the first time in human history, there are no fresh lands, no new continents. We will have to think and decide with great care what our policy should be toward immigration. At this point in history, American immigration policies are in a mess. Our borders are totally out of control. Our border patrol arrests 3000 illegal immigrants per day, or 1.2 million per year, and Two illegal immigrants get in for every one caught. And those caught just try again! More than 1 million people are entering the U.S. legally every year. From 1983 through 1992, 8.7 million of these newcomers arrived -- the highest number in any 10-year period since 1910. A record 1.8 million were granted permanent residence in 1991. Because present law stresses family unification, these arrivals can bring over their spouses, sons and daughters: some 3.5 million are now in line to come in. Once here, they can bring in their direct relatives. As a result, there exists no visible limit to the number of legal entries. Until a few years ago, immigrants seeking asylum were rare. In 1975, a total of 200 applications were received in the U.S. Suddenly, asylum is the plea of choice in the U.S., and around the world, often as a cover for economic migration. U.S. applications were up to 103,000 last year, and the backlog tops 300,000 cases. Under the present asylum rules, practically anyone who declares that he or she is fleeing political oppression has a good chance to enter the U.S. Chinese are almost always admitted, for example, if they claim that China's birth-control policies have limited the number of children they can have. Right now, once aliens enter the U.S., it is almost impossible to deport them, even if they have no valid documents. Thousands of those who enter illegally request asylum only if they are caught. The review process can take 10 years or more, and applicants often simply disappear while it is under way. Asylum cases are piling up faster than they can be cleared, with the Immigration and Naturalization Service falling farther behind every year. At her confirmation hearings at the end of September, Doris Meissner, Clinton's nominee as commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Services, conceded, ''The asylum system is broken, and we need to fix it.'' Adding the numbers of legal and illegal immigrants, 50 percent of all U.S. population growth comes from immigration. While Americans try to have smaller families, immigration threatens our nation. If immigration rates continue to be this high, more than seventy million people will be added to the United States population in just fifty years, with no end in sight. We are taking in more people than all of the rest of the world combined. As have all the other countries of the word, America needs to control its borders. As every house needs a door, so every country needs a border. And yet, our borders are full of holes. We have clearly lost control over our future. Our children will pay the price of uncontrolled immigration. The United States is no longer an empty continent. In 1886, when the Statue of Liberty was built, there were 58 million people in the United States. In 1984 there were 240 million people, that's four times the total population in less then a century The U.S. cannot and should not be the home of last resort for all the world s poor, huddled masses. We are not doing a good job with our own poor, as we see more people without jobs. Supporters of immigration use many arguments to support their side. Let's look at a few of these arguments: Illegal immigrants take jobs no Americans want. The fact is that the average illegal immigrant arrested in Denver, Colorado, made more than seven dollars an hour. Many were making over 100 dollars per day. Denver identified 43 illegal aliens making 100 dollars per day as roofers, while 438 people were registered in their employment services who would have loved those jobs. The average illegal immigrant arrested in Chicago makes $5.65 an hour. More than thirty million American workers make less than that. A common belief is that aliens fulfill many of the least desirable jobs. However, most experts agree that in today's economy, there is no shortage of Americans competing for many of these same jobs. Actually, many Americans already work in these low-paying jobs. For example: the poor black woman, who works as a seamstress, Her boss asked her to train a new employee, an illegal immigrant. As soon as she finished training her new charge, she was fired. Her position, of course, went to the illegal immigrant, who was willing to work for less pay, and under deplorable working conditions. This is one example of how illegal workers depress wages, and slow, stall or prevent unionization or improvements to working conditions. Another myth cited by supporters of immigration is that illegal immigrants work hard, pay taxes, and do not go on welfare. The sad truth is that these folks seem to learn the ropes of the welfare system with incredible speed. Today's illegal immigrants apply for and receive benefits from the government that citizens need. According to Donald L. Huddle, an economist at Rice University in Texas, legal and illegal immigrants cost the nation a net 42.5 billion dollars in 1992. The Huddle study also found that in 1992, more than 2 million Americans were displaced from their jobs by illegal immigrants. This resulted in an additional 11.9 billion dollars in public assistance. In California alone, they cost more than 18 billion dollars a year. California currently has an estimated 300,000 illegal immigrants now attending grades' 0-12. This will costs the California tax payers an estimated 1.5 billion dollars. This is 10 percent of the students currently enrolled in our elementary schools today! California has 49.8 percent of the countries illegal aliens, therefore, California pays multiple costs for its leaky borders. Providing health care for illegal immigrants costs California tax payers 400 million dollars annually. Illegals drain about two billion dollars a year for incarceration, schooling and Medicaid from the budgets of such major destination states as Texas, Florida and California. For California alone, a 1993 study by the California Legislature estimates criminal justice costs involving illegal immigrants to be 385 million dollars to the state, with an additional 112 million dollars to local or county government. This is a total cost of 497 million dollars, paid by the California tax payer, each and every year! Illinois did a study showing that it paid 66 million dollars in unemployment benefits to illegal immigrants in one year, despite a law that was supposed to stop illegal immigrants from getting unemployment benefits. Los Angeles estimates that it spends 269 million dollars in social services on illegal immigrants each year. Every person added to our population drains our natural resources and contributes to the destruction of our environment. In a Pulitzer-Prize-winning study, the Des Moines Register found that for every person added to our population, 1.5 acres of the richest farm land goes out of production to make way for new houses, roads, and shopping centers. If this continues, the United States will stop shipping food to other countries shortly after the year 2000. How can the United States feed the hungry people of the world? The national majority now says it favors cutting back on legal immigration. A TIME/CNN poll determined last week that 77 percent of those surveyed felt the government was not doing enough to keep out illegal immigrants. For years now, the battle has raged between the federal authorities who are supposed to police the borders and the states who pay the price if they fail. In an attempt to reduce illegal immigration, Nevada Senator Harry Reid, has introduced a bill that would establish an annual limit of 300,000 newcomers, including ''immediate relatives,'' and a national identification card. Congress passed legislation in 1986 that stipulates fines and other penalties for employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens. The bill includes provisions to grant amnesty to illegal aliens who were in the United States prior to January 1, 1982, and to aid farmers who have relied on illegal aliens to harvest their crops. Does anyone benefit from the rising tide of illegal immigration? Businesses that can profit from employing illegals at low wages do. And many illegals are better off here than in their own countries. But many others are exploited by dishonest employers and are treated like slaves. These immigrants are denied the rights and privileges we want every person in the United States to enjoy. In closing, we must all realize this issue will not go away. Other generations of Americans made great sacrifices so that we today can enjoy the freedom, the quality of life, and the standard of living that we have. When I think of what uncontrolled immigration will do to the dreams of my parents and grandparents, what it will mean to the future of my children, I realize that we will find a way to control immigration. Because we must. Primary And Secondary Sources (These listings are in order of their importance, in category.) "Immigration: Identifying Propaganda Techniques" · Bonnie Szumski & JoAnne Buggey, Ph.D. College of Education, University of ` Minnesota (Greenhaven Press 1989) "Immigration-Opposing Viewpoints" · David Bender & Bruno Leone, Series Editors · William Dudley, Book Editor (Greenhaven Press 1990) "The Essential Immigrant" · Dan Lacey (Hippocrene Books 1990) "Immigration" · Kelly C. Anderson (Lucent Books 1993) "Immigration-A pictorial History of" · Oscar Handlin (Crown Publishers 1972) "Immigrants, Refugees, and U.S. Policy" · Grant S McClellan (H. W. Wilson Company 1981) "Immigration and Illegal Aliens" · Mark A. Siegel, M.A., Ph.D. · Nancy R. Jacobs, B.A., M.A. · Patricia A. Von Brook, B.A., M.S. (Information Plus 1989) Newsprint Articles examined from the following publications: · Des Moines Register · Los Angeles Times · Orange County Register America On Line Numerous Articles were reviewed. A word search was performed on the system, using the keywords: · Immigration · Borders · Aliens · Liberty All Articles Were Transmitted Within The Past 8 Months Excerpts from: · Donald L. Huddle Economist, Rice University: Texas · Doris Meissner (Clinton's nominee as Commissioner of the INS) f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Immigration Essay.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Essay on Immigration Immigration is a major problem facing the U.S. today. Hundreds of thousands of immigrants flock to this country every year. Some legally, others illegally. Some are escaping from religious and political oppression while others come to seek out the "American Dream". Either way they are causing nationwide problems. Non-English speaking workers take jobs away from American people because they will work for cheaper wages. Illegal immigrants receive welfare and health care and the money to fund this comes straight from us, the citizens of the United States. Some limitations have to be put on the number of immigrants allowed each year and much stricter border patrols must be installed. Harsher punishments and frequent checks are necessary to keep corporations from hiring illegal aliens. We need to do something about this problem before its to late. The number of legal immigrants should definitely be lowered to a much more reasonable number. Right now, an average of over 600,000 legal immigrants are granted access to the country. I believe this number should be cut in half. We need to focus on problems facing American citizens, such as poverty, AIDS, cancer, and unemployment. We don't need 300,00 more people to deal with, we have enough problems with the currents population. I don't think certain ethnic groups should be give preference over another group but I think educated workers who can speak English should be granted passage before a poor worker who is coming over here to pick lettuce for minimum wage. The educated people are the immigrants that will cause this country to flourish and they are the ones that should be encouraged to migrate to the U.S. With some many problems facing the U.S. now, we need to worry about ourselves and try to get ourselves on track before we can worry about saving the world. If we can get our economy going and take care of poverty in our cities, then we can begin to help out the countries of the world. I'm not saying that we should completely cut them off, the poorer places should receive some financial aid, but the majority of our problems lie inside our borders and those are the ones we should be most concerned about. 2. Illegal immigrants are sucking up hardworking American taxpayer's money. They are gaining benefits like welfare, public education and health care and the money that funds those benefits comes straight from our wallets. These people are not tax payers and our not helping to deal with American problems. One of the main reasons that we have such a problem with illegal immigrants is because companies continue to hire them. The U.S. government needs to crack down on these companies to make sure that they are not putting these people to work. After watching news clippings on how easy it is to "sneak" across the border, its no wonder we have so many illegal aliens living in the U.S. It is not the fault of the border patrol guards, but the fault of the U.S. government for one, not having a enough help, and two, not enough barriers. People can basically walk over the U.S./Mexican border without being seen or caught. If they are caught, they usually return the next day. I Another privilege that should be taken away from illegal aliens is automatic citizenship for children born in the U.S. If the kids are not citizens then they will not be eligible to attend our already over crowded public schools and further discourage people from coming over. People take sneaking over the boarder as a joke. They can laugh about being caught because nothing can be done and since there are so few guards there is little risk of getting caught. By increasing border guards, cracking down on phony passports and pleas for political asylum in our airports we can stop illegal immigrants from coming over and receiving benefits that they do not deserve. Once we have that problem taken care of we can work on setting up fair legal immigration policies. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Immigration.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The question is have we given up on turning our immigrants into Americans (Brimelow 30). Undoubtedly, all the hipped-up controversial rhetoric will deter the immigrant population from becoming legal. It has become such a hassle to go through the process that many people choose to cross the border without permission. Before 1960, eighty percent of the immigration to America came from Europe. Since 1960, however, eighty percent has come from places other than Europe (Wishard 153). As a result, immigrant laws have become less accepting of the immigrant community. Long ago, European immigrants were given a job, shelter, and food. Soon, the new immigrants were granted citizenship and voting privileges (Hernandez A1). Today, immigrants are lucky to cross the boarder without being shot--God forbid they become citizens. Contrary to what many believe, many immigrants are not here to become citizens. Many wish to stay for a short time and then return to their home. In fact, many immigrants are reluctant to become legal. Many harbor hopes and dreams of eventually returning to their friends and family back home. Then there are the distinct few who do not wish to decide, and would like have "dual citizenship." To be loyal to more than one country, to vote in both countries, and to travel back and forth easily (Limon). To understand the affects of immigration one must study the state where it is more rampant. California is a magnet for immigrants. As a result, many claim that immigrants are a great economic burden. California does, however, benefit from its porous borders. The succession of immigrant groups has brought the state unparalleled ethnic diversity (Gerston 9). Besides ethnic diversity, California has one of the most diverse economies in the world. Despite its problems, California prevails in agriculture, mining, manufacture, transportation, communication, electronics, construction, and defense. These industries contain a high percentage of immigrants. If California were an independent nation, with a 695.3 billion dollar economy, it would rank eighth in the world (Gerston 8). California's dense population is a direct result of immigration, which accounts for California's great political and economic strength. The unregulated movement of goods, services, and people throughout the states is what makes this country economically stable and productive. NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) and GATT (General Agreement on Trades and Tariffs) are examples of successful agreements between neighboring countries. These agreements have resulted in the unparalleled betterment of the economies involved. Open markets in banking, insurance, agriculture, telecommunications, construction, tourism, advertising, etc. are essential to a capitalist economy. We cannot, in a world economy, close our doors to the rest of the world (Limbaugh). The Clinton Administration is committed to reducing illegal immigration, and agreements like NAFTA are critical to that effort (Christopher 785). Laws do little or nothing to curb the illegal immigration problem. Everyone claims to be against immigration, but those same people love the low-cost agricultural products they purchase from the supermarket. No one seems to protest the inexpensive fruits and vegetables cultivated and grown by undocumented workers. Politicians who claim to be adamantly against illegal immigration turn around and hire illegal aliens. Pete Wilson, Dianne Feinstein, and Michael Huffington have all contributed to the "nannygate" problem. It is actually no big deal, but it shows how honest and forthright our politicians are. Everyone contributes to the problem, but no one will face reality. Let's face it, we all reep the benefits of illegal immigration. Let's forget about all the useless rhetoric, and cut a deal with Mexico and other countries that will benefit everyone (Olmo B7). If politicians are serious about curbing immigration they should try to strengthen the world economy. Mexico's average salary is one-sixth ours (Gore). Can we expect immigrants to stay out? Recent, controversial debates have struck a fuse in many Americans. Americans who have been laid off or who can't seem to get ahead in our capitalist market seem to be infuriated by the influx of illegal aliens. They feel that they cannot compete with low-wage workers. To show for this is the countless anti-immigrant legislation being proposed to congress. There are grass-roots initiatives out there proposing to amend the constitution to limit American citizenship solely to children born of U.S. citizens only (McDonnel A1). A significant number of people wish to eradicate the rights foreign nationals have acquired through the years. Americans have proven to be very competitive in the world market. Especiall those who have a good education. Many feel that immigrants do not deserve an education because they have not contributed to the well being of the community. Already, undocumented students are the least likely to be given financial help, and they are often charged the highest tuition fees. Under a new court ruling, undocumented Cal State students will lose access to the system's grants programs; in addition, they will be charged out of state fees (Chandler A3). Many will have to drop out. That is unfortunate because immigrants tend to be better students. One of the biggest concerns Americans have with immigrants is education. It is a common and incorrect stereotype to believe that immigrant children bring substandard skills and poor attitudes to school (Woo A1). People from all over the world have brought with them their culture and enthusiasm for education. Prevalent, it is, that many immigrant students, legal or not, have grades substantially higher than their American counterparts. A new study found that children of immigrant parents have a greater desire to learn. Their grades are superior, they score higher on standardized tests and they aspire to college at a greater rate than their third-generation peers (Woo A1). While immigrant civil rights groups gain new footing, activist groups are growing at an unprecedented rate. Many of these groups preach hate and violence. Bete Hammond from S.T.P.I.T. (Stop The Out-of-control Problems of Immigration Today) said, "It's bad enough that we do everything for their citizens when they come here illegally and break our laws, now they want us to bail out their economy?" Hammond, obviously referring to the loan-guarantees to Mexico. Hammond tells his followers, "we've got to take back our country." Those who tend to agree with legislation directed at immigrants should listen to the legislation's proponents. S.T.P.I.T has, for the most part, shown its stance on progress. They were against NAFTA [which created new jobs for the three countries involved], the Mexico "bailout" [which was just a loan], and they want the strictest laws to apply only to our immigrants legal or illegal. Especially those from countries they dislike, namely: non-anglo, or "inferior countries." The people who are least likely to be affected by illegal immigration are the ones who are more likely to be against it. Barbara A. Coe said, "We are tired of being victims of these people." Barbara is chairwoman of the Orange County-based California Coalition for Immigration Reform, an umbrella group that was a key organizer on behalf of Proposition 187 (McDonnel A1). Orange County is one of the most affluent counties in Southern California. Despite the counties recent economic problems (i.e. bankruptcy), the people who live there are still in better economic conditions than the rest of the state. Ultimately, what caused the counties bankruptcy was not immigration, but bad investments. There is no quick fix to the immigration problem. People have studied the issue for centuries, and no one can figure it out. The world's most educated scholars cannot find the answer to the growing problem. The key lies in something very simple: a world government. No matter how the economy is doing, no one will be left out. A world government can only occur in my dreams. Unfortunately, there are too many gun-toating-crazies ready to label it "communism." The next best alternative lies in a borderless world. A world that shares its resources, people, rights, money, and knowledge, is a better world. Our salvation lies in reciprocity not altruism. The idea of a borderless world will conjure up fears among many. People believe that the world's population will suddenly try to infiltrate the Americas. If countries were more equal then there would be no need for immigration in the first place. I do not want a world government; I want equality for the world's citizens. Brimelow, Peter,. "TIme to Rethink Immigration." National Review 44 (1992): 30-68. Chandler, John. "CSU Plans to Raise Fees for Illegal Immigrants." L.A. Times 2 Apr. 1995: A3. Christopher, Warren. "NAFTA: In the overriding interest of the United States." Dispatch 15 Nov. 1993: 785. Fragomen, Austin T. Jr. The Illegal Alien: Criminal or Economic Refugee? Staten Island: Center for Migration Studies, 1973. Gerston, Larry and Terry Christensen. California Politics and Government: A Practical Approach. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1993. Gore, Albert Jr. "North American Free Trade Agreement." C-SPAN. 15 Dec. 1993. Hernandez, Efrain Jr. and Simon, Richard. "Despite Gains, Latino Voters Still Lack Clout." L.A. Times 4 Dec 1994: A1. Limbaugh, Rush. "Open-Line Friday." KFI, Los Angeles. 7 Apr. 1995. Limon, Emiliano. "I want dual citizenship." KFI, Los Angeles. 28 Apr. 1995. McDonnel, Patrick J. "For Them, Prop. 187 is Just the Beginning." L.A. Times 28 Jan. 1995: A1. Olmo, Frank. "Perspective on Immigration; Open the Door to Mexicans." L.A. Times 31 Jan. 1995: B7. Wishard, Van Dusen. "The Wider Vision Seeks to Inspire the Best in People." Vital Speeches 6 (1994): 153. Woo, Elaine. "Immigrants do Well in School, Study Finds." L.A. Times 3 Apr. 1995: A1. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Impact of Television in Relation To Juvenile Delinquency.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ IMPACT OF TELEVISION VIOLENCE IN RELATION TO JUVENILE DELINQUENCY TABLE OF CONTENTS IntroductionEffects Of Television - The BeginningCorrelational ExperimentsField ExperimentsCause And Effects On Types Of ChildrenConclusionReferences 113568 When children are taught how to tie their shoes, it is because of how their parents showed them. When children are taught how to do math problems it is because how their teachers show them. With all of the role models how does television effect our children? Many adults feel that because they watched television when they were young and they have not been negatively affected then their children should not be affected as well. What we must first realize is that television today is different than television of the past, violence is more prevalent in todays programming unlike the true family programming of the past. EFFECTS OF TELEVISION - THE BEGINNING Questions about the effects of television violence have been around since the beginning of television. The first mention of a concern about television's effects upon our children can be found in many Congressional hearings as early as the 1950s. For example, the United States Senate Committee on Juvenile Delinquency held a series of hearings during 1954-55 on the impact of television programs on juvenile crime. These hearings were only the beginning of continuing congressional investigations by this committee and others from the 1950s to the present. 1 In addition to the congressional hearings begun in the 1950s, there are many reports that have been written which include: National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence (Baker & Ball, 1969); Surgeon General's Scientific Advisory Committee on Television and Social Behavior (1972); the report on children and television drama by the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry (1982); National Institute of Mental Health, Television and Behavior Report (NIMH, 1982; Pearl, Bouthilet, & Lazar, 1982); National Research Council (1993), violence report; and reports from the American Psychological Association's "Task Force on Television and Society" (Huston, et al., 1992) and "Commission on Violence and Youth" (American Psychological Association, 1992; Donnerstein, Slaby, & Eron, 1992). All of these reports agree with each other about the harmful effects of television violence in relation to the behavior of children, youth, and adults who view violent programming. The only thing that we know about the effects of exposure to violence and the relationship towards juvenile delinquency we gather from correlational, experimental and field studies that demonstrate the effects of this viewing on the attitudes and behavior of children and adults. Children begin watching television at a very early age, sometimes as early as six months, and are intense viewers by the time that they are two or three years old. In most cases the amount of televised viewing becomes greater with age and then tapers off during adolescence. ). The violence that is viewed is more important than the amount of television that is viewed. According to audience rating surveys, the typical American household has the television set on for more than seven hours each day and children age 2 to 11 spend an average of 28 hours per week viewing. (Andreasen, 1990; Condry, 1989; Liebert & Sprafkin, 1988) The most important documentation of the amount of violence viewed by children on television are the studies conducted by Gerbner and his colleagues on the nature of American television programs. The results of these yearly analyses of the amount of violence on American television for the 22-year period 1967-89 indicate a steady but growing high level of violence. (Gerbner & Signorielli, 1990) Programs especially designed for children, such as cartoons are the most violent of all programming. How many times have we all seen the Coyote try to kill the RoadRunner? GI Joe and many other programs also represent violence and the use of deadly weapons. Overall, the levels of violence in prime-time programming have averaged about five acts per hour and children's Saturday morning programs have averaged about 20 to 25 violent acts per hour. (Lichter & Amundson, 1992) However a recent survey by the Center for Media and Public Affairs identified 1,846 violent scenes broadcast and cablecast between 6 a.m. to midnight during one day in Washington, D.C. The most violent periods were between 6 to 9 a.m. with 497 violent scenes (165.7 per hour) and between 2 to 5 p.m. with 609 violent scenes (203 per hour). (Lichter & Amundson, 1992) Most of this violence is shown during hours that are not generally viewed by the adults therefore violence in the early morning and afternoon is viewed by children and youth. CORRELATIONAL EXPERIMENTS What are the effects of this televised violence on our children? What we know about the influence of TV violence comes from the research of correlational, experimental and field studies that have been conducted over the past 40 years. The amount of evidence from correlational studies is very consistent in showing the effects of violence in relation to children: In most cases viewing and having a preference for watching violent television is related to aggressive attitudes, values and behaviors. During 1972 Robinson and Bachman (1972) found a relationship between the number of hours of television viewed and adolescent reports of involvement in aggressive or antisocial behavior. During that same year Atkin, Greenberg, Korzenny, and McDermott (1979:5-13) used a different measure to determine aggressive behavior. They gave nine to thirteen-year-old boys and girls situations such as the following. Suppose that you are riding your bicycle down the street and some other child comes up and pushes you off your bicycle. What would you do? The response options included physical or verbal aggression along with options to reduce or avoid conflict. This group found that physical or verbal aggressive responses were selected by 45 per cent of heavy-television-violence viewers compared to only 21 percent of the light-violence viewers. During 1983 Phillips (1983:560-568) recorded the effects of the portrayal of suicides in television soap operas on the suicide rate in the United States using death records he gathered from the National Center for Health Statistics. He found, over a six-year period, that whenever a major soap opera personality committed suicide on television, within three days there was a significant increase in the number of female suicides across the nation. The major experimental studies of the cause and effect relation between television violence and aggressive behavior were completed by Bandura and his colleagues (Bandura, Ross & Ross,1961:575-582, 1963:3-1) working with young children, and by Berkowitz and his associates (Berkowitz, 1962; Berkowitz & Rawlings, 1963:405-412; Berkowitz, Corwin & Heironimus, 1963:217-229) who studied adolescents. A young child was given a film, then projected on a television screen, the film showed a person who kicked and beat an inflated plastic doll. The child was then placed in a playroom setting and then they recorded the amount of times that aggressive behavior was seen. The results of these early studies indicated that children who had viewed the aggressive film were more aggressive in the playroom than those children who had not observed the aggressive person. The answer seems to be yes. Several studies have demonstrated that one exposure to a violent cartoon leads to increased aggression. During 1971, Hapkiewitz and Roden (1971:1583-1585) found that boys who had seen violent cartoons were less likely to share their toys than those who had not seen the violent cartoon. It seems clear from experimental studies that one can show increased aggressive behavior as a result of either long term or brief exposure to televised violence, but questions still arise about whether this increased aggressiveness seen in these experimental settings show in the children's daily lifes. FIELD EXPERIEMENTS In normal field-experiments, the investigator shows television programs in the normal viewing setting and observes behavior where it naturally occurs. The investigator controls the television programming either by arranging a special series of programs or by choosing towns that in the natural course of events receive different television programs. One of the early field-experiments in 1972 conducted by Stein and Friedrich (1972:202-317) for the Surgeon General's project dealt with 97 preschool children with a programming of either antisocial, prosocial, or neutral television programs during a four-week viewing period. The results indicated that children who were judged to be somewhat in the beginning aggressive became increasingly more aggressive as a result of viewing the Batman and Superman cartoons. The children who had viewed the prosocial programming of Mister Roger's Neighborhood were less aggressive, more cooperative and more willing to share with other children. (Stein, Friedrich, 1972:202-317) CAUSE AND EFFECTS ON TYPES OF CHILDREN We get a clearer picture about the effects of TV violence when we know more about the way children watch televised violence. For example, Ekman and his associates (Ekman et al., 1972) found that children whose facial expressions, while viewing televised violence, depicted the positive emotions of happiness, pleasure, interest or involvement were more likely to hurt another child than were those children whose facial expressions indicated disinterest or displeasure. Although there is much discussion about the amount of research evidence concerning the impact of television violence, most researchers would agree with the conclusion in the report during 1982 by the National Institute of Mental Health, which suggests that there is a conclusion among members of the research community that "violence on television does lead to aggressive behavior by children and teenagers who watch the programs".(NIMH, 1982) This conclusion is based on laboratory experiments and on field studies. Not all children become aggressive, of course, but the correlations between violence and aggression are positive. Television violence is strongly correlated with aggressive behavior as any other behavioral variable that has been measured. The research question has moved from asking whether or not there is an effect, to seeking explanations for the effect. While the effects of television violence are not simply straightforward, analyses and reviews of research suggest that there are clear reasons for concern and caution in relation to the impact of televised violence. To be sure, there are many factors that influence the relationship between viewing violence and aggressive behavior and there has been much debate about these influences. It is clear that there is a considerable amount of violence on television and that this violence on TV may cause changes in attitudes, values, or behavior on children and older viewers. Although there are many different views on the impact of TV violence, one very strong summary is provided by Eron during his 1992 Congressional testimony: "There can no longer be any doubt that heavy exposure to televised violence is one of the causes of aggressive behavior, crime and violence in society. The evidence comes from both the laboratory and real-life studies." (Eron, 1992) Television violence affects children of all ages, of both genders, at all socio-economic levels and all levels of intelligence. The effect is not only limited to children who are already aggressive and is not restricted to this country. The facts remain that we get the same findings of a relationship between television violence and aggression in children study after study, in every country, and every economic level. The effect of television violence on aggression, even though it is not very large, exists. This effect has been demonstrated outside the laboratory in real-life among many different children. Children have come to justify their own behavior through the scenes of violence and negativity involved in television programming. The recent report by the American Psychological Association Task Force on Television and Society (Huston, et al., 1992) adds: "...the behavior patterns established in childhood and adolescence are the foundation for lifelong patterns manifested in adulthood" (Huston,et,al., 1992:57). CONCLUSION The most recent summary released in August, 1993 of the American Psychological Association Commission on Violence and Youth: Violence and Youth, Psychology's Response, confirms the findings noted above and reaffirms the need to consider ways to reduce the level of violence in all media. (APA, 1993:77-78). In conclusion we should remember that although the media certainly has a lot to answer for, it is important to remember that not everything that comes through the TV is bad. Rather, it is overuse and generally a careless attitude by adults that so often leads to regrettable results. REFERENCES American Psychological Association. (1993) "Violence & Youth: Psychology's Response. Volume I: Summary Report of the American Psychological Association Commission on Violence and Youth." Washington. D.C.: American Psychological Association American Psychological Association. (1985) "Violence on television." Washington, DC: APA Board of Social and Ethical Responsibility for Psychology. Andreasen (1990). "Evolution in the family's use of television: Normative data from industry and academe." In J. Bryant (Ed.), Television and the American family (pp. 3-55). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Atkin, C.K. (1983). "Effects of realistic TV violence vs. fictional violence on aggression." Journalism Quarterly, 60, 615-621. Bandura, A., Ross, D., & Ross, S.H. (1963). "Imitation of film-mediated aggressive models." Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 66 (1), 3-11. Bandura, A., Ross, D., & Ross, S.H. (1961) "Transmission of aggression through imitation of aggressive models." Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 63 (3), 575-582. Berkowitz, L. (1962) "Aggression: A social psychological analysis." New York: McGraw-Hill. Berkowitz, L., Corwin, R. & Heironimus, M. (1963) "Film violence and subsequent aggressive tendencies." Public Opinion Quarterly, 27, 217-229. Berkowitz, L., & Rawlings, E. (1963) "Effects of film violence on inhibitions against subsequent aggression." Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 66 (5), 405-412. Ekman, P., Liebert, R.M., Friesen, W., Harrison, R., Zlatchin, C., Malmstrom, E.V., & Baron, R.A. (1972) "Facial expressions of emotion as predictors of subsequent aggression." In G.A. Comstock, E.A. Rubinstein, & J.P. Murray (eds.) "Television and Social Behavior, vol. 5, Television's Effects: Further Explorations." Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office. Eron, L. (1992) "The impact of televised violence." Testimony on behalf of the American Psychological Association before the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, June 18, 1992. Gerbner, G. & Signorielli, N. (1990) "Violence profile, 1967 through 1988-89: Enduring patterns." Manuscript, University of Pennsylvania, Annenberg School of Communications. Hapkiewitz, W.G. & Roden, A.H. (1971) "The effect of aggressive cartoons on children's interpersonal play." Child Development, 42, 1583-1585. Huston, A.C., Donnerstein, E., Fairchild, H., Feshbach, N.D., Katz, P.A., Murray, J.P., Rubinstein, E.A., Wilcox, B., & Zuckerman, D. (1992) "Big world, small screen: The role of television in American society." Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. Russell Sage Foundation. Lichter, R.S. & Amundson, D. (1992) "A day of television violence." Washington, DC: Center for Media and Public Affairs. National Institute of Mental Health (1982) "Television and behavior: Ten years of scientific progress and implications for the eighties" (vol. 1), Summary report. Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office. Phillips, D.P. (1983) "The impact of mass media violence on U.S. homicides." American Sociological Review, 48, 560-568. Robinson, J.P. & Bachman, J.G. (1972) "Television viewing habits and aggression." In G.A. Comstock & E.A. Rubinstein (eds) "Television and Social Behavior", vol. 3, "Television and Adolescent Aggressiveness." Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office. Stein, A.H. & Friedrich, L.K. (1972) "Television content and young children's behavior." In J.P. Murray, E.A. Rubinstein & G.A. Comstock (Eds.) "Television and social behavior" (vol. 2), "Television and social learning" (pp. 202-317). Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Imperialism in India.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Throughout history, many nations have implemented imperialism to enforce their will over others for money, protection and civilization. India was no exception. Since its discovery, Europeans were trying get a piece of India's action. In many cases England was the imperial, or mother country. Since India was put under imperialism, a great deal of things changed, some for the good, mostly though for the bad. Between 1640 and 1949, India was ruled by two periods of imperialism, both of which effected India in a very profound and permanent manner. The first period of European control was between 1740 and 1858. During this period the British East India Company controlled the Indian sub-continent under the guise of economic imperialism, when in fact the manipulation of Indian affairs was much more political than let on. When it was founded in 1600 by Queen Elizabeth I, the East India Company's main purpose was "to break into the Indonesian spice trade which was dominated by the Dutch." But after colonizing a post a Madras in 1640, the company was re-chartered to include such rights as coining money and act as government to British subjects at the East India Company's posts. As well, the British government also gave the company the right to make was or peaceful arrangements with powers who were non-Christian. This control expanded with the founding of a port at Bombay in 1668, and the founding of Calcutta in 1690. Then in 1756, a young employee named Robert Clive, who had been named lieutenant-governor in 1755, was sent to take back Calcutta from the Bengal nawab. He accomplished this in January of 1757. Then later that year, Clive lead a group of 950 European and 2,000 Indian soldiers(sepoys) against a group of 50,000 Indians lead by a degenerate nawab at Plassey. The victory of the English forces over the local resistance brought Bengal under the effective political control of the East India Company. Although a "puppet nawab" was left in control of the area, Clive was granted the right to extract land revenue from most of eastern India. Through out this whole period, the company slowly found it's privledges being revoked, until in 1858, the Sepoy Rebellion, or the Indian Revolution, finally brought an end to the rule of the East India Company in India when it was revealed the cause of the rebellion was the use of beef and pork fat to grease rifle cartridges, which are taboo to the Muslims and Hindus. This Revolution brought the rule of the East India Company to an end. The second period of English imperialism started in August of 1858 when the British monarchy assumed direct control of India from the East India Company. This established a full colonial government, where British officials run the countries affairs, in India. This is known as colonial imperialism. This period was one of major change in Indian life and culture. While the East India Company tried respect local customs and learn local languages, the colonial government "tried to impose British culture on India. . . encouraged the Indian people to abandon their traditions and learn to speak, dress and live like Europeans." This came to a head in 1877, when Queen Victoria was recognized as the Empress of India. The colonial government felt it was their duty to civilize the people of India, feeling "I am a little bit better than you, therefore my presence is necessary." This all began to end in 1885 with the formation of the Indian National Congress, made up of middle-class Indians who were known as the congress. This congress campaigned for free education for both sexes, more Indian representation in government, and other reforms. But then in the early 1900's, nationalists began to reject British rule and petition for it's end in India by boycotting British goods and publishing books which "restored peoples pride in India's ancient heritage." The nationalist leader, Mohandas Gandhi, is perhaps best known for his method of passive resistance to help the struggle of India. Then finally in 1949, the partitioning of the British controlled lands into the independent countries of Pakistan and India brought an end to English rule in the Indian subcontinent. Throughout the rule of the British in India, the effect of the colonial and economic imperialism impacted the sub-continent in the form of many economic and social changes. On the economic side, many Indian goods were sold overseas by the East India Company, but the government of England saw India as a large base for British goods, as well as a source of raw materials. This lead to British officials discouraging Indian industry, as well as encouraging the production of export crops rather than food crops. In this way cotton was produced in India, processed in England, and thin sold back to the Indians. This change in food supplies killed millions of Indians from famine in the 1800's. Then when the British government took direct control, the construction of railways, canals, and roads, especially the opening of the Suez canal in 1869 opened the interior of India for trade throughout Europe and Asia. With the construction of the telegraph lines in India, exports from India jumped tremendously. However, all of the profit went to the colonialists, plunging most Indians into poverty. The social changes included the introduction of health care and hospitals, which, while curing diseases and improving the general health of Indians, created such a tremendous population explosion that famine resulted in some regions. As well, the creation of British educated professionals and business people created a new upper-class in India changing the rule of class in India forever. All of these changes, while under the guise of helping the natives, only served to help the colonists and leave the Indians feeling inferior, as though Indians are only "hewers of wood, and drawers of water" All of these changes in Indian culture and economy forever changed the destiny of the Land of India. While many changes may have been good in retrospect, they were only meant to help the colonizing British. Overall, the colonization of India had nothing but a negative effect on its people and culture. Perhaps one day people will realize that imposing one culture on another is not only wrong, but it is destructive to the natural course of a countries history. Bibliography "India" Groiler Electronic Encyclopedia, 1994 "India" article found on Internet, 1996 "India, a history of," Groiler New Book of Knowledge, 1979 In class speech by Mr. Seqera, 1996 f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\In groups we shrink.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The main position in, In Groups We Shrink, is so true when applied to situations of aggregation of a large number of people. As stated in, In Groups We Shrink, in large groups we are reluctant to deviate from the norm, however, if alone we often act without even hesitating. We can apply this to everyday situations as with, The Lottery. Why are people so hesitant to act out when in large groups? There may be a broad spectrum of reasons from the mentality of "diffusion of responsibility" to the fear of ridicule. It seems as if within a group we act as single entity instead of a group of individuals. "In groups we shrink" may sound paradoxical but it is evident to be true. In a group we tend to think singularly instead of groups of many single individuals. This could be due to the fact that people are afraid of ridicule. So afraid that nobody is willing to do the morally correct thing. As in The Lottery, we see that people are reluctant to act out against the remainder of the group. Why did the town's people just stand by and take part in the senseless stoning of Mrs. Hutchinson? Why didn't anyone intervene? Nobody was willing to be an individual and step up to take responsibility and put an end to the senseless lottery. Another good example of the reluctance to act against the group would be the Rodney King incident. As the officers clubbed, electrocuted, and beat Rodney King to a bloody pulp, onlookers just looked on. Nobody did anything to stop the senseless beating. It was obvious that the police officers were using excessive force. Someone even shot the whole incident on videotape. Despite the number of onlookers, to no one's surprise, not a single person tried to stop it. Even as other fellow officers watched on, they just stood around. Again, we ask the question of why didn't anybody do anything? What were the people thinking? In addition to being afraid of being an individual in the midst of a group, people often look at others to set the example. Another term for this is, "diffusion of responsibility" or "social loafing". For example, I've been in many classes where the students were afraid to speak out. But eventually there is a brave soul who ventures to raise their hand to answer a question. And this starts the ball rolling. Eventually each individual starts to get involved with the class. People often have the mentality that someone else will take the responsibility. Often times this seems to be the case. In, In Groups We Shrink, Tavris gives us the example of the students seated in a room and then smoke was released into the room. "Students who were on their own usually hesitated a minute, got up, checked the vents and then went out to report what certainly seemed like a fire. But the students who were sitting in groups of three did not move. They sat there for six minutes, with smoke so thick they could barely see, rubbing their eyes and coughing." "Diffusion of responsibility" can also be witnessed in The Lottery. Nobody wanted to go against the grain. Until the lottery directly affected them, they did not feel like they had to put an end to it. Although the lottery may have been morally wrong, they all went along with it because nobody felt the obligation to break the chain. Although we aren't often faced with situations that require us to make the decision of acting against the group, most of us may claim that if faced with that situation we would be able to be individuals and do the morally correct. With the ever-growing media coverage of incidents like the Rodney King incident, we are left to ponder this question daily. Would we be able to act accordingly when faced with situations like that? I think if exposed enough, we might be able to. With a little help from the media, we can reverse the mentality from being single individual efforts to a group effort. So the stigma of being different from the rest of the group would be less potent. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Indian Awakening.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The Indian Awakening in Latin America This book describes difficulties of the Indians who inhabit the following countries: Bolivia, Venezuela, Colombia, Mexico, Paraguay, Panama, and Brazil. This book is a compilation of the various struggles of indians living in these countries of Latin America. For over four centuries, these people have been taken advantage of by the Europeans who invaded their lands. Many of the customs and traditions of the Indians in Latin America have struggled for survival throughout the centuries from the problems that the whites have caused. Latin American Indians have struggled through hardships created by the whites that include a loss of lands, slavery, discrimination, a complete rearrangement of their beliefs and cultures, ethnocide, and genocide. The Latin American Indians have struggled for centuries since the invasions of their lands to reclaim their lands, and way of life. The lands for them is not simply dirt for them to cultivate. The various Indian cultures have lived with their lands in harmony for thousands of years. The land to them is their sense of identity in which they respectfully care for and live with in harmony. The land which they once owned was meticulously cared for and the lessons which they learned of respect for nature was passed down to their children for generations. Much of the land they once owned was stolen from them when the Europeans invaded. Another aspect which was described in this book was religion and the effects it had on the natives of Latin America. The Catholic church was forced upon many of the Indians when the European, mainly Spanish, ideologies were forced upon the Indians. The church claimed to want to help them to enrich thier lives and help their communities. The new church soon forced the natives to work for many days without any pay. The impression of the church was forcfully imposed on them in many ways. The Europeans believed that the Indians were not equall to them. The believed the Indians did not know any better, and the religion they followed wasn't the true one. If the Indians didn't want to worship the Catholic religion, harm was given to them oftentimes. Religion has always been an important life to the Indians of Latin America. It has been an integral part of their life for thousands of years. Although disputs about religion has been going on since the beginning of time, the pressure which the Spanish settlers imposed on them was one which was integrated with dominance. The dominance which was imposed on the Indians of Latin Americans when the Spanish settlers arrived, stripped the Indians rights to have the freedom to choose their own religion. The new schools and the ideologies were also forced upon the Indians when the Spanish invadeed their lands. These new schools did not teach the continued traditions that are important to the cultures and the values important to the Indians. The new schools do not teach them how to continue to live in harmony with the lands that they have lived with for centuries. The history that is taught in the classrooms is of Euro-centered origin. The history that is important to the Indians is not taught in the new schools. The history that is the true history of Latin America is either ignored or changed and devalued by only being taught as a small part of history. This Euro-centered attitude of education has degraded the quality of the Indians way of life in many ways. As time passed the values and history of the native people have been slowly fading over time as the history of their people is not adequately taught or is not represented correctly. The details of the rich history of these indians are not taught to them. The information has caused many Indians to loose touch with there true culture. Furthermore, this has aided to help devide the Indians, even within their own country. This has been another major struggle the people of Latin America face. Of the people that are trying to ban together to stop the discrimination, and total dominance over them, people from different tribes are trying to combine their efforts in all areas such as government. This is a difficult task to accomplish. Their struggle is not as strong as it could be if the Indian people of Latin America continue to be devided. What is important to the native Latin American people has been pushed aside by the European settlers. This motivation has been driven by greed. Many of the Indians are very skeptical now when the white man says that they want to assist the people. Over many years of abuse the Indians are now banning together and trying to stop these types of problems from getting worse. What has the assistance of the white man led to in Latin America in the past? They have learned and suffered through all of the problems that the Europeans have brought. The church was forced upon them in order to help them. The new schools were forced upon them in order to help them. The new type of government was forced on them in order to help them. All this aid was supposed to be for their benefit, but in reality the truth of the European motivation was mainly greed. The greed for land was the largest motivation of the Europeans. The resources of the land and the natural wealth of the areas of Latin America were the primary things which the settlers wanted to own. The vastness of the lands which are untouched and some of which are still in their unaltered state is what the white man wants to take away. The raping of these Indians has been occuring for centuries and it still continues today. This book is a sobering account of the experiences of the Indians of Latin America who have been induring the problems created by the white man for thousands of years. To many people, including myself, this book is an enlightening to the immense difficulties imposed on the Indians by the white man. The facts of this book and the details of the struggles of the Indians caused my heart fall out of my body. The estimations for the numbers of Indians that lived in North and South America ranged from 50,000,000 to 100,000,000 before the first white man came to the shores, and before Clombus arrived in 1492. After the arrival of Colombus, Cortes in Mexico, Pizarro an Peru, and Cabral in Brazil, the populations of North and South America dwindled to approximately 4,000,000 in 1650. Of the original population, 92-96% had been wiped out by many diseases which the Europeans brought such as smallpox and many other deadly diseases. The number had since increased back to between 20 and 30 million, still only a fraction of the origional popuation. The book states that sometimes the Indians wish that they were a forgotton race because then, maybe their supression and hardships they endure would be lessoned by being included in the vast wealth that their countries have. Only a small fraction of the population of their countries receive this money because of the corruption which is now in place. The Indians of Latin America now want to rightfully reclaim what is theirs. They want to end the political rule by the whites that has lasted for centuries. They want people of the world to learn and to understand the situation and sufferings they have endured so it will not continue there or anywhere else in the world. They want to be treated fairly. Many of the indians produce most of the goods of their country but only receive a fraction of the income. For example, the per capita income of the Indians of Bolivia is a mere US $50. The total per capita income for all of Bolivia is US $120. This is a prime example of some of the suppression and huge problems which exist in all of the Latin American countries. The political system is unjust. The power of the countries has been taken from the wrightful owners and used against them. It is difficult to put onto paper the magnitude of these types of problems which have occured and continue to occure in Latin America. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Individuals Achievements of self Knowledge.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ English Pd. 8 June '94 Choice B An Individual's Achievement of Self-Knowledge An important theme is an individual's achievement of self-knowledge as a result of undergoing an ordeal. As Rev. Hale sits through the proceedings of the court in the play The Crucible by Arthur Miller, his views change drastically. When Rev. Hale first arrives in Salem, he is very objective about the whole situation of witchery. He questions Tituba and Abigail about all the events that occurred in the forest such as the girls' dancing and the frog in the kettle. He firmly believes that witchery was involved in causing the unresponsive condition of Betty Parris. He coaxes a confession from Tituba who names others supposedly involved in consorting with the Devil. He strongly encourages the authority of the Church to seek out and convict any unknown enemies of the Church. The Salem witchcraft trials began as a result. At first, only the poor and lower classes were accused, but soon respectable members of the community such as Rebecca Nurse and Elizabeth Proctor were charged. Hale's personal feelings tell him that they are innocent, but his Puritan background prevents him from questioning the authority of the court. As the play progresses, Hale begins to alter his views about the trials. He suggests that John Proctor should have a lawyer, but this request is denied by Danforth. He claims that a lawyer is not necessary because only the demon and the witness are important. Actually, he is conveying that the court alone will decide on the witness' probity based on his own words. Hale realizes that John Proctor is an honest man when he would willingly ruin his own reputation in the hopes of exposing Abigail as a whore. He absolutely cannot believe that the court won't accept his testimony as the truth. Hale thinks that the children are irresponsible fakers. He denounces the entire proceeding and leaves. Ironically, Rev. Hale returns to Salem to encourage the accused to lie in order to save their lives. The documentation above shows that Hale's beliefs changed dramatically as a result of the injustices of the court. He became a man of reason who experienced a growth in knowledge and had the courage to stand up for what he believed in, even though his individualistic view opposed the teachings of Puritan society. Unfortunately, his courage could not save John Proctor, Rebecca Nurse, or the countless others who were unjustly tried, tortured, and hanged. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Influencing others in business enviroments.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Influencing Others in Business Environments Throughout human civilization, the art of selling ideas or products has been a cornerstone of society. Some people have become masters at this art, yielding themselves and their companies large amounts of profit. Why is it that some people are better at this than others? This paper will take a look at the various aspects of nonverbal communication in selling (or influencing others to buy) and in job interviews by examining in detail the various aspects of proximics, haptics, physical attractiveness, and other nonverbal cues that influence people to say yes. Artifacts and local environment Several studies have presented evidence in support of the theory that "dressing for success" affects one's ability to influence other people. One study found that people dressed in suits versus people dressed in casual or working-class clothes actually affects a subject's likelihood of answering a question correctly. In this study, a person dressed in a suit had a 77% percent chance of getting money returned to them, while those dressed casually or in working outfits had a 38% chance (Bickman, 1971). This study suggests that a person's status affects how well they are received by the person they are trying to influence, and thus their likelihood of being able to influence them into buying an idea or product. Seating arrangements can affect ones ability to influence others. Seating arrangements that are closer to one another have a greater effect and lead to a less hostile environment than when people are seated opposite of one another (Sommer, 1967). Sommer found that when a relationship is of a competitive nature (i.e. bargaining situations such as labor contract agreements) there is a preference for this style of seating because it "reflects a desire to obtain information about one's competitor." Another study suggested round tables help to "increase informality and feelings of closeness in comparision to square or rectangular tables" (Sommer, 1965). Dawson (1986) suggested having the members of the negotiation dispersed, that is, have intermixing the opposing members together helps smooth over negotiations. Placing artifacts in the negotiating environment can have affects on the negotiation. A flower, vase, or abstract artwork have a tendency to promote informality and affiliative behavior while books and magazines placed in the environment discourage these processes (Mehrabian, 1971). Voice and Tone Voices have a significant persuasive affect. A study by Mehrabian and Williams (1969) suggested that there are four nonverbal cues of voice that have a persuasive effect. These are: having a louder amplitude, having a greater intonation, having greater fluency in speech, and having a faster tempo during speaking. Another study showed that when one has a louder and more fluent voice they were more likely to get a favorable decision on a job interview or in a legal battle (Hollandsworth et al., 1979). Faster tempos have a more persuasive affect by exhibiting expertise and competence (Buller, 1986). But, there is a limit. Speaking tempos greater than 375 syllables per minute decrease their persuasive affect with faster tempos exhibiting greater and greater levels of loss of persuasiveness. Physical Appearance Phsyical apperance has several manners in which it can help or hinder the outcome of a negotiation. Raw physical attractiveness, one's innate or genetic attractiveness, has been shown to dramatically affect the attentiveness of an audience. One study did an experiment with a woman, first she was dressed to look unattractive, then she was dressed attractively. The study showed that among male audience members her ability to influence them varied with how well she dressed. When she was dressed well, she was seen as more persuasive than when she was dressed unattractively (Mills & Aronson, 1965). Another study between a middle aged male professor and a younger attractive male undergraduate yielded some interesting results. The study showed that among a female audience, the young male was seen as persuasive with or without evidence to support his theories; whereas, the male professor was only seen persuasive with evidence (Norman, 1976). All of these studies suggest that the persuasive affect of attractiveness is most significant with the opposite sex. That is, the persuasive effect of attractiveness only works when the audience members being influenced are not of the same sex as the speaker. Why is this so? Bettinghaus and Code (1987) offer this answer: "Attractive sources influence us because of their attractiveness, not because of message content. That is, since we identify with, and desire approval from, attractive sources, we respond to them, not the messages)." Listening and Silence Listening (or silence) is another key and often under-rated aspect of effective nonverbal behavior. While most people think they know how to listen, few can do it well (Churchman, 1993). One cliche concerning listenings said, "You can't lose a negotiation while the opponent is talking." Interrupting an opponent or cutting them off during speaking tend to have a negative effect during negotiations (Chuchman, 1993). Silence is also an important characteristics during successful negotiations. Hopkins suggests during the closing aspect of selling it is important to be silent and resist any temptation to speak after asking a closing question. Getting someone to listen to an idea or information about a product is often difficult. A study by Doby (1970) showed that it is easier to motivate people to listen to the ideas presented when the person feels like he/she does not know enough about it. Proximics and Haptics While persuasiveness varies with distance for speakers of large audiences, there are some general trends for selling and negotiations. Distance between individuals are divided into zones: initimate zone, social zone, etc. For the sake of negotiations, a distance of 1 1/2 to 3 feet is best (Baron, 1976). Another study found that during an interview, a close proximity gives someone a greater likelihood of getting hired versus being further away. This is due to a greater feeling of warmth and enthusiasm that is portrayed during the interview (Imada, 1977). A person's body position can also affect how well one's ideas are perceived. Leaning forward or having a "more direct body orientation" can lead to greater persuasiveness (LaCross, 1975). Another study showed that having an open body position allows for ideas to be evaluated in a more positive manner versus having a closed body position (McGinley, 1975). Touch or haptics is another nonverbal cue that can play a role is successful negotiating. A light touch on the arm during a presentation. Various studies have shown that a person becomes more willing to "sign petitions or complete questionnaires, to assist with scoring inventories, and to help an interviewer pick up dropped questionnaires" (Crusco, 1984). Hence, the shaking of hands at the beginning of a business meeting to facilitate good will and cooperation (Dawson, 1986). Conclusion The role of nonverbal communication within business meetings should not be over-rated. Nonverbal behavior does play a role and can help with success in negotiations, but is not the be all, end all to negotiating successfully. However, being aware of violating someone's personal zone or knowing when to be quiet is as important as knowing what to say. In general, more successful persuaders were found to be smiling, nodding, and gesturing at appropiate moments during a business meeting or job interview (Edinger, 1983). What is important to remember is to know when to use these various cues to your advantage, and to know not to overuse them. Specific research in this field was difficult to find, and more research is needed before greater and more detailed conclusions can be drawn. 5 Influencing Others in Business Environments Throughout human civilization, the art of selling ideas or products has been a cornerstone of society. Some people have become masters at this art, yielding themselves and their companies large amounts of profit. Why is it that some people are better at this than others? This paper will take a look at the various aspects of nonverbal communication in selling (or influencing others to buy) and in job interviews by examining in detail the various aspects of proximics, haptics, physical attractiveness, and other nonverbal cues that influence people to say yes. Artifacts and local environment Several studies have presented evidence in support of the theory that "dressing for success" affects one's ability to influence other people. One study found that people dressed in suits versus people dressed in casual or working-class clothes actually affects a subject's likelihood of answering a question correctly. In this study, a person dressed in a suit had a 77% percent chance of getting money returned to them, while those dressed casually or in working outfits had a 38% chance (Bickman, 1971). This study suggests that a person's status affects how well they are received by the person they are trying to influence, and thus their likelihood of being able to influence them into buying an idea or product. Seating arrangements can affect ones ability to influence others. Seating arrangements that are closer to one another have a greater effect and lead to a less hostile environment than when people are seated opposite of one another (Sommer, 1967). Sommer found that when a relationship is of a competitive nature (i.e. bargaining situations such as labor contract agreements) there is a preference for this style of seating because it "reflects a desire to obtain information about one's competitor." Another study suggested round tables help to "increase informality and feelings of closeness in comparision to square or rectangular tables" (Sommer, 1965). Dawson (1986) suggested having the members of the negotiation dispersed, that is, have intermixing the opposing members together helps smooth over negotiations. Placing artifacts in the negotiating environment can have affects on the negotiation. A flower, vase, or abstract artwork have a tendency to promote informality and affiliative behavior while books and magazines placed in the environment discourage these processes (Mehrabian, 1971). Voice and Tone Voices have a significant persuasive affect. A study by Mehrabian and Williams (1969) suggested that there are four nonverbal cues of voice that have a persuasive effect. These are: having a louder amplitude, having a greater intonation, having greater fluency in speech, and having a faster tempo during speaking. Another study showed that when one has a louder and more fluent voice they were more likely to get a favorable decision on a job interview or in a legal battle (Hollandsworth et al., 1979). Faster tempos have a more persuasive affect by exhibiting expertise and competence (Buller, 1986). But, there is a limit. Speaking tempos greater than 375 syllables per minute decrease their persuasive affect with faster tempos exhibiting greater and greater levels of loss of persuasiveness. Physical Appearance Phsyical apperance has several manners in which it can help or hinder the outcome of a negotiation. Raw physical attractiveness, one's innate or genetic attractiveness, has been shown to dramatically affect the attentiveness of an audience. One study did an experiment with a woman, first she was dressed to look unattractive, then she was dressed attractively. The study showed that among male audience members her ability to influence them varied with how well she dressed. When she was dressed well, she was seen as more persuasive than when she was dressed unattractively (Mills & Aronson, 1965). Another study between a middle aged male professor and a younger attractive male undergraduate yielded some interesting results. The study showed that among a female audience, the young male was seen as persuasive with or without evidence to support his theories; whereas, the male professor was only seen persuasive with evidence (Norman, 1976). All of these studies suggest that the persuasive affect of attractiveness is most significant with the opposite sex. That is, the persuasive effect of attractiveness only works when the audience members being influenced are not of the same sex as the speaker. Why is this so? Bettinghaus and Code (1987) offer this answer: "Attractive sources influence us because of their attractiveness, not because of message content. That is, since we identify with, and desire approval from, attractive sources, we respond to them, not the messages)." Listening and Silence Listening (or silence) is another key and often under-rated aspect of effective nonverbal behavior. While most people think they know how to listen, few can do it well (Churchman, 1993). One cliche concerning listenings said, "You can't lose a negotiation while the opponent is talking." Interrupting an opponent or cutting them off during speaking tend to have a negative effect during negotiations (Chuchman, 1993). Silence is also an important characteristics during successful negotiations. Hopkins suggests during the closing aspect of selling it is important to be silent and resist any temptation to speak after asking a closing question. Getting someone to listen to an idea or information about a product is often difficult. A study by Doby (1970) showed that it is easier to motivate people to listen to the ideas presented when the person feels like he/she does not know enough about it. Proximics and Haptics While persuasiveness varies with distance for speakers of large audiences, there are some general trends for selling and negotiations. Distance between individuals are divided into zones: initimate zone, social zone, etc. For the sake of negotiations, a distance of 1 1/2 to 3 feet is best (Baron, 1976). Another study found that during an interview, a close proximity gives someone a greater likelihood of getting hired versus being further away. This is due to a greater feeling of warmth and enthusiasm that is portrayed during the interview (Imada, 1977). A person's body position can also affect how well one's ideas are perceived. Leaning forward or having a "more direct body orientation" can lead to greater persuasiveness (LaCross, 1975). Another study showed that having an open body position allows for ideas to be evaluated in a more positive manner versus having a closed body position (McGinley, 1975). Touch or haptics is another nonverbal cue that can play a role is successful negotiating. A light touch on the arm during a presentation. Various studies have shown that a person becomes more willing to "sign petitions or complete questionnaires, to assist with scoring inventories, and to help an interviewer pick up dropped questionnaires" (Crusco, 1984). Hence, the shaking of hands at the beginning of a business meeting to facilitate good will and cooperation (Dawson, 1986). Conclusion The role of nonverbal communication within business meetings should not be over-rated. Nonverbal behavior does play a role and can help with success in negotiations, but is not the be all, end all to negotiating successfully. However, being aware of violating someone's personal zone or knowing when to be quiet is as important as knowing what to say. In general, more successful persuaders were found to be smiling, nodding, and gesturing at appropiate moments during a business meeting or job interview (Edinger, 1983). What is important to remember is to know when to use these various cues to your advantage, and to know not to overuse them. Specific research in this field was difficult to find, and more research is needed before greater and more detailed conclusions can be drawn. 5 f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Interview Assessment.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Type Of Interview For my assignment I chose to examine an interview I was a party to at my place of employment with the local Association For Community Living. It was an orientation meeting for a new client moving into a group home where I currently work as a Direct Care Worker. Under the classification of interviews, my analysis focuses on an Information Giving type of interview. As outlined in class, information giving interviews are used to obtain facts, opinions, feelings, attitudes, reasons for actions, trends or beliefs. My specific interview was to inform, organize and assist the staff team, of which I am a member, in supporting a new individual moving into the house. Purpose Of The Interview The purpose of this interview was to instruct the staff team on current programs and supports surrounding this individual, as well as to train and coach staff on handling techniques used through stressful periods. Lastly, this interview was to clarify all procedures to be used with this individual. Setting The setting for our meeting, which is of importance, was a meeting room at our local Head Office. The meeting took place at 1900 on January 9, 1996. The meeting included the supervisor and three staff team members. A physical description of the environment is as follows: a large wooden rectangular table sits in the centre of the room with 12 chairs around it, there are 2 cluttered bookcases along one wall and a large white board along another wall. There are no pictures on the walls and no telephone. The meeting took place after business hours so the building was quiet, empty and very dark. Opening The opening of this interview began with cordial greetings and small talk, as we are all well-acquainted with each other. The purpose of the interview was established and we moved quickly into the body of the interview. Body The supervisor, as the interviewer, was in the information giving position. The staff team were informed of relevant background information and a brief history of the individual. We began to develop new perspectives as a team by reviewing current procedures, handling techniques, supports and activities all the while trying to improve on them if possible. Problem solving was undertaken to determine strategies to support this individual with the move and any changes or adjustments. Confrontation was used by staff to identify discrepancies and distortions in the information. After much brainstorming, responsibilities were designated to each staff member for implementation. As a staff team we set goals for ourselves. Closing As the supervisor shifted the conversation towards questions or concerns surrounding the new client, I began to feel things drawing to a close. All new information was reviewed and summarized to ensure understanding. The staff's new role was clarified and the next steps were identified. After a final round of clearinghouse questions, we agreed to meet again to review and evaluate our progress after a trial period (one month). Inclusion Inclusion refers to how much a party is willing and able to take part in an interview. The staff team were willing and able to learn. The supervisor was able but seemed somewhat closed to offering specific information. For example, the supervisor was evasive to questions regarding specific amounts of support required for the new client. As the interview progressed, the unwillingness on the supervisor's part to exchange information caused defensiveness in the staff members. The supervisor continued this throughout and staff became noticeably upset and frustrated. Control Control refers to the degree of power each party in the interview has to influence the nature and/or outcome of that interview. The supervisor, from my point of view, had more control due to job position/status, as well as having the information that staff was seeking. Control was exercised by the supervisor by limiting the amount of information shared. This had a negative effect on staff and the interview as a whole. The power struggle between staff and supervisor seemed to increase as the interview progressed. The staff became agitated to receive further information and the supervisor became less inclined to offer any. Affection Affection refers to the degree of warmth between the parties in the interview. This is completely a personal perception on my part. The supervisor appeared hostile towards two staff members in particular. I base this judgement on complete lack of eye contact and verbal bluntness with these particular staff. The supervisor was seemingly speaking to one staff only. I felt negative feelings from staff towards the supervisor intensifying as the interview progressed (body language, verbal cues). Everyone became questioning of each other and leery of the information being shared. Level Of Interaction There are three main levels of interaction. Level 1 being Action-Reaction. Interviews often start at this level, which exhibits the least degree of communication. Interactions deal with non-threatening questions and responses are usually superficial. Level 2 is Interaction. This level deals with more intimate or controversial areas. Nothing more is revealed than need be. Level 3 is Transaction. This level is the highest degree of interpersonal involvement, formed through trust and positive rapport. All parties are actively listening and responding with a high degree of intimacy and honesty. In my opinion, this interview would very much be considered within Level 2, Interaction. The interview began at Level 1 during the opening phase and entry into the body of the interview (superficial small talk to pass time). It then progressed to Level 2 as we entered further into the body of the interview. We began to discuss more intimate details of an individual's life and ideas for support were shared. Personal feelings were briefly touched upon. Both staff and supervisor were asking and answering questions of each other without offering too much information. I don't believe that this interview ever attained Level 3. Verbal & Non-Verbal Communication Verbal and non-verbal communication signals are presented by every individual. These signals are very important because they alter our responses. Ninety percent of any message we convey is non-verbal, even when talking. It has been shown through research that the non-verbal messages tend to outweigh the verbal messages. My perception of the verbal communication from the supervisor would be described as: abrupt, fluctuating high-pitched voice, incomplete phrases, jerky speed of speech, very repetitious with many hesitations throughout the interview. My perception of the staff member's verbal communication could be best described as: quiet, tense, frequent hesitations, many irregular pauses in speech, repetitious questions with a varied inflection in voice. The non-verbal communication I perceived from the supervisor could be best described as follows: eyes cast downward, sighing frequently, often having raised eyebrows, rapid breathing, infrequent smiling at selected participants, stiff and shifting posture with some head nodding noted. I perceived the non-verbal communication from the staff to be: shoulders shrugged, leaning back in seats, sideways eye glancing, crossed legs, folded arms, sighing, slouched posture, clasped hands and some head nodding. Questioning & Interviewing Techniques The placement and types of questions used during an interview can be very important to providing framework and encouraging desired topics. Closed questions, which are used to get specific facts and limit information shared, were used very frequently by the supervisor during this interview ("Do you agree?"). Open-ended questions, which allow more sharing of information and control, were used very infrequently and mostly by staff members rather than the supervisor ("How do we proceed from here?"). Indirect questions, which are less threatening questions in the form of statements, were infrequently used during the interview ("You seem confused."). Focusing on the interviewing techniques used by the supervisor during this interview, I noted that minimal encouragers (head nodding) and accenting (repeating key words) were used. Paraphrasing and summarizing were also used by both staff and supervisor to convey and assure understanding of relevant information to the other party. Effectiveness Of The Interview This interview was effective in sharing only some of the relevant information. I would say it was not as effective as it could have been due to the breakdown in communication as the interview progressed. The staff's perceived evasiveness of the supervisor caused further tension and frustration. The ineffectiveness of the interview to alleviate staff's concerns regarding the new client was evident to me after speaking with co-workers following the closing of the interview. The Interviewer's Strengths & Weaknesses I feel bias in surveying the strengths and weaknesses of my supervisor. Under strengths, I would say that my supervisor ensured that there would be no distractions, allowed each individual opportunity to share feelings or ideas and arrived on time and well organized with a detailed agenda. I would say that my supervisor was ineffective in responding to questions, closed minded to suggested alternatives and unsupportive of the staff team. How Might The Interview Have Been Improved? I feel more knowledgeable due to my class studies to be able to suggest viable alternatives to improve on the outcome of this interview. I believe that each party should be more open to others' ideas and be aware of mental arguing with others. Each party must try to keep personal feelings out of professional settings by being aware of biases and putting them aside if possible. I also believe that honesty amongst all parties (complete and accurate information, sharing of true feelings) is vital to developing a successful helping relationship. Each party must concentrate and listen to what the other is saying to be able to gain a true understanding of one another. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Is euthanasia moral or immoral .TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Mr. Blackburn Inquiry Skills 2 Dec. 1996 Euthanasia In today's society there are many disagreements about the rights and wrongs of euthanasia. Although death is unavoidable for human beings, suffering before death is unbearable not only for terminal patients but for the family members and friends. Euthanasia comes from the Greek word "Thanatos" meaning death and the prefix "eu" meaning easy or good (Russell 94). Thus, "eu- Thanatos" meaning easy or good death. Euthanasia is a better choice for terminal patients than suicide. In our society, suicide is always traumatic for families and friends. If there is no alternative to relieve the suffering of terminal patients, then the more humane option to suicide is euthanasia. An option for people that are unsure of euthanasia is called DNR or do not resuscitate(McCuen 2). This means that if the patient has a heart attack or another potentially fatal problem in the hospital, the doctors are told to preform a " No Code" which means that they should let the patient die peacefully with any amount of painkillers or medication requested by the patient(McCuen 3). Doctors that are treating a dying patient should treat them with care. They should make them as comfortable as possible and give them medication to dull their pain. Instructors tell doctors in training to treat dying patients as people " that are alive but just that their death is more imminent than our own"(Moroney 2). Many families could rest easy that their relative is being treated well and are receiving the necessary attention. A lot of terminal patients decide to sign DNR forms or request euthanasia so that they would not be a burden on their families. Euthanasia should be legalized in all of the United States because it would end much suffering and pain. Euthanasia is the justified killing or assisted killing of a disabled or terminally ill person at their will or if the patient is incapable of making the decision, at the family's will(Satris 260). The doctor or in some cases, a family member, uses injections, weapons, or other means of killing to act out euthanasia. But euthanasia is usually gentle and quiet. In most of the cases of euthanasia, the patient died by lethal injection or certain life support systems were withheld. There are many types of euthanasia. The most common type is voluntary euthanasia(Russell 32). Voluntary euthanasia is euthanasia that is preformed at the will of the patient. Involuntary euthanasia is the other type of euthanasia(Russell 32). That is when the patient does not want euthanasia, but it is administered (i.e.-compulsory). There are also different ways to administer euthanasia. One is direct euthanasia, which is deliberately inducing death in order to terminate hopeless suffering(Russell 31). Then there is indirect euthanasia which is indirectly causing death with the use of drugs to relieve pain, but hasten death(Russell 31). When a patient pleads for euthanasia doctors are placed in a dilemma. If they help the patient die then their practicing license could be taken away and they may be taken to court, possibly ruining their career(McCuen 53). However, the patient who is constantly in pain will always be on the doctor's conscience unless they do something about it. Usually the doctor decides to help the patient by either giving the patient extremely strong painkillers and telling them the lethal dosage or directly assisting in the death of the patient(McCuen 53). A doctor that has helped terminal patients die is Dr. Jack Kevorkian. He is probably the most well known for this practice because he does not deny he practices it. The first case that Dr. Kevorkian had was in 1990. He met his "patient" in Michigan (which did not prohibit euthanasia at that time). The woman's name was Janet Adkins, who was suffering from Alzheimer's disease(Levine 114). Using a machine that Kevorkian invented she killed herself. This machine that Kevorkian made consisted of an IV that first dripped salt water into the patient. Then when the patient was ready, she pressed a button that released a chemical agent that induced unconsciousness. After about five minutes, the machine delivered a lethal dose of potassium chloride(Levine 115). Some people think that euthanasia is not acceptable in our society because of a variety of reasons. Many who oppose of euthanasia fear that if it were to be legalized then many people would die needlessly and murders in so-called "mercy killings" would run rampant(Satris 262). Others believe that since we are the property of God then we should wait until He is ready to receive us(Russell 93). Many churches and religious groups oppose euthanasia stating that the sixth commandment "Thou Shalt Not Kill" also extends to euthanasia. But this also raises many questions. Why do these churches and religious groups specifically target euthanasia as horrific killing when there is war in this world. Every day countries send troops to kill and to be killed, but these religious groups seem to ignore these problems(Russell 93). Many medical doctors also oppose euthanasia. They say that assisted suicide "violates one's will to survive" and that it violates our dignity. They believe that one of our natural human goals is to survive and if we practice euthanasia, then that goal is destroyed(Satris 258). When doctors receive their license to practice medicine they have to take the Hippocratic Oath. This oath says that " I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody when asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to that effect."(Levine 104). However, many pro-euthanasians say that the oath means that they should not give anybody a deadly drug to kill an enemy with, nor should they tell the person what to use to kill. A quote from Carol Levine says, " on the other hand, if the goal of medicine is not simply to prolong life but to reduce pain, then questions arise about the oath"(105). Another problems with euthanasia is that if an elderly patient is entered into a hospital, they are immediately deemed to be frail and are treated like terminal patients. The thought of euthanasia as a choice instead of a cure may prompt doctors to prematurely induce death(McCuen 2). The recovery from an illness requires that we fight it. If we know that there is an easy way out, such as euthanasia, then the human consciousness instinctively tries to take that way out(Satris 262). Other problematic situations with euthanasia is that a person with a non-terminal disease may blindly choose euthanasia without a settled desire to die(Haifetz 21). It is also likely that a person who chooses euthanasia may change his or her mind at the last moment and then it is obviously too late(Heifetz 21). On the other hand, a growing number of people believe that euthanasia is acceptable in our society because it relieves the unnecessary pain and suffering of patients and their family. Euthanasia is also a good way for people that have family members that are either extremely deformed or retarded to help out the person and end their incapacitated lives. In the Netherlands, euthanasia can be legally administered under four conditions: a) if the patient is suffering intolerably and there is no hope of recovery, b) if the patient is capable of deciding whether to choose euthanasia or not, c) if the patient repeatedly asks for euthanasia over a repeated period of time, and d) if another doctor that has not treated or previously examined the patient agree that euthanasia should be enforced(Levine 110). Robert George has his opinion on the "right to die", He says that 1) people own themselves, 2)owners can dispose of their property as they see fit, and 3) people are therefore entitled to kill themselves and even to engage the help of others in doing so(50) Euthanasia is also a very good choice for senior citizens because they often suffer much before they finally can die.Sufferring is a terrible thing and we have a clear duty to comfort those in need and to ease their sufferring when we can. Elderly people are also prone to painful diseases and medical problems. Mercy killing can end their pain in a non-traumatic way for their families'. In the days of Socrates, Plato and the Stoics euthanasia was even permissible(Russell 42). The Greeks had a tradition that when all the old members of the society outlived their usefulness, they would ge together and drink a deadly poison(Russell 42). Thus eliminating a burden on their families and on themselves. To date, there is still much controversy about the legalization of euthanasia. But as long as there are willing and kindhearted doctors and people, eventually there will be a time when euthanasia will be allowed and poor souls can die peacefully. So far, 35 states allow the withdrawal or withholding of life sustaining equipment of terminal patients at their will. The trend in mercy killing will continue until leaders in health care can show that there is another alternative that is more merciful(McCuen 3). Until then, Doctors and family members, will still have to resort to illegal euthanasia to help their patients and loved ones. Works Cited George, Robert P. and William C. Porth Jr. "A Duty to Live?" National Review 26 June 1995 Heifetz, Milton D. and Charles Mangel. The Right to Die. Toronto: Longman Canada Limited, 1975. Levine, Carol. Is Physician-Assisted Suicide Ethical? Guilford: The Dushkin Publishing Group Inc.,1991. Russell, Ruth. Freedom to Die. New York: Human Sciences Press, 1977. Society for the Right to Die. The Physician and the Hopelessly Ill Patient. New York: Society for the Right to Die, 1985. Works Consulted Lemonrick, Michael D. "Defining the Right to Die." Time 15 April 1996. 82. Moroney, Catherine. "Three Choices for Death." America 21 November 1992. Nichols, Mark. "Dying by Choice." Maclean's Magazine. 20 May 1996. 47 William, J. Gay. "The Wrongfulness of Euthanasia." Intervention and Reflection: Basic Issues in Medical Ethics. Ed. Ronald Munson. Gilford, Connecticut: Dushkin Publishing Group Inc, 1979 Is Euthanasia Immoral? Mr. Blackburn Inquiry Skills 2 Dec. 1996 f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Is the criminal justice system biased.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Most criminologist use two sources of criminal justice data in the United States: the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) and the National Crime Victimization Surveys (NCVS). The URC data is made from law enforcement agencies and include crime incidents reported to or obtained by the police. NCVS data is obtained from a very complex national survey of a sample of homes and provide information about crime incidents and victims for both reported and unreported crimes, excluding homicide. For my report I obtained research information from questionnaires and from several text books. I gave the questionnaire concerning bias in the criminal justice system to four whites, four blacks, one Asia, and one Mexican. Although this sample is not representative of racial attitudes in general, it can used to develop a better sense of differences among students. To discuss my findings fully I must define a few terms. The Criminal Justice System is the network of agencies that respond to crime, including the police, courts, jails, and prisons. Minority Group is a group of people who, because of physical or cultural characteristics, are singled out for differential and different and who regard them as objects of collective discrimination. Discrimination is the act of singling out for unfair treatment. Labeling is stereotyping, or putting a tag on someone, and treating them accordingly. Self-fulling Prophecy is an expectation about how things will be the situations that they predicted or expected. Finally, Differential Association is the idea that interacting with others learns criminal behavior. It is no secret whites and blacks in America experience life differently because of their race. Therefore, whites and blacks view the criminal justice system differently. My research found 70% of those studied agree the courts do not offer equal treatment. Although both agree that the system is biased, whites seem to have a more positive view about the whole system, while Blacks feel the system is corrupt and works' against them. 50% of my non-white sample and 20% of my white sample felt the courts discriminate. James Henslin, author of the text Social Problems, states "[Violent crime] recedes with income ... people with higher incomes live in better, more affluent and less violent neighborhoods"(Henslin 141). The criminal justice system is made up of these type people, who are mostly white, and they share the same moral community. Blacks however are on the outskirts of that moral community or in another different moral community. Ultimately whites and blacks do not relate to and understand the Criminal Justice System the same for they view and react to the actions of authorities based on their life experiences caused by race and SES I stated earlier that blacks and whites are in different moral communities, this means that the normal excepted behavior for one group is not the same for the other group. We can prove this with statistics. The median family income for whites is 38,909 and for blacks it is 21,161. This shows that blacks earn 54% of what whites earn. In addition, 4% of whites are unemployed, while 8% of blacks are unemployed. This shows that blacks are unemployed at a rate of 200% compared with unemployed whites. Also, 9% of whites live in poverty, compared with 31% of blacks living in poverty. This is an astonishing figure that states 344% of blacks live in unacceptable conditions compared with whites. What does all of this mean? Where and how you live decide who you are, and contribute to labelling. Obviously, blacks have a lower SES and fall victim to a self-fulfilling prophecy and labels. The problem arises when "the Criminal Justice System discriminates against these groups of citizens" (Henslin 182). In William Chambliss' study of "Saints and Roughnecks" he proved that social class does matter. People and police in the local community labelled the lower class kids as worst than the upper-class kids based on their parents' SES (Henslin 190). The police also believed this label. They proved discrimination against the "roughnecks" because they had the discretion to harass and arrest whoever they wanted. Although both groups participated in the same activities, the "roughnecks" were harassed worst than the "saints." My research found 100% of my sample agree police discriminate. Although Chambliss' study dealt with high and low class students, our studies can be compared for race coincides with class status in American society. 60% of my non-white sample felt police discriminate almost always to sometimes, but 10% felt they do so almost always. 30% of my white sample felt the police discriminate, but that they do so almost never; the other 10% felt they do so only sometimes. Many whites, therefore, fit into the category of "Saints.' My studies show both have knowledge os some sort of police discrimination. Another example of this discrimination is found in the sentences of three young males: Buddy 19-year-old black, Gary 34, and Clyde 21, both white. The trio robbed a l liquor store and were caught by authorities. Clyde came up with the 5,000 dollars it took to secure his bond. Gary and Buddy could not so they had to stay in jail. Just before the trial Clyde plead guilty and received five years probation after the judge previously sentenced him to 3-5. Gary received 6-10 years in prison. Buddy on the other hand received a 15-year minimum prison term. Three men received different punishments for the same crime and the black man got the worst sentence (Henslin 184). The issue of discrimination in the criminal justice system has been in the eye of the Supreme Court for years, however with issues of capital punishment it has taken a new twist. In the 1972 Supreme Court case Furman v. Georgia, the court ruled that the death penalty was cruel and unusual punishment as prohibited by the eighth and fourteenth amendments. Five on the nine justices addressed the racial issue. Judge Marshall said it was unconstitutional because it, "imposed discriminatorily against certain identifiable classes of people"(Aguire and Baker 110). A few years later this decision was overturned. Nonetheless, within a few years capital punishment was used in the courts again. Ideally, the court room should leave no room for discrimination, bias, and labelling, for ones life is at stake. However, this is easier said than done. "Police are more likely to arrest black suspects"(Henslin 213). A recent study revealed astonishing evidence of racial bias in Virginia. Sociologist Donald Partington examined all death row inmates in Virginia charged with rape and attempted rape between 1908 and 1963. Between this time, of the 2798 convicted men 56% were black. All of these black men were executed. Ironically none of the 44% convicted white men were executed (213). This proved just how racially biased Virginia, and probably others, were between 1908 and 1963. Applying sociological labels to these concerns provide concrete credibility. Symbolic Interactionist emphasize, social class is a powerful symbol that affects people's perceptions and behavior; and authorities tend to see what they want to see. Because of this, many blacks are already seen in a negative way in the eyes of the criminal justice system. Functionalist consider crime a natural part of society. To them crime serves a purpose in the criminal justice system. The police target crime from black degenerates in society for they are easily targeted, to meet their quotas and goals in order to fake doing a lot to stop crime in society as a whole. Of course blacks are among the lowest social class in America. They have little defense to this tactic and it perpetuates the negative label given to them, and reinforces their self fulfilling prophecy. Conflict theorist see the criminal justice system as a strategy administered and created according to the wishes of the powerful. With this theory, law enforcement is a cultural device the powerful use to carry out their policies. Also it serves as an instrument of repression designed to maintain the powerful in their privileged positions. Here plea-bargaining is used to effectively enforce social control over the poor at a reduced cost to the state. However, this is not to say that the powerful do not commit crimes. Their crimes are called white collar and are usually handled in courts that instead of administering prison terms render fines. In all, these labels work together to better define and understand the social problem of discrimination in the criminal justice system. Ethnic discrimination is clearly functional for certain groups. Symbolic interactionest help in determining how people see themselves and others. They also, allow well-meaning people to discriminate with a clear conscience. Many people began to refute the notion that the criminal justice was racially biased so the government implemented two programs effecting the fate of minorities and the poor offenders in this country. First, the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 gave mandatory sentences. Secondly the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 which caused the principal increase of black populations in prisons. Despite the fact that these programs were implemented at almost the same time; the combined effect of guideline justice and the war on drugs has been disastrous for the poor minority population. We can conclude, although the justice system overcame much of the overt racism that existed before, disproportionate racial disparity still exist. The system purposely adopted policies that continue to target poor minorities. My results did show that there was differences in the way black and white students in American society view the criminal justice system. Because race can be compared to SES non-whites have a more negative view of how often police discriminate. On the other hand whites are not ignorant to the negative police discrimination non-whites face; nevertheless they feel it happens much less than it actually does, or almost never. Similar, in the courts, more non-whites feel their is discrimination. My answer to this could be that non-whites are being convicted, going to jail and receiving the death penalty, while white are the ones suing, and are not getting convicted for crimes when they are arrested. While we all agree the criminal justice system is corrupt, my studies show, whites and blacks disagree with the extent to which it happens. This is an obvious result because blacks and whites are in two separate moral communities. Blacks have been negatively labeled, and stigmatized as lower class citizens who cause trouble. Inturn they have been the victim of legislation that keeps them in the dismal status they are in. Most cr f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Is the Dream REally as Sweet as Apple Pie .TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Is the Dream Really as Sweet as Apple Pie? There were a few aspects of Lawrence H. Fuchs's essay The American Way of Families that I found extraordinarily interesting. He discusses influences of the modern American family that I found quite bizarre. Fuch also labels the key component to the American family as being none other than the gratification and pursuit of one's own self being. The most bizarre thing that overcame after reading this piece was that I found myself to be in total agreement with Fuch. That is what scared me. I realized that something that is supposed to be so stable in one's own life is really as "cut and dry" as we would like to believe. In essence, the main premise of human existence is satisfying yourself; at every level down to your basic foundation. We fight to make our own lives better at times even at the cost of others. This holds true in almost every arena of society that I tried to imagine after reading Fuch's essay. The only area of life that this struggle to satisfy yourself above and beyond all does not pertain in my opinion is religion: it is impossible to worship a being and try to overcome that being at the same time. Whether it involves fighting to be on top in the workplace or playing dirty to win a sporting event; almost all Americans have the fire burning within them that compels them to reach their goal or self satisfaction. In reading The American Way of Families, it occured to me that the struggle for pleasing one's own self existed even in the family. I don't think that after reading this piece that anyone can deny the existence of this urge in themselves. The urge exists in every form. No matter how picture perfect the family may be perceived, each member of that household wants to please themselves. In this quest to satisfy the appetite of happiness we often overlook the feelings of others. For instance, suppose that in a family that consisted of two college graduates in the role of parent, were faced with a child (that they brought up with all of their values and good intentions) that suddenly decides that he or she wants to move to Hollywood to become a rock star. It is almost by instinct that these parents will not approve of their child's decision. They do not want to lie about what their child is doing when their friends(who coincidentally all have children in college) ask, "Hey, what's Johnny and Sally up to theses days?" Quite to the contrary, most parents want to be able to tell their friends straight in the eye that their kid is going to school to learn to be a doctor just like them. When Fuch mentioned in his piece, "In America a new kind of family system emerged, based on the search of individual members for personal independence.", I realized that he was talking about my family and every other family in America. It soon dawned upon me at this point that in America each member of a household has his or her own agenda and we set out to fulfill it any expense; even by going astray from our very own blood. Another aspect of The American Way of Families struck me as very odd. Not once in all of Lawrence Fuch's essay is the word "love" implied or written. I believe that this emotion does not exist the same way today that it was in generations past. Now in the nineties, love has its terms, limits and even legal boundaries. No longer in America is the love between a mother and child sacred. This was evident in the past year when a judge in Florida granted a child there a divorce from his parents. The word love was not mentioned in this essay because it is not able to be mixed with independence. Love in my opinion is a codependence between two people. At this point I began to wonder if love even existed anymore in the American Family. Here I was reading an essay on the modern American family written by an esteemed expert on the subject and he happened to forget to include the meaning of love in a family. Its importance must have fell wayside to the philosophies of great poets such as Ralph Waldo Emerson And Henry David Thoreau and their respective contributions to the mannerisms of the modern American family. Personally, I am only familiar with the little portions of these poet's works that I was fed in high school. I questioned my parents of these men's influence on their parenting and they were aware of none. Then, I asked myself, "How does my family play into the "American Way of Families"?" It is true in my own family that each of us is ambitious toward our own self - satisfaction. At times we will hurt or offend each other in order to pleases ourselves. This usually occurs when my brother and I used to fight over certain responsibilities; feeding the dog for instance. Just as Fuch noted about the importance of self-satisfaction in the American culture, my brother and I would follow that in this case. He would be satisfied if he didn't have to do the chore, likewise I would have been equally as satisfied if he had to do it. Our satisfaction would come from the sheer labor and grief of the other feeding the pet knowing that we both shared distaste in this job. One day it all changed. I offered to feed the dog. My brother was having a bad day and I, OUT OF LOVE, fed the dog for him without a battle. I ignored my own satisfaction to enhance his own. In the longrun though, I found gratification because we began to take turns without fighting thus we came to terms. that is why I don't agree with Thoreau or Emerson on the importance of independence. From the experiences that I have had with my family I believe that life is much more fulfilling at home by living the philosophy, "Give a little, take a little." This Fuch's essay almost made me believe that no love existed in the American family; that life centers around one's self. if this were true the word "family" would mean nothing to the average American. To me it means a home that I can always turn to and a place were people care about my troubles. Of course independence and personal agenda are vital to each and every one of us but in order to say that "we love" or "are loved" that independence must be compromised. Two key components of a family were missing from Lawrence H. Fuch's, The American Way of Family. They were sacrifice and love. With the absence of these two very important words comes the absence in my agreement with his views. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Islamic Women 2.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Muslim society over the centuries has treated women as second class citizens. It's been this way since the beginning of time. Women are treated in this manor for a number of reasons, but all leading back to the Quran. Women are considered inferior to men, are treated unfairly in marriage, and even are oppressed legally, but all are approved of in the Quran. It describes in detail the way that a women is to be treated and the way a women should treat her husband. The Quran expresses the equality of the sexes in the following. "And their Lord answereth them, `I will not suffer the work of him among you that worketh, whether of male or female, to be lost. the one of you is the issue of the other."(Q 3:195) So while the Qur`an holds the works of men and women in equal regard and acknowledges that they are completely interdependent to their very existence, They are not regarded as having equal worth as people. The fact that men are a step above the women and superior to them is evident in the following verses. "And it is for the women to act as they (the husbands) act by them, in all fairness; but the men are a step above them."(Q 2:228) "Men have authority over women because Allah has made the one superior to the other."(Q4:34) Women are thought of as being lower in intellect and spirituals in comparison to men. In the Quran it states, "And of His signs is that He created for you, of yourselves, spouses, that you may repose in them."(Q 30"21) This causes many Muslims to look at women as creations like the animals and plants and other useful things created by Allah. Muslims believe that women are lacking many of the traits that men possess. The believe that women are lacking gratitude as well as intelligence. The Hadith speaks of this subject saying, "Women are ungrateful to their husbands and are ungrateful for the favours and the good (charitable) deeds done to them. If you have always been good (benevolent) to one of them and then she sees something in you (not of her liking), she will say, `I have never received and good from you." Also women are not reliable witnesses due to their lack of intelligence and their emotional state. It is said that, "Women was made to bear and feed children. Therefore she is very emotional. And she is forgetful, because if she did not forget how it is to give birth she would not have another child. That is why she will not be as reliable a witness as a man." Women have so many things separating them from men in the Muslim society. It is believed that every woman has ten awrah. (translation: the external genitals, especially of the female, Latin- something to be ashamed of ) It is perceived that women are awrah and that is one reason that all women must not show any part of their body along with staying in the house. It is believed that the woman's place is in the home and that she shouldn't even leave the house to pray at the mosque, but rather she is closer to Allah while inside the home. Some groups such as the Malikiyah and Hanafiyah do allow the woman's face to be shown, but only if the face is not naturally beautiful and makeup is not worn. It is thought that Allah decreed that the face be veiled not for the chastity of the woman, but for the chastity of the men who might look at her. For this defeats the woman's biggest evil her sexuality. It is believed that a woman's way to paradise is through her husband. All the man's needs must be met before anything else may be completed. If a woman is cooking and her husband desires sexual pleasures it is better to let the food burn than to deny her husband. This is true because if the husband is not satisfied then he be cannot at peace to pray to Allah therefore the woman is in bad favor with Allah and all the angels until she satisfies her husband again. There is never anything that a woman can do to repay her husband for taking her as his wife. It is a noble sacrifice for a man to share his life with a woman; she being deficient in mind, religion, and gratitude. There is no sacrifice she can make to repay the favour he has done for her. The rights of Muslim women and men are as you might expect them to be. The women's rights are very simple as stated in the Quran, "It is that you shall give her food when you have taken your food, that you shall clothe her when you have clothed yourself, that you shall not slap her on the face, nor revile her, not desert her except within the house. Other than that she has no rights, he has the right to beat her if she does one of four things. One if she doesn't wear the fineries wanted by the husband. Two if she refuses sexual intercourse. Three when she is told to bath and she refuses. Fourth when she goes abroad without permission of her husband. These are all legal caused for a man to beat his wife. It is also the right of the man to marry up to four wives and to have as many slave girls as he sees fit. Adultery is one of the worst sins a man can commit so Allah allows him to have four wives and as many slave girls as needed to satisfy his lust. Again freeing him from his lust allows him to be more at peace and better able to pray to Allah. There is one provision dealing with slave girls though, a man is only allowed to have sexual intercourse with a slave girl if he has paid the extra amount of money to the seller for that benefit. Men also have all the rights after a divorce in matters dealing with the custody of a child. "The conditions of the custody of the children is as follows. First the wife should not reject Islam. If she rejects Islam, she has no right to the custody of the children. Second, she must be of good character for if it was proven that she is corrupted by illicit sex, or theft, or has a low trade such as a professional mourner, or a dancer, she loses her right to custody. Third, she is not allowed to marry anyone except the father of the child. If she remarries, she has no right to custody, unless her new husband is related to the child as a paternal uncle. But if she marries a foreigner she has no right to custody. fourthly, she must not leave the child without supervision. Especially if the child is a female, because females need protection. So if the mother had to go outside for a long period and so neglect her child, she has no right to the custody of the child. Fifthly, if the father is poor, and the mother refused the custody of the child except for payment, and his aunt said "I will look after him for free,"then the aunt will have the right to the custody of the child. To follow the religion of Islam is not a condition to the right of custody, for if the husband is married to one of the people of the Book, she has the right to custody as long as he is safe from apostasy, or corruption. But if that is not so, such as he say her taking the child to a church, or feeding him pigs meat, or giving him wine, then the father has the right to take the child from her, and sanity is a pre-requisite that is agreed upon by all" A husband may be one of the only things a woman may choose under Islam. Marriages are no longer forced by fathers and this practice is actually discouraged. If a man knows that a father is trying to force a marriage it is his obligation not to marry the woman. Every woman must marry of her own free will or the marriage is null and void. This is also true if a dowry isn't included in the marriage. A dowry is given to the father for the securing of the sexual rights of the woman. This is also true outside of marriage. If a man has sexual intercourse with a married woman, by mistake, thinking that she was his wife, then he must pay to her and not to her husband a dowry equal to her social worth. This is even stated in the Quran in 4:24 when it is said, "Such wives as you enjoy thereby, give them their wages apportionate." Under Islam when a couple are married the property and everything on it don't belong to the couple as a whole, but rather remains the husbands. This forces the wife to rely on the husband for her daily needs. (i.e. food,clothing,sexual pleasure) This gives the man a very large advantage because the woman cannot survive without his support and a man may refuse support for a number of reasons. 1. If she leaves the house without his permission 2. If she refuses to give herself to him 3. If the woman is a renegade 4. If the woman who obeys the husband's son or his father or kiss either with lust or anything that might put her relation with her husband on a prohibited degree. 5. If the marriage contract is imperfect (i.e. if she had sex with someone by mistake, the man thinking she was his Wife) 6. If the wife is too young to have sex 7. If the wife is imprisoned even if innocent 8. If the wife doesn't surrender herself in his home on the day due to illness. 9. If a wife was raped 10. If a wife goes to perform a pilgrimage (she in this case would not be under her husbands care at this time) These instances of inequality among men and women of Islam where not the isolated or uncommon examples. I found that for the most part this is the way the Islamic women live their day to day lives. Unusual to Americans this is the norm for that part of the world and many people both men and women are fighting to keep it that way. Many of their beliefs are suprising, but are their results justified? Their goal is to secure a descent wholesome family free of adultery and divorces. However unusual they believe their means are justified. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Islamic Women.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Muslim society over the centuries has treated women as second class citizens. It's been this way since the beginning of time. Women are treated in this manor for a number of reasons, but all leading back to the Quran. Women are considered inferior to men, are treated unfairly in marriage, and even are oppressed legally, but all are approved of in the Quran. It describes in detail the way that a women is to be treated and the way a women should treat her husband. The Quran expresses the equality of the sexes in the following. "And their Lord answereth them, `I will not suffer the work of him among you that worketh, whether of male or female, to be lost. the one of you is the issue of the other."(Q 3:195) So while the Qur`an holds the works of men and women in equal regard and acknowledges that they are completely interdependent to their very existence, They are not regarded as having equal worth as people. The fact that men are a step above the women and superior to them is evident in the following verses. "And it is for the women to act as they (the husbands) act by them, in all fairness; but the men are a step above them."(Q 2:228) "Men have authority over women because Allah has made the one superior to the other."(Q4:34) Women are thought of as being lower in intellect and spirituals in comparison to men. In the Quran it states, "And of His signs is that He created for you, of yourselves, spouses, that you may repose in them."(Q 30"21) This causes many Muslims to look at women as creations like the animals and plants and other useful things created by Allah. Muslims believe that women are lacking many of the traits that men possess. The believe that women are lacking gratitude as well as intelligence. The Hadith speaks of this subject saying, "Women are ungrateful to their husbands and are ungrateful for the favours and the good (charitable) deeds done to them. If you have always been good (benevolent) to one of them and then she sees something in you (not of her liking), she will say, `I have never received and good from you." Also women are not reliable witnesses due to their lack of intelligence and their emotional state. It is said that, "Women was made to bear and feed children. Therefore she is very emotional. And she is forgetful, because if she did not forget how it is to give birth she would not have another child. That is why she will not be as reliable a witness as a man." Women have so many things separating them from men in the Muslim society. It is believed that every woman has ten awrah. (translation: the external genitals, especially of the female, Latin- something to be ashamed of ) It is perceived that women are awrah and that is one reason that all women must not show any part of their body along with staying in the house. It is believed that the woman's place is in the home and that she shouldn't even leave the house to pray at the mosque, but rather she is closer to Allah while inside the home. Some groups such as the Malikiyah and Hanafiyah do allow the woman's face to be shown, but only if the face is not naturally beautiful and makeup is not worn. It is thought that Allah decreed that the face be veiled not for the chastity of the woman, but for the chastity of the men who might look at her. For this defeats the woman's biggest evil her sexuality. It is believed that a woman's way to paradise is through her husband. All the man's needs must be met before anything else may be completed. If a woman is cooking and her husband desires sexual pleasures it is better to let the food burn than to deny her husband. This is true because if the husband is not satisfied then he be cannot at peace to pray to Allah therefore the woman is in bad favor with Allah and all the angels until she satisfies her husband again. There is never anything that a woman can do to repay her husband for taking her as his wife. It is a noble sacrifice for a man to share his life with a woman; she being deficient in mind, religion, and gratitude. There is no sacrifice she can make to repay the favour he has done for her. The rights of Muslim women and men are as you might expect them to be. The women's rights are very simple as stated in the Quran, "It is that you shall give her food when you have taken your food, that you shall clothe her when you have clothed yourself, that you shall not slap her on the face, nor revile her, not desert her except within the house. Other than that she has no rights, he has the right to beat her if she does one of four things. One if she doesn't wear the fineries wanted by the husband. Two if she refuses sexual intercourse. Three when she is told to bath and she refuses. Fourth when she goes abroad without permission of her husband. These are all legal caused for a man to beat his wife. It is also the right of the man to marry up to four wives and to have as many slave girls as he sees fit. Adultery is one of the worst sins a man can commit so Allah allows him to have four wives and as many slave girls as needed to satisfy his lust. Again freeing him from his lust allows him to be more at peace and better able to pray to Allah. There is one provision dealing with slave girls though, a man is only allowed to have sexual intercourse with a slave girl if he has paid the extra amount of money to the seller for that benefit. Men also have all the rights after a divorce in matters dealing with the custody of a child. "The conditions of the custody of the children is as follows. First the wife should not reject Islam. If she rejects Islam, she has no right to the custody of the children. Second, she must be of good character for if it was proven that she is corrupted by illicit sex, or theft, or has a low trade such as a professional mourner, or a dancer, she loses her right to custody. Third, she is not allowed to marry anyone except the father of the child. If she remarries, she has no right to custody, unless her new husband is related to the child as a paternal uncle. But if she marries a foreigner she has no right to custody. fourthly, she must not leave the child without supervision. Especially if the child is a female, because females need protection. So if the mother had to go outside for a long period and so neglect her child, she has no right to the custody of the child. Fifthly, if the father is poor, and the mother refused the custody of the child except for payment, and his aunt said "I will look after him for free,"then the aunt will have the right to the custody of the child. To follow the religion of Islam is not a condition to the right of custody, for if the husband is married to one of the people of the Book, she has the right to custody as long as he is safe from apostasy, or corruption. But if that is not so, such as he say her taking the child to a church, or feeding him pigs meat, or giving him wine, then the father has the right to take the child from her, and sanity is a pre-requisite that is agreed upon by all" A husband may be one of the only things a woman may choose under Islam. Marriages are no longer forced by fathers and this practice is actually discouraged. If a man knows that a father is trying to force a marriage it is his obligation not to marry the woman. Every woman must marry of her own free will or the marriage is null and void. This is also true if a dowry isn't included in the marriage. A dowry is given to the father for the securing of the sexual rights of the woman. This is also true outside of marriage. If a man has sexual intercourse with a married woman, by mistake, thinking that she was his wife, then he must pay to her and not to her husband a dowry equal to her social worth. This is even stated in the Quran in 4:24 when it is said, "Such wives as you enjoy thereby, give them their wages apportionate." Under Islam when a couple are married the property and everything on it don't belong to the couple as a whole, but rather remains the husbands. This forces the wife to rely on the husband for her daily needs. (i.e. food,clothing,sexual pleasure) This gives the man a very large advantage because the woman cannot survive without his support and a man may refuse support for a number of reasons. 1. If she leaves the house without his permission 2. If she refuses to give herself to him 3. If the woman is a renegade 4. If the woman who obeys the husband's son or his father or kiss either with lust or anything that might put her relation with her husband on a prohibited degree. 5. If the marriage contract is imperfect (i.e. if she had sex with someone by mistake, the man thinking she was his Wife) 6. If the wife is too young to have sex 7. If the wife is imprisoned even if innocent 8. If the wife doesn't surrender herself in his home on the day due to illness. 9. If a wife was raped 10. If a wife goes to perform a pilgrimage (she in this case would not be under her husbands care at this time) These instances of inequality among men and women of Islam where not the isolated or uncommon examples. I found that for the most part this is the way the Islamic women live their day to day lives. Unusual to Americans this is the norm for that part of the world and many people both men and women are fighting to keep it that way. Many of their beliefs are suprising, but are their results justified? Their goal is to secure a descent wholesome family free of adultery and divorces. However unusual they believe their means are justified. Muslim society over the centuries has treated women as second class citizens. It's been this way since the beginning of time. Women are treated in this manor for a number of reasons, but all leading back to the Quran. Women are considered inferior to men, are treated unfairly in marriage, and even are oppressed legally, but all are approved of in the Quran. It describes in detail the way that a women is to be treated and the way a women should treat her husband. The Quran expresses the equality of the sexes in the following. "And their Lord answereth them, `I will not suffer the work of him among you that worketh, whether of male or female, to be lost. the one of you is the issue of the other."(Q 3:195) So while the Qur`an holds the works of men and women in equal regard and acknowledges that they are completely interdependent to their very existence, They are not regarded as having equal worth as people. The fact that men are a step above the women and superior to them is evident in the following verses. "And it is for the women to act as they (the husbands) act by them, in all fairness; but the men are a step above them."(Q 2:228) "Men have authority over women because Allah has made the one superior to the other."(Q4:34) Women are thought of as being lower in intellect and spirituals in comparison to men. In the Quran it states, "And of His signs is that He created for you, of yourselves, spouses, that you may repose in them."(Q 30"21) This causes many Muslims to look at women as creations like the animals and plants and other useful things created by Allah. Muslims believe that women are lacking many of the traits that men possess. The believe that women are lacking gratitude as well as intelligence. The Hadith speaks of this subject saying, "Women are ungrateful to their husbands and are ungrateful for the favours and the good (charitable) deeds done to them. If you have always been good (benevolent) to one of them and then she sees something in you (not of her liking), she will say, `I have never received and good from you." Also women are not reliable witnesses due to their lack of intelligence and their emotional state. It is said that, "Women was made to bear and feed children. Therefore she is very emotional. And she is forgetful, because if she did not forget how it is to give birth she would not have another child. That is why she will not be as reliable a witness as a man." Women have so many things separating them from men in the Muslim society. It is believed that every woman has ten awrah. (translation: the external genitals, especially of the female, Latin- something to be ashamed of ) It is perceived that women are awrah and that is one reason that all women must not show any part of their body along with staying in the house. It is believed that the woman's place is in the home and that she shouldn't even leave the house to pray at the mosque, but rather she is closer to Allah while inside the home. Some groups such as the Malikiyah and Hanafiyah do allow the woman's face to be shown, but only if the face is not naturally beautiful and makeup is not worn. It is thought that Allah decreed that the face be veiled not for the chastity of the woman, but for the chastity of the men who might look at her. For this defeats the woman's biggest evil her sexuality. It is believed that a woman's way to paradise is through her husband. All the man's needs must be met before anything else may be completed. If a woman is cooking and her husband desires sexual pleasures it is better to let the food burn than to deny her husband. This is true because if the husband is not satisfied then he be cannot at peace to pray to Allah therefore the woman is in bad favor with Allah and all the angels until she satisfies her husband again. There is never anything that a woman can do to repay her husband for taking her as his wife. It is a noble sacrifice for a man to share his life with a woman; she being deficient in mind, religion, and gratitude. There is no sacrifice she can make to repay the favour he has done for her. The rights of Muslim women and men are as you might expect them to be. The women's rights are very simple as stated in the Quran, "It is that you shall give her food when you have taken your food, that you shall clothe her when you have clothed yourself, that you shall not slap her on the face, nor revile her, not desert her except within the house. Other than that she has no rights, he has the right to beat her if she does one of four things. One if she doesn't wear the fineries wanted by the husband. Two if she refuses sexual intercourse. Three when she is told to bath and she refuses. Fourth when she goes abroad without permission of her husband. These are all legal caused for a man to beat his wife. It is also the right of the man to marry up to four wives and to have as many slave girls as he sees fit. Adultery is one of the worst sins a man can commit so Allah allows him to have four wives and as many slave girls as needed to satisfy his lust. Again freeing him from his lust allows him to be more at peace and better able to pray to Allah. There is one provision dealing with slave girls though, a man is only allowed to have sexual intercourse with a slave girl if he has paid the extra amount of money to the seller for that benefit. Men also have all the rights after a divorce in matters dealing with the custody of a child. "The conditions of the custody of the children is as follows. First the wife should not reject Islam. If she rejects Islam, she has no right to the custody of the children. Second, she must be of good character for if it was proven that she is corrupted by illicit sex, or theft, or has a low trade such as a professional mourner, or a dancer, she loses her right to custody. Third, she is not allowed to marry anyone except the father of the child. If she remarries, she has no right to custody, unless her new husband is related to the child as a paternal uncle. But if she marries a foreigner she has no right to custody. fourthly, she must not leave the child without supervision. Especially if the child is a female, because females need protection. So if the mother had to go outside for a long period and so neglect her child, she has no right to the custody of the child. Fifthly, if the father is poor, and the mother refused the custody of the child except for payment, and his aunt said "I will look after him for free,"then the aunt will have the right to the custody of the child. To follow the religion of Islam is not a condition to the right of custody, for if the husband is married to one of the people of the Book, she has the right to custody as long as he is safe from apostasy, or corruption. But if that is not so, such as he say her taking the child to a church, or feeding him pigs meat, or giving him wine, then the father has the right to take the child from her, and sanity is a pre-requisite that is agreed upon by all" A husband may be one of the only things a woman may choose under Islam. Marriages are no longer forced by fathers and this practice is actually discouraged. If a man knows that a father is trying to force a marriage it is his obligation not to marry the woman. Every woman must marry of her own free will or the marriage is null and void. This is also true if a dowry isn't included in the marriage. A dowry is given to the father for the securing of the sexual rights of the woman. This is also true outside of marriage. If a man has sexual intercourse with a married woman, by mistake, thinking that she was his wife, then he must pay to her and not to her husband a dowry equal to her social worth. This is even stated in the Quran in 4:24 when it is said, "Such wives as you enjoy thereby, give them their wages apportionate." Under Islam when a couple are married the property and everything on it don't belong to the couple as a whole, but rather remains the husbands. This forces the wife to rely on the husband for her daily needs. (i.e. food,clothing,sexual pleasure) This gives the man a very large advantage because the woman cannot survive without his support and a man may refuse support for a number of reasons. 1. If she leaves the house without his permission 2. If she refuses to give herself to him 3. If the woman is a renegade 4. If the woman who obeys the husband's son or his father or kiss either with lust or anything that might put her relation with her husband on a prohibited degree. 5. If the marriage contract is imperfect (i.e. if she had sex with someone by mistake, the man thinking she was his Wife) 6. If the wife is too young to have sex 7. If the wife is imprisoned even if innocent 8. If the wife doesn't surrender herself in his home on the day due to illness. 9. If a wife was raped 10. If a wife goes to perform a pilgrimage (she in this case would not be under her husbands care at this time) These instances of inequality among men and women of Islam where not the isolated or uncommon examples. I found that for the most part this is the way the Islamic women live their day to day lives. Unusual to Americans this is the norm for that part of the world and many people both men and women are fighting to keep it that way. Many of their beliefs are suprising, but are their results justified? Their goal is to secure a descent wholesome family free of adultery and divorces. However unusual they believe their means are justified. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Israel.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Do you see that chimney over there? See it? Do you see those flames? Over there- that's where you're going to be taken. That's your grave, over there. Haven't you realize it yet? You dumb bastards, don't you understand anything? You're going to be burned. Frizzed away. Turned into ashes. Night is one of the masterpieces of Holocaust literature. It is the autobiographical account of an adolescent boy and his father in Auschwitz. Elie Wiesel writes of their battle for survival, and with his battle with God for a way to understand the wanton cruelty he witnessed each day. Elie Wiesel was born in a little, quiet town called Sighet, in transylvania where he had lived all of his young life. Quiet until the 1940's, when the city, and eke himself charged for ever, just as Europe, and for that matter the world. One day they expelled all the foreigners of the city, and Wiesels master in the study of cabbala (Jewish mysticism) of a foreigner so he was expelled too. The deportees were soon forgotten, he writes. However a few lines later he explains why this is relevant, and gives the reader an idea of what was going on in the minds of the jews living where he did. He told his story (referring to the expelled Rabbi) and that of his companions. The train full of deportees had crossed the Hungarian frontier and on Polish territory had been taken in charge by the Gestapo. The jews had to get out and climb into lorries. The lorries dove towards a forest. The jews were made to get out. They were made to dig huge graves. And when they had finished their work, the Gestapo began theirs. Without passion, without taste, they slaughtered their prisoners. Each one had to go up to the hole and present its neck. Babies were thrown into the air and the machine gunners used them as targets. . . Through long days and nights, he went from one Jewish house to another, telling the story Malke, the young girl who had taken three days to die, and of tabias, the tailor, who had begged to be killed f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\ISRAELI PALESTINIAN CONFLICT.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ISRAELI PALESTINIAN CONFLICT The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict is a dangerous and volatile situation that has attracted American attention for some decades. The conflict is a sensitive subject that produce strong emotions in people. This conflict deals with Jewish nationalism, distribution of resources, and politics. About a hundred years ago, Jews underwent a drastic change in their view of themselves. At first a few, and then more, began to call themselves Zionists. Zionism is a term that in its broadest and early sense meant simply the "return" of Jews to their ancestral homeland. That homeland was called Zion (or Israel) and its heart was Jerusalem, known as the "City of Zion." Early Zionists were simply pious, nonpolitical, religious Jews who thought they could best practice their faith in the Land of Zion. Some went primarily to pray, to study their religious books, and to await the arrival of the Messiah. Politics played a influential role in their thinking. By the beginning of the 20th century, however, Zionism came to have a political meaning: that Jews were not just a religious or ethnic group but were a nation of people who should have their own state. Today Zionism is the term for Jewish nationalism. Not all Jews agree upon what Zionism is, but to a point there is agreement, it is upon three things: there should be a Jewish state; it should be permanent, independent, and secure; and Jews who are threatened anywhere in the world should be able to go there to be safe. All other issues--the boundaries of the state, the nature of government, relations with the Palestinians, relations with American Jews, religious law--are in dispute. It is important to understand the Palestinian views . Keep in mind two points. First, people respond to the circumstances in which they live. If one is rich, one sees problems one way; if one is unemployed, one sees it a second way; if one owns a small shop, one sees it a third way. One must understand the circumstances in which Palestinians live if we are to understand their positions and actions. Second, there are about five million Palestinians. Like Americans, they disagree on political issues. They also change their minds as new circumstances develop. It is wrong to think Palestinians have a common view that remains unchanged. Their view changed considerably over the years. They view that the Israelis are taking the land rightfully theirs, and are being "bullied" by Israelis. They are the ones who had their land taken away from them and are left with no where to live. In 1948, there were approximately 860,000 Palestinians inside today's Israel. About 700,000 were driven out or fled during the fighting that followed the declaration of Israeli statehood. The Palestinian population of Jerusalem went from 75,000 to 3,500; of Jaffa from 70,000 to 3,600; of Haifa from 71,000 to 2,900; of Lydda-Ramle from 35,000 to 2,000; of Tiberias from 5,300 to zero. All refugees lost their property (about 800,000 acres were taken for Israeli use.). The 160,000 Palestinians still in Israel in 1949 when the fighting stopped lost another 250,000 acres. The Palestinians in Israel were left without resources or strong leaders. When the Likud Party took power in 1977, it intensified colonization, pouring some $1 billion into settlement building over the next seven years. Today, land taken from the Palestinians and earmarked for military purposes or Jewish settlements amounts to more than 52% of the most fertile areas of the West Bank and 40% of the Gaza Strip. Only a very small percentage of this land was sold willingly by Palestinians. Most of it was confiscated, and is held to be for Jews only-not just Jews from Israel, but Jews from anywhere in the world. Many newly-arrived immigrants from the United States and Russia are given heavily financed housing in the settlements built on seized Palestinian land. By 1990, according to Israeli estimates, 83% of the water from the West Bank will be diverted to Jewish settlements and Israel. The indigenous Palestinians will get only 17% of their own water. This taking of natural resources from the Palestinians, are the reasons for the rise in conflict. To a large extent Jews and Palestinians are geographically concentrated. Most Jews live in Israel and most Palestinians live in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. There are exceptions of course. Many Jews live in the new ring of suburbs around East Jerusalem and in the new settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. And many Arabs live inside of Israel, particularly in Galilee, including Nazareth, and in the Negev Desert in the South. The first comprehensive peace talks between Israel and delegations representing the Palestinians and neighboring Arab states began in October 1991. After Likud lost the parliamentary election of June 1992, Labor party leader Yitzhak Rabin formed a new government. Rabin took a more conciliatory line toward the Palestinians and imposed strict limits on new Jewish settlements in the occupied territories. In 1993, after decades of violent conflict between Palestinians and Israelis, leaders from each side agreed to the signing of an historic peace treaty. Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasir Arafat and Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin met in the United States on September 13 to witness the signing of the treaty, which paved the way for limited Palestinian self-rule in Israeli-occupied territories. The Gaza-Jericho Agreement was signed in Cairo on May 4, 1994, and applies to the Gaza Strip and to a defined area of about 65 square kilometers including Jericho and its environs. The Gaza-Jericho agreement addresses four main issues -- security arrangements, civil affairs, legal matters, and economic relations. The document includes agreement to a withdrawal of Israeli military forces from Gaza and Jericho, a transfer of authority from the Israeli Civil Administration to a Palestinian Authority, the structure and composition of the Palestinian Authority is a Palestinian police force, and relations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. After intensive diplomatic efforts by the United States, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and Yasser Arafat agreed on September 29, 1996 to go to Washington the following week to seek ways out of a war that has put the entire Israeli-Palestinian peace in jeopardy. Despite the historical tensions of the Middle East, recent issues have arisen to intensify the conflict. Angry Palestinians protested Israel's decision to open an archeological site, the issue becoming one more in a growing number of Middle East tensions. The Muslim crowd feared the excavation of an ancient tunnel, right beside the foundations of Jerusalem's al Aqsa Mosque compound, would undermine what is the third-holiest shrine in Islam after Mecca and Medina. The tunnel excavation dispute is only the latest indication of rising tension between Arabs and Israelis. And the latest death count is 76 ( as of October 1, 1996). In conclusion, this is an issue that deals with politics, uneven distribution of resources, and nationalism, and will take a great effort to come to an agreement. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a "battle" that has a long history that will continue till a mutual understanding and agreement is settled. Until the Israelis and the Palestinians can settle there differences and cooperate with each other, the "battle" will continue on. BIBLIOGRAPHY CNN Interactive. http://www.cnn.com/, Sept 28, 1996 THE JERUSALEM POST NET EDITION. http://www.jpost.co.il/, Sept 30, 1996 Israel-Palestinian Negotiations. http://www.israel-mfa.gov.il/peace/palest.html, Sept 29, 1996 Israeli conceptions of the enemy . http://www.hf-fak.uib.no/institutter/smi/paj/Lonning.html, Sept 24, 1996 Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. http://www.umich.edu/~inet/cmenas/StudyUnits/israeli-palestinian- conflict/studentindex.html, Sept 27, 1996 The New York Times on the Web. http://www.nytimes.com/, Sept 30, 1996 WashingtonPost.com: International News . http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/digest/int3.htm, Sept 26, 1996 f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Jesus and the Anorexic Suicidal Supermodels.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Jesus and the Anorexic Suicidal Supermodels The family unit is one of the most cherished institutions of American society. Its function is one of philanthropy, to raise America's children in accordance with our accepted norms and various proscriptions and prescriptions. However, rising teenage pregnancy and juvenile crime seem to indicate that the American family is not doing this. Many Americans insist that a family is capable of producing a productive citizen in every instance and believe that only a traditional family can do this. So the conclusion one might draw baring in mind this paradigm is that the traditional one mom and one dad family needs help as a function. Any Pat Robertson- fearing Republican will tell you that Judeo-Christian ethics are the foundation upon which the family is based, therefore to help the family why not foster these religious ideals? (And while we're at it, why not make a contribution to the two billion dollar tax-free Christian Broadcasting Network?) The manifest function here of religion is to provide people with a unifying belief that will scare kids into behaving so they do not go to Hell. The latent function is that it is a slap in the face to every Easterner who has conducted themselves in a productive and positive manner. Many of the Christian right I am sure do not realize how offensive the notion is that Christianity is the only faith to recognize that killing and stealing are bad. What exactly are the "norms" that are so exclusive to Christianity? The Christian world is more afflicted with crime than Singapore ever will be, just take a walk through the super Catholic ghettos of Buenos Aires. I personally believe that the break from moral traditions does not exist. The vast majority of American youth hold murder and violence to be a proscription, and so do their families whether they consist of two moms or two dads or one of each. Certainly poverty has created a problem to compliment the stress placed on those growing up in single parent families, and perhaps here is where faith belongs. If people can just have something to believe in, to lift up their spirits, perhaps the dread of daily life would not seem so terrible for those it depresses, and here I speak not only of inner cities, I speak of the dozens of people I know who have to be on prozac to have the will to wake up in the morning, I speak of the countless multitudes of young women who purposely vomit because they feel they have no control over their lives or because they feel they must aspire to be thin enough to houlla hoop in a Cherio. The plight of youth is not the measure of their morality. The plight of youth is the measure of their self worth. We value malnutrition for our girls and perfect health for our boys. Although the older members of our society will say that these are not the new prescriptions, that these are wrong, these detrimental social phenomenon occur in desperately large numbers. How can Christian ideology help these depressed youth? The Bible does not have anything to say about anorexia, about buhlemia. It does condemn suicide, but certainly condemnation is not the way to help us. In the end, the saving grace of American youth will be their ability to believe in themselves. Self confidence and preservation will give them the emotional capacity to aim as high as Americans should, to make something of themselves other than a thin body. Of course, no one wants to think that the ones hurting American youth are themselves. But they are. Hollywood and the fashion industry have indeed played a large part as far as America's perception of beauty. This influences the American paradigm far more than media violence ever could, for no one wants to be the bad guy murderer. He (almost) always looses. Times change. A place called America started in a revolution that was seen as an atheistic break from the tradition of British rule. Now we are liberating ourselves from ourselves, for better or worse. Sex education is teaching children not to be afraid or ashamed of their bodies, gays and lesbians need not live undignified lives of shame and a teenage mother need not carry to term a baby she can not afford. This is the moral crisis the Pat Robertson denounces. If I had a two billion dollar tax-exempt media corporation, I'm sure I could paint progress as crisis too. The real fundamentals of Christianity that offer a positive function for society is not the condemnation of diversity and alienation that the rich and religious are always so good at; it is the idea that we start caring about each other, that we love one another and stop blaming each other for our own problems. I think that if Jesus were to return tomorrow, he would be rather unhappy to find Pat Robertson the spokesman and president of his fan club. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Just War Doctrine and the Gulf Conflict.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Just War Doctrine and the Gulf Conflict In evaluating US involvement in the Iraq conflict in terms of the Just War Doctrine - jus ad bellum and jus in bello - it is my opinion that the US adhered to the Doctrine in its entirety. The US acted justly both in its entering into the Gulf conflict (jus ad bellum) and in its conduct while in the conflict (jus in bello). To support this opinion I will individually address the co parts that constitute the Just War Doctrine and show how US participation in the Iraq war abstained from violating the tenets of either co-part. Jus Ad Bellum Jus Ad Bellum, the justness of entering into conflict consists of six primary tenets: legitimate authority, just cause, proportionality, right intention, chance of success, and last resort. 1. Legitimate Authority - Only those of legitimate authority may justly lead its country into war. This tenet disqualify revolutionaries, radicals and/or subversives who seek to justly initiate war. War is to be the decisions of the head of state and is to be subject to their guidance. 2. Just Cause - A just conflict may not be initiated void of just cause. This tenet disallows justifying war for the purpose of economic gain, land acquisition, or strategic position. If war is to be justly initiated just cause, usually humanitarian, must first exist. 3. Right Intention - This relates to the tenet of just cause. Just cause must be followed by right intention. It would be unjust seek a goal devoid of the just cause. 4. Proportionality - Also in relation to just cause is the tenet of proportionality. Proportionality must exist between the cause and the decision to go to war. For country (a) to initiate a total war with country (b) because of a minor violation that country (b) was responsible for would be unproportional and unjust. There is not cause enough to warrant country (b) being subjected to a total war. 5. Chance of Success - War must be initiated with a chance of success. It would be unjust to lead people into a war they have no chance of winning. It would more just to bow to superiority and fight another day than to commit to a policy of suicide. 6. Last Resort - This is probably the most important of the jus ad bellum tenets. War should be the last resort. Every diplomatic effort should be made to achieve a just cause without conflict. Only after all non-conflictory options have been exhausted should war be committed to. As to the question of whether or not the US adhered to the tenet of jus ad bellum the reply is a resounding yes. The US, under legitimate authority undertook the just cause of alleviating the plight of a coalition partner. Saddam Husseins invasion of Kuwait was unjust, or at least in violation of the Just War Doctrine, and the US sought to reconcile matters. The goal, the removal of Iraqi forces from Kuwait, was a just one and was pursued proportionally. For nearly six months the US and other UN/coalition partners made every diplomatic effort to resolve the conflict peacefully. Secretary General of UN Security Council Junio Perez de Cuellar made several attempts to hash out a peaceful plan with Saddam Hussein directly and during this time the US abstained from any military action. In conjunction with efforts of Perez de Cuellar, US Secretary of State James Baker spent countless hours negotiating directly with the Iraqi Foreign Minister in an attempt to bring about a non-violent end to the crisis. When all efforts failed to bring an end to the conflict by peaceful means the UN Security Council drafted Resolution 678 which authorized "all means necessary" to dislodge Iraqi forces from Kuwait. In one last effort US President George Bush sent a direct communiqué to Saddam Hussein asking the Iraqi President to leave peacefully or face an international conflict. In the communiqué the President Bush wrote: Mr. President: We Stand at the brink of war between Iraq and the world. This is a war that began with your invasion of Kuwait; this is a war that can be ended only by Iraq's full and unconditional compliance with U.N. Security Council Resolution 678....The international community is united in its call for Iraq to leave all of Kuwait without condition and without further delay....We prefer a peaceful outcome. However, anything less than full compliance...is unacceptable. Only after Saddam Hussein failed to comply with Resolution 678, the eighteenth resolution drawn in response to Iraqs invasion of Kuwait, was the decision made to forcefully remove Iraqi forces from Kuwait and launch Operation Desert Storm. Jus In Bello The second co-part of the two co-parts that constitute the Just War Doctrine is jus in bello or justices in war. Jus in bello mandates that the following tenets must be adhered to for justice in war to exist: proportionality, moral means, purposeful deprivation of life. 1. Proportionality - This tenet of proportionality eliminates overkill as a just means in war. Allegorically speaking, this tenet says its unjust to use an H-bomb where a bayonet will suffice. 2. Moral Means - The moral means tenet of jus in bello bars the use of indiscriminate weapons and/or weapons that cause needless pain and suffering. Again, atomic weapons are an apt example; nuclear weapons would be considered unjust because they indiscriminate and capable of causing needless pain and suffering. 3. No Deprivation of Life Without Cause - Under jus in bello it is unjust to kill when it can be avoided. Deprivation of life without purpose is immoral and contradictory to the Just War Doctrine. When analyzing the justness of US conduct in the Gulf Crisis, it is important to keep two points in mind: 1. The just cause was to remove Iraqi forces from Kuwait; anything more and the Doctrine might be violated. 2. UN Resolution 678 authorized the use of "all means necessary" to dislodge Iraqi forces from Kuwait. This quite literally opened the door to Doctrine violation. Any adherence to the Just War Doctrine would be by choice and not by fear of consequence. It was in fact the choice the US to adhere to the Just War Doctrine and their conduct in the conflict proves of this. The US goal was to remove Iraqi Forces from Kuwait and prevent the possibility of any immediate reoccupation. This goal was pursued and achieved, and done so in the most just manner possible. Though the US possessed immense destructive capabilities they employed only that necessary to get the job done. The most effective aspect of the coalition forces was their air assault. The various jet-fueled fighters and bombers the US employed were more than capable of turning Iraq quite literally into a parking lot. They did not. Instead bombing occurred only where enemy forces or enemy armament was suspected to be stored. Civilian areas were not fired upon unless a threat, such as an anti-aircraft gun, was placed in a civilian area, and in these instances pin-point missiles were used to eliminate the threat with as little destruction to the surrounding area as possible. This adheres to the moral means doctrine which finds indiscriminate weapons unjust. Though the US was authorized to use any and all means they employed nothing more than what was necessary to complete the job adequately. As I stated above UN Resolution 678 left the door wide open to possible violations of International Law. Despite this US went beyond the call of duty to assure that its role in the Gulf conflict was just. Risking their own well being, US pilots often gav f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Juv Delinquency.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Date sent: Mon, 15 Apr 96 02:54:48 0700 Subject: DELINQUENT.TXT Report for system password Remember doing something mischievous or wrong when you were a kid and getting the label "delinquent" slapped on you ? Did you ever wonder what it meant ? That is what my topic for today is . . . juvenile delinquency. In this report I will: define juvenile delinquency, give the extent of juvenile delinquency, give some suggestions on what causes juvenile delinquency, and what is being done in various communities to deal with this growing problem. The legal term juvenile delinquent was established so that young lawbreakers could avoid the disgrace of being classified in legal records as criminals. Juvenile delinquency laws were designed to provide treatment, rather than punishment, for juvenile offenders. Young delinquents usually are sent to juvenile courts, where the main aim is to rehabilitate offenders, rather than to punish them. But the term juvenile delinquency itself has come to imply disgrace in today's society. A youngster can be labeled a delinquent for breaking any one of a number of laws, ranging from robbery to running away from home. But an action for which a youth may be declared a delinquent in one community may not be against the law in another community. In some communities, the police ignore many children who are accused of minor delinquencies or refer them directly to their parents. But in other communities, the police may refer such children to a juvenile court, where they may officially be declared delinquents. Crime statistics, though they are often incomplete and may be misleading, do give an indication of the extent of the delinquency problem. The FBI reports that during the early 1980's, about two-fifths of all arrests in the United States for burglary and arson were of persons under the age of 18. Juveniles also accounted for about one-third of all arrests for larceny. During any year, about 4 % of all children between the ages of 10 and 18 appear in a juvenile court. The percentage of youngsters in this group who are sent to court at least once is much higher. A third or more of those boys living in the slum areas of large cities may appear in a juvenile court at least once. Girls are becoming increasingly involved in juvenile delinquency. Today, about one of every five youngsters appearing in juvenile court is a girl. In the early 1900's, this ratio was about 1 girl to every 50 or 60 boys. Sociologists have conducted a number of studies to determine how much delinquency is not reported to the police. Most youngsters report taking part in one or more delinquent acts, though a majority of the offenses are minor. Experts have concluded that youthful misbehavior is much more common than is indicated by arrest records and juvenile court statistics. Many studies have been made in an effort to determine the causes of delinquency. Most of these have focused on family relationships or on neighborhood or community conditions. The results of these investigations have shown that it is doubtful that any child becomes a delinquent for any single reason. Family Relationships, especially those between parents and individual children, have been the focus of several delinquency studies. An early study comparing delinquent and nondelinquent brothers showed that over 90 % of the delinquents had unhappy home lives and felt discontented with their life circumstances. Only 13 % of their brothers felt this way. Whatever the nature of the delinquents' unhappiness, delinquency appeared to them to be a solution. It brought attention to youths neglected by their parents, or approval by delinquent friends, or it solved problems of an unhappy home life in other ways. More recent studies have revealed that many delinquents had parents with whom they did not get along or who were inconsistent in their patterns of discipline and punishment. Neighborhood conditions have been stressed in studies by sociologists. Many of these inquiries concentrate on differing rates of delinquency, rather than on the way individuals become delinquents. A series of studies have shown that delinquency rates are above average in the poorest sections of cities. Such areas have many broken homes and a high rate of alcoholism. They also have poor schools, high unemployment, few recreational facilities, and high crime rates. Many young people see delinquency as their only escape from boredom, poverty, and other problems. Social scientists have also studied the influence of other youngsters on those who commit delinquencies. For example, they point out that most youngsters who engage in delinquent behavior do so with other juveniles and often in organized gangs. Studies indicate that the causes of delinquency also extend to a whole society. For example, delinquency rates tend to be high among the low-income groups in societies where most people are well-to-do. The pain of being poor and living in slum conditions are felt more strongly in a rich society than in a poor one. Many efforts have been made to develop programs of delinquency prevention. There is little evidence, however, that any of these programs is truly effective. Some programs provide counseling services to youths who appear to be on the verge of becoming delinquents. Other programs draw youngsters into clubs and recreational centers in an effort to keep them away from situations in which delinquency is likely to occur. In recent years, many efforts have centered on improving the educational and work skills of youngsters. For those juveniles who have already become delinquents, there are programs designed to prevent them from committing future delinquent acts. Probation services are offered through juvenile courts in an effort to provide guidance for delinquent children. The more progressive institutions for juveniles attempt to provide treatment programs for offenders--work experiences, counseling, education, and group therapy. However, many other institutions provide little more than protective custody for juvenile delinquents. In conclusion, I have defined juvenile delinquency, explained the extent of juvenile delinquency, gave some suggestions on what causes juvenile delinquency, and what is being done in various communities to deal with the problem of juvenile delinquency. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Juvenile Crime Crime Rates.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Juvenile Crime (Crime Rates) It is comforting to know that, according to recent crime statistics, crime rates are dropping among adults. However, for teens the crime rate is soaring. Between 1990 and 1994, the rate at which adults age 25 and older committed homicides declined 22%; yet the rate jumped 16% for youths between 14 and 17. This age group surpassed the 18 - 24-year-old group in the early Œ90¹s as the most crime-prone. (Between 1986 and 1991, 18 - 24 showed a 62% increase in homicides; 14 - 17 showed a 124% increase in murders.) It is this age group that will be booming in the next decade (currently 39 million under 10). However, the American Civil Liberties Union, in a fact sheet on juvenile crime published in mid May of this year, stated that contrary to public perception, the percentage of violent crimes committed by juveniles is low. According to one estimate, only 13% of violent crimes are committed by young people (Gallup Poll Monthly, Sept. 1994). The ACLU further suggests that the public also holds greatly inflated perceptions about the violence of today's juveniles, claiming only about 0.5% of young people commit violent crimes. (³Crime Time Bomb,² U.S. News & World Report, March 25, 1996) Current social trends do little to contradict the dire predictions made about youth crime rates. Nearly all the factors that contribute to youth crime -- single-parent households, child abuse, deteriorating inner-city schools -- are getting worse. At the same time, government is doing less (spending less) to help break the cycle of poverty and crime. Predicting a generation¹s future crime pattern is, of course, risky. Especially when outside factors remain unpredictable (Will drug use be up or down? Will gun laws be tightened?). Also, from year to year, crime rates can fluctuate much like the stock market. What goes up generally comes down, and what goes down generally comes back up. It is probably no surprise to hear that crime rates among juveniles vary across race (structural limitations/discrimination, self-fulfilling prophecy, etc.). Minorities, especially Blacks, have a higher arrest rate for violent crimes (per 100,000) than Whites. Black males age 15 - 25, while only one percent of the U.S. population, constitute 14% of the victims of homicide and 19% of the perpetrators. In the 1980¹s, the arrest rate for murder rose for young blacks by 145%. Racial differences is only one factor which impacts juvenile crime. Other areas that, directly or indirectly, deal with juvenile delinquency include changes in the family structure and its functions, and in institutions and policies aimed at rehabilitating these troubled youths. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\La France et lEurope.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Le 25 Mars 1957 marque un des evenements les plus importants du 20eme siecle ainsi que le debut d'un projet et d'une entreprise gigantesque: le Traite de Rome institue une communaute economique europeenne dite "CEE" comportant les 6 pays de la CECA. Actuellement, la CEE comporte un total de 15 pays et unit des nations comme par exemple la Grece, la France, le Norvege, la Suede et l'Espagne, dans un ensemble economiquement et politiquement stable qui a pour but de favoriser la croissance economique. L'accroissement journalier des flux d'informations ainsi que de produits destines a etres exportes, s'accompagnent d'un flux de population de plus en plus grand entre les divers pays composants la CEE. Mais comment l'unite entre peuples s'operera t-elle quand les Europeens se caracterisent par des cultures et des passes qui se different largement, et comment reagira chacun envers "l'Autre"? Le but de cette dissertation sera donc d'aborder cette question apres avoir etudie de plus pres quelles etaient les visions passees sur l'idee d'union des peuples Europeens. Nous formulerons des arguments de nature sociologique et philosophique, inspirees a la fois de penseurs du passe comme Victor Hugo et Paul Valery, ainsi que du present en se referent a Gilles Lipovetsky. Le 19eme siecle se caracterise par une serie de boulversements en Europe qui vont influencer les pensees de maniere assez considerable. Cette influence avait deja commence a partir du 18eme siecle, le siecle de Lumieres, quand des grands penseurs comme Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu et Diderot on soutenu les idees de liberte, egalite et fraternite qui apparurent durant la Revolution Francaise en 1789. Les grands philosophes on mis l'accent sur le fait que l'homme est semblable a so voisin et merite d'avoir acces a l'education, a la culture et a l'enrichissement de son esprit, tout en utilisant la raison et la science comme guides. Ceci a donc promulge une idee d'unite entre les etres humains autour d'un meme sentiment d'espoir dans l'homme. Le progres dans la pensee s'accompagne d'un progres technologique qui dote l'Europe d'un certain air d'optimisme. Pourtant, les guerres Napoleoniennes et les revoltes en Allemagne annoncent l'ecroulement d'un optimisme presque naif, mais qui ne mourra pas. En 1949 lors du Congres de Paix , le grand ecrivain, poete et "pere de la France" Victor Hugo va marquer l'ouverture d'une nouvelle vague d'optimisme pour son pays. Selon Victor Hugo, l'Europe devrait unir ses forces pour former un ensemble ideologiquement, politiquement et economiquement stable ; selon l'ecrivain, cette union aurait pour consequence la paix et le bien etre mondial. La liberte serait un ingredient necessaire pour que l'union puisse voir le jour, tandis qu'Hugo semble convaincu que le futur sera caracterise par un monde harmonieux. Cette union est etroitement reliee a l'idee de Providence car "Dieu le veut ce but sublime!" . Hugo se refere a une destinee commune et fait croire a son audience que l'amour et la foi suffisent pour accomplir une telle oeuvre de dimensions immenses. La base de la construction prevue par Hugo serait la paix mondiale tandis que l'outil de construction serait la civilisation. Cette derniere serait confiee a des pays puissants comme la France ou l'Angleterre qui eux serviront de modeles de pays civilises. L'union ideologique se ferait autour une idee de fraternite Europeenne, de paix et d'entraide entre les etres humains formant les divers peuples. A l'aide de la notion de destin, Hugo pense que l'unite ideologique pourra s'achever. A ce qui concerne l'unite historique entre les peuples divers, celle-ci serait restauree grace a la civilisation et la paix, sur un chemin trace par Dieu. Mais qu'en est-il de l'union politique et economique entre les nations? Hugo prevoit l'existence d'un Parlement europeen qui sera elu au suffrage universel, ce qui permettra a chacun de formuler son opinion. Chaque peuple sera charge d'elir son representant dans le Parlement qui essayera de satisfaire les interets de son pays. Du point de vue economique, Hugo met l'accent sur l'idee de bien etre collectif qui sera le fruit d'une richesse mieux repandue, celle-ci rendue possible grace au travail collectif de plusieurs peuples, chacun offrant ce qu'il possede. Hugo prevoit donc pour resumer une Europe unifiee, intellectuellement et materiellement riche et ou figureront des nations qui formeront desormais partie que d'un peuple. En realite, cette vision d'Hugo est tout a fait caracteristique de son epoque, et bien qu' assez visionnaire elle peut etre facilement reliee aux evenements historiques auxquels on a fit allusion auparavant. On pourrait meme qualifier la vision d'Hugo comme etant optimiste sans bornes, tandis que chez d'autres comme chez Paul Valery l'idee d'union est plutot ce qu'il faudrait en tant que necessite pour pouvoir acceder a un optimisme futur. Grand penseur et poete francais, Valery nous exlplique dans son livre intitule "Le monde actuel" publie en 1933, que l'Europe se trouve dans une situation assez precaire puisque regne une "paix virtuelle". Cet etat d'instabilite et de desequilibre est du au fait qu'au sein de l'Europe il existe toujours des nations qui ne sont point satisfaites de leur situation et qui desirent acceder a quelque chose de meilleur. L'issu de chaque guerre est donc baptise de periode de paix, mais ce que Valery montre c'est qu'il faudrait plutot penser au commencement d'une periode de "non guerre", qui menera ineluctablement a un futur conflit. L'Europe aurait du s'unifier depuis l'ere Napoleonienne, et maintenant que la France et l'Europe se trouvent a la veille de la seconde guerre mondiale l'union semble etre, selon Valery, imperative. Contrairement a Hugo, Valery n'a pas une vision romantique de l'union des peuples en Europe et il rentre plus dans le detail quand aux implications historiques et culturelles de la chose. Celui-ci explique comment l'histoire de chaque nation est intimement relie a celle des autres, puisque l'histoire se repete partout mais avec un ordenement des evenements different. Sa vision est en quelque sorte plus philosophique en faisant allusion par exemple au fait que les valeurs que possedent chaque peuple ne sont que des valeurs et peuvent donc s'adapter au besoin important qui est d'unir l'Europe face a la guerre. Nous venons donc d'etudier la vision de deux penseurs parmis tant d'autres qui ont formules des reflexions sur la notion d'union entre les peuples de l'Europe. Mais qu'en est-il de la pensee moderne, dans une epoque ou la CEE existe vraiment et ne represente plus un simple veux ou projet sans bases veritables? Il semble que dans le passe Valery et Hugo voient l'union des peuples comme une necess ite selon le premier, tandis qu'une destinee pour le second. Mais maintenant que l'union n'est existe comment se deroulera l'union concrete entre individus? Actuellement, la possibilite de poursuivre ses etudes ainsi que de travailler a l'etranger font que des peuples tres divers viennent face a face et s'affrontent non seulement sur le marche du travail mais aussi dans la sphere du social et du prive. Selon Gilles Lipovetsky , le monde contemporain est caracterise par l'indifference pure resulant de la revolution de la consommation et la communication de masse. Ceci a pour resultat que les individus faisant partie des societes modernes se replient sur elles memes et se resignent a la conquete du Moi, notion inventee par Immanuel Kant. Dans son livre intitule "L'Ere du Vide", Lipovetsky fait allusion a ce qu'il apelle "la seduction non stop". L'homme qui vit au sein de la societe contemporaine est seduit par l'hyperchoix. L'abondance des produits, des images et des services mis a la disposition de l'individu simple et a la portee de chacun creent un univers transparent dans le sens ou c'est un monde dans lequel le consommateur peut tout faire. Tout est offert a l'individu, ainsi que les cadres coercitifs et rigides de la societe sont abattus pour fair plaisir au besoins du consommateur. Dans le "desert social" qui se creer, l'individu souverain se dresse et devient autonome puisque la societe lui offre tout dont il a besoin pour que celui-ci satisfasse ses besoins tout en etant detache de son voisin. L'individu laisse tomber les valeurs traditionelles de la famille, de la religion et l'Eglise, du savoir base sur l'education et de l'armee. Il est desormais possible de vivre parfaitement bien au sein du milieu social sans se poser des questions sur son but et le sens de ses actions, et donc l'idee de Nietzsche sur l'angoisse que ressent l'homme moderne ne tient plus, il y a maintenant que "l'indifference, pas la detresse metaphysique". On constate de plus en plus un desengagement de la vie sociale: l'exemple le plus concret c'est l'accroissement des abstentions aux elections. L'homme moderne est frappe par le doute, et face a un futur incertain il se replit sur le present et sur soi meme de facon a faire face a un monde exterieur qui est menacant. En se repliant dans le present, l'homme perd le sens de continuite historique ce qui est suivit par une perte des valeurs traditionelles. De plus, la societe devient caracterise par un manque de codification definitive a cause des options si multiples quand ca vient au mode de vie ou de pensee, et donc chaque personne perd ses reperes traditionels. Il y a "l'apotheose du temporaire" et donc manque de stabilite au sein du milieu social, tandis que l'individu change de mode de vie en recherche du Moi interieur. L'indifference resulte donc de l'exces, de l'abondance et de la saturation. La seule chose qui reste a l'homme c'est de repondre avec apathie et se replier sur lui meme: "En fait, c'est de la desertion generalisee des valeurs et finalites sociales, entrainee par le proces de personalisation que surgit le narcissisme." L'idee de Lipovetsky quand celui-ci fait reference a cette notion de narcissisme c'est que l'un des elements qui caracterisent le refermement sur soi c'est les fait que l'homme essaye de connaitre son Moi et s'aimer assez pour ne pas avoir besoin de l'Autre. En se liberant des codes publics existants ainsi que des codes sociaux, les individus font leur mieux pour s'exterioriser de moins en moins de maniere a consacrer leur temps et effort a se decouvrir soi meme. L'homme parvient donc a creer un monde a lui consacre a se decouvir, et dans lequel il se propose lui meme des valeurs, des normes et des limites pour remplacer celles qui ne sont point offertes par le milieu social, caracterise par Lipovetsky comme etant un desert. La societe contemporaine est donc caracterisee par l'alienation et par l'isolation de l'individu du monde public et social. Face a l'abondance d'information et de possibilites, l'homme se replit sur lui meme et voit l'Autre comme etant un simple etranger. Ainsi nous arrivons a distinguer une difference fondamentale entre les visions du passe et du present a propos de l'union des nation europeennes et des relations humaines au sein d'une union economique. Tandis qu'Hugo et Valery nous parlent d'union comme etant le resultat d'une destinee ou une necessite, la vision moderne fait face a la notion d'une perspective tres differente. Il ne s'agit plus de se demander comment et pourquoi des peuples divers devraient vivre ensemble au sein d'une entite apellee Europe, ni comment des peuples differents peuvent coexister, mais comment dans une telle societe moderne decrite par Lipovetsky l'homme detache de toute nationalite pourra continuer de vivre dans un milieu social en general. Le probleme s'elargit donc et ne devient plus un probleme entre disons le grec et le francais, mais plutot un probleme entre moi et l'Autre. La question a se poser n'est donc plus comment des peuples culturellement differents viverons ensemble, mais comment l'homme en general parviendra a coexister avec son semblable dans une societe qui prone l'individualisme et l'indifference quelque soit la nationalite des persones qui la composent. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Labor in America.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ GROWTH OF THE FACTORY In colonial America, most of the manufacturing was done by hand in a home. Labor took place in workshops attached to the side of a home. As towns grew into cities, the demand for manufactured goods increased. Some workshop owners began hiring helpers to increase production. Relations between the employer and helper were generally harmonious. They worked side by side, had the same interests and held similar political views. The factory system that began around the mid 1800's brought great changes. The employers no longer worked beside their employees. They became executives and merchants who rarely saw their workers. They were less concerned with their welfare than with the cost of their labor. Many workers were angry about the changes brought by the factory system. In the past, they had taken great pride in their handicraft skills, and now machines did most of the work, and they were reduced from the status of craft workers to common laborers. The were also replaced by workers who would accept lower wages. The Industrial Revolution meant degradation rather than progress. As the factory system grew, many workers began to form labor unions to protect their interests. The first union to hold regular meetings and collect dues was organized by Philadelphia shoemakers in 1792. Soon after, carpenters and leather workers in Boston and printers in New York also organized unions. Labor's tactics in those early times were simple. Members of a union would agree on the wages they thought were fair. They pledged to stop working for employers who would not pay that amount. They also sought to compel employers to hire only union members. CONSPIRACY LAWS Employers found the courts to be an effective weapon to protect their interests. In 1806, eight Philadelphia shoemakers were brought to trial after leading an unsuccessful strike. The court ruled that any organizing of workers to raise wages was an illegal act. Unions were "conspiracies" against employers and the community. In later cases, courts ruled that almost any action taken by unions to increase wages might be criminal. These decisions destroyed the effectiveness of the nation's early labor unions. Not until 1842 was the way opened again for workers to organize. That year several union shoemakers in Boston were brought to trial. They were charged with refusing to work with non-union shoemakers. A municipal court judge found the men guilty of conspiracy. But an appeal to a higher court resulted in a victory for labor unions generally. Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw ruled that it was not unlawful for workers to engage peacefully in union activity. It was their right to organize, he said. Shaw's decision was widely accepted. For many years following this decision, unions did not have to fear conspiracy charges. UNION STRUGGLES In the next two decades, unions campaigned for a 10-hour working day and against child labor. A number of state legislatures responded favorably. In 1851, for example, New Jersey passed a law calling for a 10-hour working day in all factories. It also forbade the employment of children under 10 years old. Meanwhile trade unions were joining together in cities to form federations. A number of skilled trades organized national unions to try to improve their wages and working conditions. The effort to increase wages brought about hundreds of strikes during the 1850s. None was as extensive, however, as a strike of New England shoemakers in 1860. The strike started in Lynn, Massachusetts, when factory workers were refused a three-dollar increase in their weekly pay. It soon spread to Maine and New Hampshire. Altogether, about 20,000 workers took part in the strike. It ended in a victory for the shoemakers. Similar victories were soon won by other trade unions. These successes led to big increases in union membership. Yet most American workers were generally better off than workers in Europe and had more hope of improving their lives. For this reason, the majority did not join labor unions. In the years following the Civil War (1861-1865), the United States was transformed by the enormous growth of industry. Once the United States was mainly a nation of small farms. By 1900, it was a nation of growing cities, of coal and steel, of engines and fast communications. Though living standards generally rose, millions of industrial workers lived in crowded, unsanitary slums. Their conditions became desperate in times of business depressions. Then it was not unusual for workers to go on strike and battle their employers. Between 1865 and 1900, industrial violence occurred on numerous occasions. Probably the most violent confrontation between labor and employers was the Great Railway Strike of 1877. The nation had been in the grip of a severe depression for four years. During that time, the railroads had decreased the wages of railway workers by 20 percent. Many trainmen complained that they could not support their families adequately. There was little that the trainmen could do about the wage decreases. At that time, unions were weak and workers feared going on strike; there were too many unemployed men who might take their jobs. Yet some workers secretly formed a Trainmen's Union to oppose the railroads. Then, in 1877, four big railroads announced that they were going to decrease wages another 10 percent. In addition, the Pennsylvania line ordered freight train conductors to handle twice as many cars as before. On July 16, a strike began on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in West Virginia. The strike quickly spread to other lines. On July 19, Pennsylvania Railroad workers at Pittsburgh refused to let freight trains move. (The strikers let passenger trains move freely because they carried United States mail.) The next day the governor sent statemilitiamen to oust the strikers from the freight yard. But these men were from Pittsburgh. They had many friends and relatives among the strikers. Soon they were mingling with the crowd of men, women and children at the freight yard. The next day 600 militiamen arrived from Philadelphia. They were ordered to clear the tracks at the freight yard. The soldiers advanced toward the crowd and shooting erupted. In the aftermath, 20 people in the crowd lay dead. Many more were wounded. News of the killings triggered rioting and fires in the Pittsburgh railyards. President Rutherford Hayes ordered federal troops to Pittsburgh to end mob violence. When they arrived, the fighting had already ended. In the smoking ruins, they found the wrecks of more than 2,000 railroad cars. Dozens of buildings lay in ashes. Many strikers were sent to jail and others lost their jobs. A large part of the public was shocked by the violence in Pittsburgh and other cities. Some people were convinced that miners, railroad workers and other laborers were common criminals. Legislatures in many states passed new conspiracy laws aimed at suppressing labor. But the Great Railway Strike of 1877 helped the workers in some ways. A few railroads took back the wage cuts they had ordered. More important was the support given to the strike by miners, iron workers and others. It gave labor an awareness of its strength and solidarity. KNIGHTS OF LABOR The Railway Strike led many workers to join a growing national labor organization. It had a grand name--the Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor. It was founded in 1869 by a small group of Philadelphia clothing workers. Their union had been unable to organize effectively. The reason, they believed, was that its members were too well-known. Employers fired them and then put their names on a "blacklist." Other employers would not hire anyone whose name appeared on the list. The garment workers came to two conclusions: Secrecy was needed to protect union members against employer spies. Labor organizations would fail if they were divided into separate craft unions. Instead, labor should be organized in one big union of both skilled and unskilled workers. Membership in the Knights of Labor was open to wage earners over 18 years of age regardless of race, sex or skill. New members had to take an oath of secrecy. They swore that they would never reveal the name of the order or the names of its members. The program of the Knights of Labor called for: an eight-hour working day, laws establishing a minimum weekly wage, the use of arbitration rather than strikes to settle disputes, laws to protect the health and safety of industrial workers, equal pay for equal work, an end to child labor under 14 years of age and government ownership of railroads, telegraphs and telephones. It was impossible for the Knights to operate in complete secrecy. Rumors of their activities reached the press. Newspaper stories usually exaggerated the strength of the order. Under pressure from public opinion, the Knights began to operate openly. But they were still forbidden to reveal the name of any member to an employer. Membership in the Knights increased slowly. By 1884, the order had only 52,000 members. But that year workers led by Knights of Labor organizers went on strike against two big railroad companies. Both strikes ended in complete victories for the Knights. Now workers everywhere rushed to join the order. Within two years membership in the Knights rose to 150,000. Newspapers warned their readers about the power of the Knights. One of them said, "Their leaders can shut most of the mills and factories, and disable the railroads." Many people associated the order with dangerous radicals. Later railroad strikes by the Knights met with defeat. The order was not nearly as powerful as it had seemed. Workers began to leave it in great numbers. Within 10 years of its greatest victories, the Knights of Labor collapsed. "BREAD AND BUTTER" UNIONISM As the Knights declined, a new labor organization began to challenge it for supremacy. This was the American Federation of Labor (AFL). It was formed in 1886 by Samuel Gompers, a leader of the Cigarmakers' Union. Gompers believed that craft unions of skilled workers were the best kind. Unskilled workers were easily replaced when they went on strike. Craft workers could not be replaced easily. Gompers had no use for the Knights of Labor, which combined all workers in one big union. The American Federation of Labor began with a core of six craft unions. They were cigarmakers, carpenters, printers, iron molders, steel molders and glassmakers. The new organization was not an immediate success. For 10 years, the AFL and the Knights battled each other. They invaded each other's territory, encouraged revolts and welcomed each other's members into their own ranks. They even supplied strikebreakers against each other. But the tide was running against the Knights. The AFL, led by Gompers, grew steadily in size and power. By 1904, it had 1.75 million members and was the nation's dominant labor organization. At this time, many workers in Europe were joining revolutionary labor movements which advocated the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of a new socialist economic system. Most American workers, however, followed the lead of Gompers, with his highly pragmatic approach to problems of labor. They strove to organize strong unions so that they could demand a greater share in the wealth that they helped to produce. They were not interested in destroying the economic structure of the country but in making it work more effectively for their benefit. Gompers believed that unions should be primarily concerned with the day-to-day welfare of their members and should not become involved in politics. He also was convinced that socialism would not succeed in the United States but that practical demands for higher wages and fewer working hours could achieve the goal of a better life for working people. This was known as "bread and butter" unionism. There was one outstanding exception to the pragmatic "bread and butter" approach to unionism which characterized most of American labor. This was the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), a revolutionary labor union launched in Chicago in 1905 under the leadership of Eugene V. Debs. The IWW the overthrow of capitalism through strikes, boycotts and sabotage. Particularly strong among textile workers, dock workers, migratory farmers and lumberjacks, the union reached its peak membership of 100,000 in 1912. The IWW had practically disappeared by 1918, because of federal prosecutions and a national sentiment against radicalism which began in 1917. In the early years of the 20th century, a powerful reform movement called Progressivism swept the country. Its leaders were college professors, ministers, journalists, physicians and social workers. Their goal was to improve conditions for all Americans. They wanted to make the political system more egalitarian. They also wanted to make the nation's economic system more democratic. Those who owned the nation's resources, they said, should share some of their wealth with the less fortunate. The movement appealed to farmers, small businessmen, women and laborers. It cut across political party and regional lines. The Progressive Movement had the support of three United States presidents: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft and Woodrow Wilson. The Progressives were concerned about labor's problems. They were alarmed by the growing use of court rulings to halt strikes. In 1890, for example, Congress passed the Sherman Anti-trust Act. Its purpose was to punish big business corporations that combined to prevent competition. Yet more and more it was being used as a weapon against unions. The Progressives were unhappy about the use of federal troops and state militia against strikers. They were outraged by inhuman conditions in factories and mines. The Progressives and the AFL pressured state governments for laws to protect wage earners. Almost all states passed laws forbidding the employment of children under 14 years old. Thirty-seven states forbade children under 16 years old to work between 7p.m. and 6a.m. Nineteen states established the eight-hour day for children under 16 in factories and stores. The Progressives were also concerned with the hours worked by women in industry. Forty-one states wrote new or improved laws to protect women workers. Most limited the work day to nine hours, or the work week to 54 hours. One of the greatest concerns of the Progressives was the problem of industrial accidents. They wanted workers to be paid for accidents regardless of cause. The cost of insurance to cover accidents, they said, should be paid by employers. By 1917, 13 states had passed workers' compensation laws. Many states passed laws to improve safety regulations. The alliance of Progressives and the AFL also campaigned for federal laws to aid labor. In response, Congress passed laws to protect children, railroad workers and seamen. It established a Department of Labor in the president's Cabinet. Most important of all, Congress passed the Clayton Act of 1914. Its purpose was to halt the use of antitrust laws and court injunctions against unions. During World War I, organized labor made great advances. The federal government created the War Labor Board to settle disputes by arbitration. Generally the Board was favorable to wage increases, the eight-hour day and collective bargaining. This led to a big increase in union membership. In January 1917, the AFL had 2,370,000 members. By January 1919, it had 3,260,000 members. RED SCARES AND DEPRESSION As the 1920s began, organized labor seemed stronger than ever. It was successful in getting Congress to pass laws that restricted immigration to the United States. Unions believed that a scarcity of labor would keep wages high. But events that took place in Europe were already threatening labor's gains. In 1917, a communist revolution overthrew the government of Russia. Communists also attempted revolutions in Germany, Hungary and Finland. Immigrants entering the United States at this time were primarily from southern and eastern Europe. Many of them, in response to the economic hardship and social inequality which they found in America's industrial cities, were attracted to the utopian promises of socialist, communist and other radical political groups which advocated a drastic change in American society. There was widespread fear--almost hysteria--among more established Americans that a revolution might break out in the United States. In response to this fear, the federal government launched a series of raids which resulted in the arrest and sometimes the deportation of aliens who were members of socialist, anarchist or communist organizations. About 500 aliens, including Russian-born anarchist "Red Emma" Goldman, were deported during this period. A number of them, like Goldman, rejected Bolshevism as they experienced it in the Soviet Union and later returned to the United States. Meanwhile, workers were striking for higher wages all over the United States. Many Americans believed that these strikes were led by communists and anarchists. During the Progressive era, the public had sympathized with labor. Now the public became hostile to it. Employers encouraged anti-union movements, or created company unions that they sought to control. Courts found legal openings in the Clayton Act and issued rulings against union activity. The courts also found ways to use the Sherman Anti-trust Act against unions. Opposed by public opinion, business and the courts, union membership fell. The number of AFL members dropped to 2,770,000 by 1929. This decline took place even though the number of workers in industry rose by almost seven million. For most Americans, the 1920s were prosperous years. But in October 1929, the New York stock market "crashed," and the value of stocks went way down. The crash, part of a worldwide economic decline, led to the worst economic depression in the nation's history. People lost their jobs, their farms and their businesses. By 1932, 13 million men and women were unemployed. This was one out of every four in the work force. Many more workers had only part-time jobs. In the cities, jobless men stood on long lines for a handout of bread and soup. Many of them lived in shanties near garbage dumps. Men and boys roamed the country, hoping to find work. In the past, depressions had usually hurt unions. Unemployment meant a sharp drop in workers' dues. Then unions became almost powerless to prevent decreases in wages or long working hours. But in the Great Depression of the 1930s, unions actually benefited. In 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt, a Democrat, promised Americans a "New Deal." He pledged to help the "forgotten man"--the worker who had lost his job, or the farmer who had lost his land. Under Roosevelt, Congress passed laws to revive business and create jobs. To help labor, Congress passed the Wagner Act. It guaranteed workers the right to join unions and bargain collectively. The law created a powerful National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The Board could order elections in which workers voted for the union they wanted to represent them. (Workers could vote against joining any union, if they wished.) The NLRB could also order a stop to unfair practices used by employers against unions. Union leaders hailed the Wagner Act. It provided a great opportunity to increase union membership. But the drive was delayed at first by a dispute within the American Federation of Labor. The AFL was made up mainly of skilled workers organized into craft unions. But millions of unskilled workers were in giant industries like steel, autos, rubber and textiles. Some labor leaders believed that a single union should represent all the workers, skilled and unskilled. One big industrial union would be much stronger than a dozen different craft unions, they said. FROM THE CIO TO TAFT-HARTLEY Most leaders of the AFL were opposed to the idea of industrial unions. They made no effort to organize them. Finally Lewis and other union leaders broke away from the AFL. They formed a new labor organization that became the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). One of the first targets of the CIO was the auto industry. Workers at the General Motors factories in Flint, Michigan, eagerly joined the CIO's United Automobile Workers (UAW) union. They demanded that the company recognize the UAW. But officers of General Motors refused to meet with union representatives. This was a violation of the Wagner Act. In January 1937, the UAW called a strike against the company. The tactics used by the auto workers took the company by surprise. The workers refused to leave the factories. Instead, they put away their tools and sat down. They did this to prevent strikebreakers from taking their jobs. At night the men slept on the seats of new cars. Food was passed to them through windows by their families. General Motors tried to force the workers out. The company shut off the heat in the factories. It was winter, but the workers stayed. Police tried to break into one of the factories. The strikers drove them back by throwing soda bottles, coffee mugs and iron bolts. Then the police charged with tear gas bombs. This time the workers drove them back by turning fire hoses on them. Finally General Motors went to court and got a ruling against the strikers. The workers were ordered to leave the GM factories by February 3. The National Guard (militiamen) was alerted to enforce the order. Everyone expected a big battle on February 3, but it didn't happen. Governor Frank Murphy refused to order an attack on the strikers. Instead, he ordered General Motors officers to hold peace talks with the UAW. President Roosevelt also asked for a peaceful end to the strike. A week later General Motors recognized the union and agreed to bargain with it. The UAW and the CIO had won a major victory. Within two years, the CIO organized 3,750,000 industrial workers. The AFL met the challenge of the CIO with an organizing drive of its own. By the end of 1937, the AFL had 3,400,000 members. During the 1930s, Congress enacted other reforms that benefited labor: The Social Security Act of 1935 created a system of government-sponsored unemployment insurance and old-age pensions. The Fair Labor Standards Act regulated wages and hours. Minimum wages were established to help workers maintain a decent standard of living. Hours were shortened to give them more time for leisure. The law also forbade the labor of children under 16 in most occupations. Unemployment in the United States remained high until the United States entered World War II in 1941. Then, defense industries boomed, and millions of men entered the armed forces. By 1943, unemployment ended and industry was faced with a shortage of labor. During the Great Depression, women were urged not to take jobs. Now they were encouraged to go to work. Before long, one out of four workers in defense industries was a woman. During World War II, labor cooperated with government and industry. Its spirit was expressed by John L. Lewis, president of the CIO. "When the nation is attacked," he said, "every American must rally to its defense." When peace came, a wave of strikes for higher wages swept the nation. Employers became alarmed. They said that the Wagner Act had given labor too much power. A majority in the United States Congress agreed with them. In 1947, Congress passed the Taft-Hartley Act. It contained a number of provisions to limit organized labor. One of them outlawed the "closed shop" agreement which required employers to hire only union members. It also permitted the states to pass "right to work" laws. These laws forbade agreements that required workers to join a union after they were hired. Labor leaders bitterly denounced the Taft-Hartley Act. They said it was meant to destroy unions. Despite their fears, membership in unions continued to grow. By 1952, it had increased to 17 million. Leaders of the AFL and the CIO merged their organizations in 1955. The combined organization became the AFL-CIO. LABOR TODAY In recent years there has been a steady decline in the percentage of workers who belong to labor unions. In 1945, 35 percent of the work force were union members. In 1988, less than 17 percent of the labor force--or 17 million workers--were unionized. There are several reasons for this, including: The decline of heavy industry (once a stronghold of unionism) and the increase of advanced-technology industries. Automation and other technological changes that have displaced many blue-collar workers. Foreign competition, which has depressed some United States industries and increased unemployment. The transition to a "post-industrial" economy in the United States. Ever increasing numbers of workers are employed in service-providing businesses, such as hotels, restaurants and retail stores. Despite the decline in members, organized labor in the United States remains strong and conditions of America's labor force have steadily improved. The length of the work day has been shortened. Many agreements between employers and wage earners now call for less than 40 hours of work a week. Most agreements have generous "fringe" benefits. These include and seasonal farm workers. By the early 1990s, the work force was changing. First. the pool of workers was no longer expanding as rapidly as in the past. And, second, the composition of the labor force was different, consisting of a larger percentage of minorities and women than before. Employers are adapting to this work force diversity in several ways. Some sponsor education and training programs for potential recruits. Many, in an attempt to attract and accommodate insurance, pensions and health care plans. As the number of union members has decreased as a percentage of the total work force, unions have responded by broadening their organizing efforts to include employees of federal, state and local governments as well as other professionals. Organizers have also waged long campaigns to unionize and win better conditions for such diverse groups as public school teachers women workers, provide on-site child care, and flexible hours. Others make special arrangements so they can hire more handicapped workers. One hotel chain, for example, uses lighted telephones and vibrating beepers so they can hire more hearing-impaired people. As the work force has changed, so have some--but not all--labor-management issues. Unions now want laws to strengthen their right to strike by prohibiting companies from hiring permanent replacements for striking workers. Employers want the right to test workers for drug use. There is also growing sentiment that all employers should be required to provide adequate health insurance to their workers--which most, but not all, already do. Many workers are fighting for the right to take unpaid leave when they have babies or when a family member is ill and needs extensive care. And, as the unemployment rate has climbed (over 6 percent in 1990), there is growing sentiment that the government should help create jobs--through public works programs, job training programs and tax credits for employers in areas of high unemployment. Suggestions for Further Reading Brody, David. Workers in Industrial America: Essays on the Twentieth Century Struggle. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980. Fink, Gary M., ed. Biographical Dictionary of American Labor. 2nd ed. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1984. Fink, Gary M., ed. Labor Unions. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1977. Kessler-Harris, Alice. Out to Work: A History of America's Wage-Earning Women. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982. Morris, Richard B., ed. A History of the American Worker. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Land of Dreams.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ "Land of Dreams" By: Joan Lowery Nixon Characters List: 1) Kristian Swensen 2) Her father 3) Her mother 4) Jenny Berglund 5) Johan Olsen Setting: This story takes place on a farm in Minnesota. Kristian just moved from Sweden to the United States of America. This story sounds like it came from the 1920's to 1940's. It is full of dialog. Plot: Kristian Swenson, a 16 year old Swedish girl, immigrates to the United States to seek a new life. Kristian She makes a vow to forget her old life in Sweden and accept her new surroundings in the United States. She longs to speak English and help the causes of women's rights. Her parents, however, want her to settle down and get married. Her new friend, Jenny, and her new romance, Johan helps her through the tough times in America. Kristian finally finds her dream for equal rights for women at the end of the story. Who would have thought? Evaluation: From this story, I have learned that not all dreams just "come true". It needs hard determination and effort to get the miracle. Although "Land of Dreams" is fiction, it does show real life experiences of immigrants to the United States. That I will remember. Land of Dreams By: Joan Lowery Nixon Characters List: 1) Kristian Swensen 2) Her father 3) Her mother 4) Jenny Berglund 5) Johan Olsen Setting: This story takes place on a farm in Minnesota. Kristian just moved from Sweden to the United States of America. This story sounds like it came from the 1920's to 1940's. It is full of dialog. Plot: Kristian Swenson, a 16 year old Swedish girl, immigrates to the United States to seek a new life. Kristian She makes a vow to forget her old life in Sweden and accept her new surroundings in the United States. She longs to speak English and help the causes of women's rights. Her parents, however, want her to settle down and get married. Her new friend, Jenny, and her new romance, Johan helps her through the tough times in America. Kristian finally finds her dream for equal rights for women at the end of the story. Who would have thought? Evaluation: From this story, I have learned that not all dreams just "come true". It needs hard determination and effort to get the miracle. Although "Land of Dreams" is fiction, it does show real life experiences of immigrants to the United States. That I will remember. Land of Dreams By: Joan Lowery Nixon Characters List: 1) Kristian Swensen 2) Her father 3) Her mother 4) Jenny Berglund 5) Johan Olsen Setting: This story takes place on a farm in Minnesota. Kristian just moved from Sweden to the United States of America. This story sounds like it came from the 1920's to 1940's. It is full of dialog. Plot: Kristian Swenson, a 16 year old Swedish girl, immigrates to the United States to seek a new life. Kristian She makes a vow to forget her old life in Sweden and accept her new surroundings in the United States. She longs to speak English and help the causes of women's rights. Her parents, however, want her to settle down and get married. Her new friend, Jenny, and her new romance, Johan helps her through the tough times in America. Kristian finally finds her dream for equal rights for women at the end of the story. Who would have thought? Evaluation: From this story, I have learned that not all dreams just "come true". It needs hard determination and effort to get the miracle. Although "Land of Dreams" is fiction, it does show real life experiences of immigrants to the United States. That I will remember. Land of Dreams By: Joan Lowery Nixon Characters List: 1) Kristian Swensen 2) Her father 3) Her mother 4) Jenny Berglund 5) Johan Olsen Setting: This story takes place on a farm in Minnesota. Kristian just moved from Sweden to the United States of America. This story sounds like it came from the 1920's to 1940's. It is full of dialog. Plot: Kristian Swenson, a 16 year old Swedish girl, immigrates to the United States to seek a new life. Kristian She makes a vow to forget her old life in Sweden and accept her new surroundings in the United States. She longs to speak English and help the causes of women's rights. Her parents, however, want her to settle down and get married. Her new friend, Jenny, and her new romance, Johan helps her through the tough times in America. Kristian finally finds her dream for equal rights for women at the end of the story. Who would have thought? Evaluation: From this story, I have learned that not all dreams just "come true". It needs hard determination and effort to get the miracle. Although "Land of Dreams" is fiction, it does show real life experiences of immigrants to the United States. That I will remember. Rating gave after reading this book on a scale of 5 *'s **** Rating gave after reading this book on a scale of 5 *'s **** f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Last of the Mohicans.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Last of the Mohicans is set in 1757 in the third year of a war in North America over land and territory. Mostly, the war is between the English and the French, but each side has taken up Indian allies to assist them. The main story in the Last of the Mohicans is the love of an adopted Mohican, Hawk-eye, and Cora, the daughter of an English general. There are also other stories embedded in the movie, which are harder to recognize. For instance, a second love story between Hawk-eye's brother and Cora's sister. The life of Magua is another story that the movie seems to slightly touch, but doesn't elaborate on. As for the historical part of the movie, I think it is accurate in the sense of the fighting style of the English. The "proper" way of war might be fine in Europe, but against the Indians, standing in a line with bright red coats is not the way to win. "...the soldiers' uniforms splendid - though (and that's a historic fact) idiotically ornate and impractical for warfare. It wasn't until about 1916 that the British and the French saw the light and stopped wearing all that Day-Glo, easy target colors" (Prof. Jahiel). For example, at the beginning of the movie, Magua killed one soldier marching in the line, and the guy next to him didn't even do anything until the commander said to attack. They would also fire at the same time, leaving the whole squad vulnerable to attack while they reloaded. By fighting in this manner, it allowed the Indians to fight much more strategically. They would fire muskets three at a time, so they could stop an oncoming rush while the others reloaded. The Indians also took advantage of the English firing scheme. After the whole squad of English soldiers fired their muskets, the Indians would rush in with axes and knives, then fall back. This strategy would allow just a few Indians to take out a relatively large number of English. "The British, we learn by the proof in the pudding, are inept warriors, and lousy tacticians...Plus, they're seemingly accurately described, both from the point of view of the historian and political correctness" (Prof. Jahiel). I also think the film did a good job with the weapons used throughout the movie. The spears, bows, axes, and muskets look authentic enough for me. The one weapon that I couldn't recognize was the axe-type club that was used by Hawk-eye's father. I found this to be a remarkable weapon, used very skillfully. Also Hawk-eye gets his name from his skill with a musket. He always seems to have a gun when he needs it, and he never misses. Another thing that caught my attention was the canoes used in the river chase scene. I'm not sure if this was an accurate representation of what the Indian canoes looked like, but they were very pleasing to the eye, especially if they were make with the crude tools the Indians had to work with. As for people, places and actions, I think the film is mostly historically accurate because "His [Mr. Mann, director] dedication to historical accuracy is not only admirable, it makes Mohicans a convincing experience -- and a great-looking historical epic" (Alex Patterson). Professor Jahiel states that the old forts, cannons, and encampments are all painstakingly genuinized. I think the central action or event would be the lives of Hawk-eye and Magua. The English and the French were responsible for the war, which brought them together, but as enemies. "The war creates a myriad of conflicts -- military, personal, tribal and romantic. In addition to rival Waddington, Day-Lewis must contend with Stowe's patriotic father, fort commander Maurice Roeves. He must also defeat bellicose Wes Studi (as the infamous Huron Indian, Magua), who has a blood account to settle" (Desson Howe). As for the history part of the movie, I think it was accurate in the fact that each side had Indian allies, but I think the Indians fought mostly when there was a distinct purpose, not just because they were at war. At first the major conflict seems to be the war itself, but I think it might be Hawk-eye's and Magua's lives. The war is there, but it is in the background. "The movie touches quickly on the fine points of British-French-Indian-settler conflicts, so that they can get on to the story we're really interested in, about the hero who wins the heart of the girl" (Roger Ebert). Hawk-eye seems to be caught in his own war, meaning he comes from a French background, has Mohican customs, and is in love with an English girl. He always seems to do the just thing even when outside forces make it hard for him. Like when Hawk-eye chooses to stay at the fort instead of going with his friends to defend their homes. He stays because of Cora, even though he knew he would be arrested. As for Magua, he is desperate for revenge, and will go to any lengths to kill the "grey-hair", or General Munroe, and his daughters. In the film Magua says 'when the Grey Hair is dead, Magua will eat his heart. Before he dies, Magua will put his children under the knife, so the Grey Hair will know his seed is wiped out forever.' Magua blames the loss of his children and wife on the war, and more specifically, on General Munroe. I think another sub plot that comes out of the film is the idea of change. Or at least reality sets in on some of the characters. For instance, General Munroe decides not to fight for his fort and just leave. This was something that was not previously done, or even accepted in the English Military. Also I found Cora's ex-boyfriend, the noble, to be an extremely brave and honorable man. At first I thought he was, quite frankly, an arrogant jackass until the end when he sacrificed himself for Cora and Hawk-eye. One thing to keep in mind when watching the film is that it shows the war from a different angle than what the public might be used to. It focuses more on an Indian point of view and a more individualistic view. By Indian point of view I mean most representations of wars in America make us look to be the good guys, in this film there is a somewhat neutral eye from which the war is viewed. What I mean by individualistic is that each person, Hawk-eye, Cora, General Munroe, and Magua are involved in the same war, but see things totally different. One person viewing the film will most likely see something different or special about the film than another person would. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Leadership 2.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ s are being influenced dominantly by either confidence or competence. Before a person can take any action to lead their followers, they must be able to recognize approximately where their followers are in the developmental cycle. To do this, he or she must watch closely the actions of his or her followers and determine to what degree their actions are being influenced dominantly by either confidence or competence. Once the leader knows the point of confidence vs. competence in his or her followers, he or she will know which factor to build on. When the leader feels they have successfully motivated their followers to be both very confident and competent, and that the followers are ready and have the responsibility to lead themselves to their goal, then they know that at that point, the followers are ready to accept some leadership themselves. Once the followers are ready for some leadership of their own, the next problem at hand becomes how to go about empowering them with the leadership responsibilities. Needless to say, the leader cannot simply step away and allow the responsibility to dump onto the followers; surely if that happened, they would quickly lose confidence and possibly competence too. Instead, the leadership and responsibility of the followers should be increased gradually as they are steadily empowered, and at a rate that depends on how well the newly gained leadership is handled. At all times though, the leader must be prepared to guide or even realign the direction the newly independent followers take. The leader must also realize the risk of failure in the complete empowerment of his or her followers, as starting over completely is hardly possible. Were that to occur, the subject would near definitely experience a severe loss of confidence as a major consequence to a premature empowerment situation. And lastly, if a leader is completely successful in empowering his or her subjects and has sent them well off on their way to their ultimate goal, the leader must realize that he/she has completed his or her own goal, and is no longer needed as holder of the leader position. Most likely, they must resign (or retire, which ever term better applies to the situation). By resignation meaning moving on to the next situation to start anew, the cycle continuing. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Leadership.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Leadership by Andy Novick When Ronald Reagan said, "What I'd really like to do is go down in history as the President who made Americans believe in themselves again", he probably was not thinking too much about the definition of leadership. However, without realizing, he pretty much defined it. I believe the definition of leadership is having a impression on others, and not only inspiring them, but making a physical difference in their lives (hopefully in a good way). Without that aspect, there is not only no effective leadership, but there is no leadership at all. To have this ability to make impressions and differences, you need communication skills. One who can not communicate well will never be a leader. A leader must know how to speak so his ideas are understood in the correct way. Ronald Reagan very own nickname was "The Great Communicator." The examples that prove his nickname true are his great acting skills, the fact that his talks with the Soviet Union push to the Russian move toward capitalism. The next aspect of effective leadership is the ability to make decisions to change, and not always stick to the status quo. What good is a leader who is afraid of change? Despite economic setbacks, President Reagan reduced government spending tremendously, and cut back on business regulations to strengthen the business sector of the economy. By making this change, the inflation rate fell 13% to 2%, and created thousands of jobs for Americans. When Reagan entered office, the unemployment rate was 10.8%, when he left it was 5.3%. This economic growth would have never come if Reagan did not have the will to change. Even though Reagan's term sounds successful, there were many problems. Failure is an aspect of leadership whether we want to believe it or not. The drug menace, loss of international competitiveness, falling standards in education, and the rising national debt were all of Reagan's flaws. However, to be an effective leader, one must realize that there will be flaws such as Reagan experienced in his term, and it is the effective leader's duty to try to clean up his mess. I believe to become a leader in any situation, I must apply all of these aspects to the best of my ability. I also need to try to learn from past leaders such as President Reagan so I may be able to repeat the accomplishments and avoid the shortcomings. All this, and keeping in mind that the impressions I make upon my followers, matter more than anything. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Lenins Problems after the October Revolution.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 4) What were the problems facing Lenin after the October Revolution and how successfully did he deal with them? The initial difficulties faced by the new Soviet Union were so severe that its survival seemed almost miraculous" . The remains of the czarist regime left Lenin to face a country wrought with war, devastated economically. Russia's involvement in World War I, followed by its Civil War, wide spread famine and a change in political and social ideology were the problems confronting Lenin after the October Revolution. Lenin did succeed in ending both the war with Germany and the Civil War for Russia. Yet, the economic and social aspects of the revolution can be more critically assessed. Lenin knew the importance of ending Russian involvement in World War I. On March 3, 1918 Russia lost 1/3 of its fertile farm lands, 1/3 of its population, 2/3 of its coal mines and oil fields and 1/2 of its heavy industry to German peace terms. Though the treaty of Brest-Litovsk was harsh, the terms were annulled once the Allied powers defeated Germany. Lenin managed to end the war that had for so long depressed Russia's resources and morale. He succeeded in focusing on the severe internal problems of the new government, and in "saving the socialist republic" . One of the largest problems that Russia faced prior to the October Revolution was finally ended, though its effects were still to be felt. Almost immediately afterwards, in 1918, Civil War begins. The battling White Army divided amongst different leaders and interests left the Red Army, led by Trotsky victorious. Lenin does succeed in eliminating opposition to the Soviet Union in November of 1920. As in the case of the World War, a simple end to the fighting did not signify an end to the devastation that had been left as a consequence. The economic and social problems that arose from the end of the czarist regime were dealt with by Lenin initially unsuccessfully. War communism, a forced socialized economic policy began with the confiscation of surplus grain. It then extended to all other products. Abusive detachments fought peasant resistance with the terror of the Red Army, and in 1919 when they gained control, with the Extraordinary Commission (Cheka). What Lenin had thought would bring the triumph of communism rendered only misery and disorder. The Kronstadt Revolt in February, 1921 is an example of the indignation felt by those that saw the Bolshevik's policies as too oppressive. Finally, Lenin sees that a transition period is necessary, and denounces war communism for its impractical severity. Up until this point the disastrous economic and social problems of the nation were not dealt with successfully. Both World War I and the Civil War left rampant destruction in Russia's agricultural production. Drought as well as the failure of war communism led to wide spread famine. At this point Lenin introduced gradual economic measures that began as agricultural policies. According to British historian E.H. Carr, Lenin's New Economic Policy increased from food production to trade, to the most "profound evil": industrial policy. He states that the essential nature of the NEP was the negation and reversal of war communism policy. Lenin described the NEP as a retreat in order to attack again. After seven years the NEP succeeded in returning agriculture and industrial production to 1913 levels. Yet in his book From Lenin to Stalin (1930s), Victor Serge a former communist criticizes the NEP. He points out that the NEP merely restored the appearance of prosperity to Russia. This prosperity was for many "distasteful and often disquieting". It meant a reversal to capitalist corruption, confusing those that had learned to accept the harsh terms implied by revolution. Yet, I cannot agree completely with Serge. Lenin knew how essential a transitional period was for a Russia in ruin. The NEP, though not entirely successful in solving all the problems that came after the October Revolution, did manage to bring a better standard of living for many, as is affirmed by historians Strayer and Gatzke. Lenin faced complex problems after the initial triumph of the October Revolution subsided. He was left with a foreign war to end, and a domestic one to quell. Both terminated victoriously only on an ideological level. The massive devastation that the new government confronted was aggravated by harsh war communism policy. With the gradual increase of Lenin's New Economic Policy came controversy and some emergency relief. Ultimately at the time of Lenin's death the Soviet Union was still plagued, though perhaps not as severely, by economic and social distress. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\les revolutions.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Il n'y a pas beaucoup de pays qui fait les revolutions sans beaucoup de violence. Tous les revolutions ne sont pas positive. D'habitude un gouverenment mauvaise change a un autre gouverenment mauvaise. Ce se passe souvent dans les pays de troisieme-monde. C'est tres rare qu'un gouverenment change en emploiant un system democratique. Il n'y a pas beaucoup de revolutions democratique. Par example en Russie dans l'annee 1917 il y avait un grand revolution qui a change la Russie d'un pays avec un monarchie a un pays communiste. Le gouverenment a change a communist parce que les gens a deteste les grandes difference social et economique. Le systeme communiste a egalise tout le monde economiquement et socialment. C'est tres different de le revolution American parce que en Amerique nous voulions etre egal dans le societe mais pas economique. Il n'est pas beaucoup de pays qui est devenu communist et meme la Russie n'est pas encore communiste. Il y a seulment deux pays communiste qui existe maintenant, la Chine et le Cuba. Un pays qui avait beaucoup de problems avec les dictature militaire s'appele Nigeria qui est dans l'Afrique. Le Nigeria a essaie pleusieur fois de changer le gouverenment a un systeme democratique mais cheque fois le chef de le revolution qui est toujours un official militaire est devenu avide et il a voulu etre un dictateur. Ce dictateur n'est jamais un bon chef d'etat le gouverenment est toujour terrible et il y a beaucoup de corruption. Ce pays devien plus en plus mauvaise parce-que les chef d'etat n'est jamais assez bon. Un bon chose d'un dictature est qu'il sont tres facile pratiquer. Les pays democratique ne marchent pas souvent tres bien aussi. Il etait beaucoup de pays dans l'Amerique du sud qui a essaie de faire un systeme democratique mais il etait trop difficile. Aujour d'hui il n'y a pas beaucoup de pays democratique mais il y a plus cheque annee qui essaie a devenir democratique. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Levinsons Seasons of Man.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Introduction Background In May of 1977, Daniel Levinson constructed a model of the season's of a mans life. His developmental theory consists of universal stages or phases that extends from the infancy state to the elderly state. Most development theories, such as Freud's psychosexual development theory or Piaget's cognitive development theory, end in the adolescent stage of life. Levinson's stage theory is important because it goes beyond most theories assuming that development continues throughout adult life. Levinson based his model on biographical interviews of 40 American men. These 40 men were between 35 to 45 years in age and they worked as either biology professors, novelists, business executives or industrial laborers. The biographical interviews lasted one or two hours and ranged from six to ten interviews for each subject. The questions asked focused on the subject's life accounts in their post adolescent years. The interviews focused on topics such as the men's background (education, religion, political beliefs) and major events or turning points in their lives. Levinson's concept of life structure (the men's socio-cultural world, their participation in their world and various aspects of themselves) is the major component in Levinson's theory. The life structure for each person evolves through the developmental stages as people's age. Two key concepts in Levinson's model are the stable period and the transitional period in a person's development. The stable period is the time when a person makes crucial choices in life, builds a life structure around the choices and seeks goals within the structure. The transitional period is the end of a person's stage and the beginning of a new stage. Levinson's model contains five main stages. They are the pre-adulthood stage (age 0 - 22), the early adulthood stage (age 17 - 45), the middle adult stage (age 40 - 65), the late adulthood stage (age 60 - 85) and the late late adult stage (age 80 plus). Levinson states "the shift from one era to the next is a massive development step and require transitional period of several years."(Levinson, 1977) This would explain why there is an overlap in each of these stages. Levinson's first adult stage in his model is called the Early Adult Transition Period. This phase is similar to Erikson's psychological theory in that both concern the young adult's identity crisis or role confusion. It is during this phase that the young adult first gains independence (financial or otherwise) and leaves the home. This is a transitional stage because it marks the end of adolescence and the beginning of adulthood. The second stage would be a stable period because it marks the time where the adult must pick a role, establish goals and build a life structure. This stage provides the young adult with any roles and choices for their future. Levinson believes that it is during this time that the young person dreams of his future success in a career, family life and status. Levinson also believes that the presence of a mentor or older teacher is a great influence in guiding the person through the obstacles in their career paths. The third stage, which can be divided into two parts, is called the Age 30 transition. The first part of this phase deals with when the young adult reflects on their career and past successes and also plans for future success and status in their career as well as making plans in starting a family and settling down. In Levinson's own words, the Age 30 transition "provides an opportunity to work on the flaws and limitations of the first adult life structure and to create the basis for a new and more satisfactory structure with which to complete the era of early adulthood." (Levinson, 1977) This Age 30 transition parallels Erikson's autonomy versus shame and doubt stage which Erikson applies to toddlers. The second part of the Age 30 transition period is the settling down stage. It is in this stage that the person feels a need to establish a role in society, whether in their career or their family life, which ever is the most central part of their life structure. The fourth phase of Levinson's model is called Becoming One's Own Man or BOOM phase. In this stage, the man feels constrained by the authority figures in their world. The individual wants more independence, authority and to be true to their own voice. With this larger amount of authority, there comes a greater amount of responsibility and burden. This is also a time of conflict as the person struggles with the notion of becoming an established adult and leaving behind the flaws of the early adult they once were. Levinson uses the phrase "breaking out" to describe the adult's radical change in life structure. The conflict in this stage is the beginning of the major transitional period in life called the mid-life transition. In the Mid-life transition, which Levinson believes to last from age 40 to 45, the adult faces a crucial point in their development. Much soul searching and reflecting is done during this phase. The adults question their past life structures and accomplishments and reevaluate their goals. There are very few adults, according to Levinson, that find this mid-life stage difficult. The painful process of the mid-life transition stage results in a drastically different life structure with new goals within it. Even if an adult chooses not to change their life structure, they must still reappraise their life and recommit themselves on different terms to their old choices. This troubling transitional phase does, according to Levinson, have beneficial results. Levinson believes that "the life structure that emerges in the middle 40s varies greatly in its satisfactoriness..."(Levinson, 1977). Levinson also states that for some, the outcome of this transition provides the person with fulfillment and a better direction. Levinson's model emphasizes that development of life structures is a continuous life process. In the stages which follow the mid-life transition are not focused on, but Levinson does state that the mid-life transition is not the last opportunity for growth and change. He believes there are later transitional periods in late adulthood as well. He states that "as long as life continues, no period marks the end of the opportunities, and the burdens of further development." (McAdams and Levinson, 1977) Purpose Levinson's model is called the season's of a mans life. This wording alone predicts the gender bias found in his theory. His theory was based on biographical material solely from men. This blatant bias would certainly affect the model's applicability towards women. Argument " It is surprising that Levinson's model, established in 1978, would contain such an outright bias considering the time period. Some obvious faults in his theory as it relates to women are the differences in men's and women's career and family goals. the men who were interviewed for Levinson's study would have been raised in the 1950s and 60s. Women and men who grew up during this time were gender typed to a much greater extent than the males and females are today. These big differences would indicate different education, goals, values and statuses. It is very unlikely that Levinson's theory would apply to a woman's development considering the different roles, goals and life structures between these men and women. Perhaps, with a amore equal treatment of men and women today, Levinson's model of the season', of the life of man would be more applicable to both sexes. However, even with the majority of women who join the work force today, the lives of these women still differ drastically with the men of the labor force and a universal model of development for men and women would still await further research as Levinson stated. This is not to say that women do not enter a development stage pattern that Levinson proposes because research has shown that women do enter these phases, however, at different times than men and also the effects of these transitions affect women differently than men. It would be unlikely for a woman's life to develop parallel to a man's life because the choices, obstacles and goals men and women face , differ drastically from one another. For example, when entering the adult world, many women ( during the 50s and 60s ) were not faced with the many different opportunities and roles which faced men. For many women, even those who were educated and worked, family was the major responsibility and their main role was the mother. Even in today's society, with equal opportunity and career mothers, a woman's career is interrupted with pregnancy and the first months of motherhood (many choose to take years off from work to raise their children (Orstein and Isabella, 1990) ). The fact remains, although women have established themselves in the work force as equals to men and are able to have both families and careers, women's lives are different than men's. these differences mean that the phases of life development, according to Levinson's model, will differ with men and women. The age 30 transition, for example, may occur for women at a somewhat later age than for men because women's are described taking a slow burn to the top. ( This is not to say women's careers are less successful, but rather take a longer time to reach success. This is probably due to the interruption of pregnancy and motherhood. (Orstein and Isabella, 1990) ) The differences between the lives and development patterns between men and women and how this affects Levinson's model will be examined further, but first here's a look at some recent research regarding women's current goals, changes and life structures. The Divorce rate in North America has never been higher. One would think that the effects of divorce would be most devastating to a woman whose main goals relate to her family and marriage. A recent study by Krisanne Bursik (1991) researches the ego development for women after marital separation or divorce. Bursik found that "divorce demands personal reorganization and adjustment to new roles and life-styles." (Bursik, 1991) She also found that women who find divorce to be more disequilibrating, experienced the most change in ego development. Barsik's study involved a longitudinal research of 104 women who lived in the greater Boston area. The women reported their feelings of disequilibrium after their divorce or separation. A year later, their ego development scores were compared with their scores from the previous year. Contrary to what one may think about the effects of divorce on women, this study shows that for many women a painful time in life can produce strong, positive changes in their personal growth (Bursik, 1991) I feel that for many women, a divorce or marital separation is in some way equivalent to Levinson's mid-life transition which he applied to men. Another study, by Paul Wink and Ravenna Helson (1993), focuses on the personality change in women after pregnancy and motherhood, compared to the change in their husbands. The women in this study were all educated and graduating from college in the late 50s. It is a linear study including ages 21, 27, 43 and 52. The husbands of these women were also evaluated at the same time intervals. the first period studied was early parental time. All of the women had a t least one child and only a few continued in pursuing a professional career. The second period studied was post parental and in this stage, more than 70% of the women were now in the labor force. The results showed that at the time of early parental stage, the women were less goal oriented, more facilitative in their interpersonal relationships and in more need of emotional support from others. The men were all full time employed in this stage. The next stage, the post parental time, almost all of the women were working in the paid labor force at least part time while 35% of their partners had retired or were planning on retiring within years. At this stage, the men were no longer the goal oriented ones and the women were no longer the most facilitative in interpersonal relations. They now had higher levels of self-confidence than their partners. The women's goals no longer focused on their marriage, but now included their concern with their own assertiveness and their ability to make money (Wink and Helson, 1993). I feel that this later career development is comparable to Levinson's entering the adult world stage in that the women (though much later in age) now face with many more choices in roles and career direction. The women who enter this phase are beginning a new way of living and also changing their existing life structure. The women and their male partner are not living in the same development stage and this is because their lives are so different. A study by Ravena Helson and Brent Roberts (1992) suggests that the personality of a woman's husband was a significant factor in predicting the work history of that woman. Their research focused on the graduates of the Mills college for women (classes of 1958 and 1960) and their total sample consisted of 63 women and their husbands. A longitudinal analysis was conducted to conclude whether a woman's college goals, their husbands personality and the duration of their marriage affected the woman's choice to work in the paid work force or as a volunteer. They found that a husband's personality was the main influence on a woman choosing volunteer work. Also interesting was that the duration of marriage was a factor that influenced the women's amount of paid work (Helson and Roberts, 1992). This research verifies that women's choices are not as broad and unlimiting as a young man who enters Levinson's "Entering the Adult World" phase. A woman's role and choices were much more predetermined and narrow and this fact alone offers evidence that North American women lead different lives that North American men at the time Levinson's model originated. Yet another example of the difference between men and women's lives (especially during the 50s, 60s, and 70s) is career choices and development of women's careers. Ornstein and Isabella (1990) found that women find success in their careers at a later time in their lives than men do. Their study consisted of a sample of 422 women who had reached the top level of management in their telecommunications firm. The research was conducted in a questionnaire method. Their research showed that women develop in distinctive patterns, according to Levinson's model, however, their research indicates that the stages for women do not parallel those of men. They believe that the reason for this is because of the differences found between men and women in their career stages. Ornstein and Isabella explain that women's careers are often interrupted because of pregnancy and motherhood. They also explain the differences in career stages as a result of the different socialization experiences for men and women. Men are taught that their working career must continue throughout their lifetime and that their sense of identity is the result of their career achievement. Women, however, are raised with conflicting messages, for example, the heavy task of balancing both career and motherhood. The researchers concluded from their study that women at different ages have different goals and values regarding their careers (this is keeping with Levinson's age related model). However, though the ages between women do correspond, the age group of women does not compare to that of men for the reason that many of the women's careers do not develop at the same pace as men's (Ornstein and Isabella, 1990). Job stress and the differences of stress concerning men and women were the topics of the next study by Rosalind C. Barnett et al. (1993). In this article, research supports the conclusion that there is no gender difference regarding psychological distress (career related). The sample, for this study, consisted of 300 dual-earner couples, all of which were full time employed, well educated and lived in Massachusetts. Their evidence supports the theory that career women endure in their career (Barnett et al., 1993). While the previous articles established that women develop their careers at a different pace than men, this article confirms that career women do encounter the same burdens of the work force that inflict men. This would lead one to assume that women also face the "Becoming ones own man" stage that Levinson believes men encounter. (The BOOM phase suggested that men become unsatisfied in the lack of dependence and constraint they feel in their careers.) Apart from career stages, women also differ in their Mid-life Transition phase compared to men. In the article by Paul Wink and Ravenna Helson (1993), they believe that mid-life transitions ..., of their work become more humanistic in their approach to life and for women to become more career oriented and focus on personal achievement (Wink and Helson, 1993). This difference in the mid-life phase is most likely attributed to the different pace of development concerning careers and personal growth. This look at the recent studies concerning women and their different life structures, roles and choices, compared to men, offers a better understanding of the inapplicability of Levinson's model of development stages towards women. Levinson's first stage in adulthood development is the "Early Adult transition" period. This transition is from the end of adolescence to the beginning of adulthood. It is most likely that men and women enter this stage at approximately the same time. The next stage, called "Entering the Adult World" is, on the other hand, different for men and women. As stated in the previously mentioned research many women, educated and career oriented or not (mostly in the 50s, 60s, and 70s), were not offered the broad number of choices that a man at the same age was offered. Women who joined the work force were expected to quit their jobs when they became married or pregnant. Even today, though we have come so far in equal opportunity for men and women, there are still differences between men and women's roles and responsibilities. The women who were raised more in traditional ways, however, reached the stage where more opportunities were was presented to them, at a much later age than their husbands. This stage for these women came after their husbands retired or planned to retire. Levinson's stage model does relate to these women because they do eventually reach the stage in which they choose a career role and focus on their own personal achievement (and not just the achievement of their children or their spouse). It is now time for the women to focus on their abilities in their career and for the men to focus on their personal interests. The above studies showed that the men who enter retirement become more humanistic in their approaches towards their lives. In more modern times, women may enter their career of choice and still become a wife and mother. While their husbands do share in the work concerning the household and child rearing responsibilities, it is the women whose career is put on hold during the last months of pregnancy and the first months of motherhood. Many mothers take much more time off from their careers than the few months of maternal leave that is offered to them. Though women have made great strides in balancing both motherhood and career, it is obviously a challenging task and one that differs from their husband's. For these women, their career may take a "slow burn" to the top. In other words, these working mothers do eventually reach the top ladder rung of success in their field, but because of the interruption in their rise to the top due to child raising, their success is usually slower than their husband's. In regard to Levinson's model of development, the "Becoming One's Own Man" (or woman) stage may take longer to reach for women than for men. This would also mean that the "Age 30 Transition," which involves dissatisfaction with their careers and their lack of seniority, may affect women longer, and later than men. The studies mentioned earlier indicate that there are different stages of career development for men and women. Levinson's development model is an age-related model, however, he does relate the ages of the men to the stages of their career that they should currently be in. Levinson's model is not applicable to women in this regard, because women's ages and their careers do not equal men's age and their place in their career. If there must be a universal model for human mid-life development, it must include this factor in their theory. The final difference that will be discussed about the development for men and women in Levinson's model is the "Mid-Life Transition". While it has been established that this phase is equally troubling for both men and women, it has also been shown that women choose different possibilities in dealing with this transition period. For many women, the beginning of the 40s is also the time when their children are grown up and leave the nest. For these women, opportunities and choices, in the work field, present themselves. However, men are well into their careers and in several years will consider retirement. This obvious difference in their career development is also an indicator of future differences to come as the men and women enter the later part of adulthood. Though Levinson does not offer much detail in the further course of adult development in the later stages of life, he does state that transitions and changes in life structures continue throughout a person's life. The before mentioned studies have shown that for women who have just entered the work force at an older age, their focus will be on their personal achievements in their career field. This is a transition for women who have worked at home for the majority of their early adult years. For the men, on the other hand, their transition is to focus on their marriage, children and personal interests. The following years in these stages, for both men and women, will be on different levels of development for the woman and her husband Conclusion Levinson's development model is based on research strictly from men. This bias in his sample illustrates the shortcomings his model contains when related to women. For Levinson to think that a model based on the development patterns of a man can apply to a woman would be to assume that the lives of men and women are the same. Research shows that this is not the case. There is a great deal of differences in the lives of women, compared to men, including career and family goals and the options offered to men and women. While the difference in education and careers are most obvious in the lives of women who were raised in the 40s and 50s, it is still a current issue for the more modern woman. Levinson's age-related development model is based on the stages of a man's career and since men and women develop their careers at a different pace, women's development stages do not coincide with Levinson's model. In sum, a developmental model, if it is to apply to both genders must include the difference between man and women and the contrasts between their career development. There is still an embarrassing lack of research on women's development. Further studies must develop in order to assess how much different men and women, in present modern day, really are in regard to their careers. A common trend occurring among married couples, is to postpone having children until the woman's career has evolved (early 30s). Research into this pattern of later motherhood will prove necessary in order to understand the similarities and dissimilarities of the careers of men to women. The contrast in careers for men and women is an important place to start in developing a model of development for people because career development and the life structure, goal and personal development, are closely. I guess when Levinson decided to name his study "The Mid-Life Transition: A Period in Adult Psychosocial Development", he really should have called it "The Mid-Life Transition: A Period in Men's Psychosocial Development" to avoid any misinterpretations. References Barnett, Rosalind C. et al . "Gender and the Relationship Between Job Experiences and Psychological Distress: A Study of Dual-Earner Couples"" Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 5, vol. 64 1993, 793-803 Bursik, Krisanne. "An Adaptation to Divorce and Ego Development in Adult Women" Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 2, vol. 60 1991, 300-306 Helson, Ravenna and Brent Roberts. "The Personality of Young Adult Couples and Wives' Work Patterns" Journal of Personality 3, vol. 60 Sept. 1992, 575-595 Levinson, Daniel J. "The Mid-LIfe Transition: A Period in Adult Psychosocial Development." Psychiatry, vol. 40 May 1977, 99-112 Ornstein, Suzyn and Lynn Isabella. "Age vs. Stage Models of Career Attitudes of Women: A Partial Replication and Extension." Journal of Vocational Behavior, vol. 36 1990, 1-19 Wink, Paul and Ravenna Helson. "Personality Change in Women and Their Partners" Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 3, vol. 60 Sept. 1992, 597-604 f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Lierature Review.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ First Study Reference: Genia, Vicky and Shaw, Dale E. 1991. "Religion, Intrinsic-Extrinsic Orientation, and Depression." Review of Religious Research 32(3):274-283. Hypothesis: The authors hypothesize that depression will be greater among groups that are proreligious, extrinsic and nonreligious than among people who have intrinsic religiosity. In affect, the authors believe that religiosity influences one's mental health. Sample: The unit of analysis is 309 students. The students included 97 Catholics, 39 Jews, 77 evangelical Protestants, 51 religiously liberal Protestants and 45 Unitarian-Universalizes. There were 115 males and 191 females (3 unspecified) ranging in age from 17 to 83; mean age of 29 years. The average participant had completed 3 years of college. Method: Initially, 522 surveys were distributed in the Washington, DC area. These surveys included two scales, the Religious Orientation Inventory (ROI); a measurement of religiousity, and the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI); a measurement for depression. The dependent variable was depression, and the independent variable was religiosity. Three hundred nine questionnaires were returned resulting in a 61% return rate. Findings: The results of the surveys indicate that depression was negatively related to intrinsicness and positively related to extrinsicness. However, there was no differences in depression among the nonreligious, extrinsic or proreligious groups. Conclusions: The study supports the researcher's hypothesis that intrinsic religious commitment is correlated to a more positive outlook and extrinsic religiosity is related to a higher rate of depression. The authors believe that the methodology they used was to generalized and that a clear straightfoward measurement of intrinsic verses extrinsic religiosity was not ideally found. Second Study Reference: Easing, Rob, Felling, Albert and Perters, Jan. 1990. "Religious Belief, Church Involvement and Ethnocentrism in the Netherlands." Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 29(1):54-75. Hypothesis: Church members in the Netherlands are more likely to be prejudiced with regard to Holland's ethnic minorities and more likely to be nationalistic than nonmembers. Sample: The unit of analysis was the general Dutch population. The initial sample consisted of 3,003 participants aging from 18 to 70. This sample was then broken down into a smaller subset; eliminating randomly chosen people who did not deliberately receive a series of questions, and those who had missing data. Method: The data used was taken from the national survey in 1985, "Social and Cultural Developments in the Netherlands." In this survey, they compared the Independent variables: Christian Beliefs, Authoritarianism, and Localism to that of the dependent variable: ethnocentrism. The authors tried to determine what level of ethnocentrism one has depending on their religious beliefs: church members and church nonmembers. Scales measuring attitudes toward religion, ethnic outgroups and national ingroups were used in the survey. Findings: The study showed that categories including church members were more likely to show prejudices that categories including nonmembers. Moderate levels of church involvement showed a higher level of prejudices than both the nonmembers and core church members. In addition, the study showed that nationalism was seen the lowest in nonmembers. Modest church members were more likely to be nationalistic, in comparison to nonmembers and core church members. A correlation between negative attitudes toward new ethnic minorities in Holland and positive attitudes toward the national Dutch in-group. Conclusion: The authors concluded that religious beliefs do not cultivate prejudices. Their original hypothesis was not accurate, but at the same rate it was not inconclusive. While the studies showed that moderate levels of church involvement indicated a higher level of prejudices, core church members had a negative effect on ethnic prejudices. The authors suggest from these results that a study showing a separation of different types of church members may result in greater findings. The data supports that Christian beliefs has a positive affects on nationalism. Third Study Reference: Perkins, Wesley H. 1992. "Students Religiosity and Social Justice Concerns in England and the United States: Are Thet Still Related?" Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 31(3):353-360. Hypothesis: A strong religious commitment among students in England and the United States reduces racial prejudices. Sample: The unit of analysis was 2,299 introductory sociology students at five colleges: Loughborough University, University of Reading, and the University of Sheffeild in England; the University of Central Florida, and Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, NY in the United States. The samples selected provided diversity in gender, ethnic background, regional and rural/urban backgrounds, and parents' occupational prestige for each country. Method: The data was taken using a Value Inventory (VI) survey which measured values among students. A cross-national data base allowed the researchers to explore values and beliefs of students having different cultural visions. The study was a follow up study from ten years previously. The independent variable, religiosity, was measured by their religious preferences and attitude scales. The dependent variables: Humanitarianism, Egalitarianism and Racism were measured by scales attempting to show personal positions concerning justice. Findings: Religiosity displayed a positive relationship to humanitarianism in England. Protestants were connected with less humanitarianism in the prior study, but in this study the findings were inverted. Religiosity was the only statistically significant variable that predicted humanitarianism. Egalitarianism had no correlation with religiosity in England. In the United States, high levels of religiosity showed egalitarian beliefs in the first study only. Moderate religiosity was correlated with high levels of racism in both countries. Conclusions: The authors support their original hypothesis. They believe that a strong religious commitment among students reduces racial prejudices and augments humanitarianism. Egalitarianism are unaffected by religiosity. Consistent cross-national data does not show less social justice concern among highly religious students. The data does show a decrease over the ten years on the effect of religiosity on humanitarianism and egalitarianism. The authors suggest that this could be caused by the change in the present generation. They believe that the present generation puts less attention on humanitarianism and more attention on themselves. Fourth Study Reference: Chalfant, Paul H. and Peek, Charles W. 1983. "Religious Affiliation, Religiosity and Racial Prejudice: A New Look at Old Relationships." Review of Religious Research 25(2):155-161. Hypothesis: Religious affiliation and religiosity leading to higher prejudices than do non-affiliation and low religiosity. Sample: The unit of analysis is adult white participants in the United States. (no more info was given.) Method: The data was taken from three NORC surveys. The surveys contained information on racial prejudice two religious variables. The independent variable, Religiosity was found only in respondents who attended religious services at least several times annually. Those who did were considered affiliated, those who did not were non-affiliated. The other three independent variables used were social status, region and year. Social status was characterized by the level of education completed. The dependent variable was racial prejudices. Findings: In only six of the sixteen groups analyzed religious affiliated adults revealed more racial prejudice than non-affiliated adults. The researchers re-calculated the data by including very low attenders in their calculations. This showed that racial prejudices was exhibited in all affiliated groups except Jewish and Episcopal groups. Conclusions: The researchers believe that a correlation can be made between religiosity and racial prejudices. Even though religiosity was shown merely by effects attendance, religious traditions may account for the racial prejudices. Hence, religious denominations may be factors in racial prejudices. In addition, the researchers also suggest that racial prejudice may affect religiosity as much as religiosity a racial prejudice. Fifth Study Reference: Foster, Rachel Ann and Keating, John P. 1992. "Measuring Androcentrism in the Western God-Concept." Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 31(3):366-375. Hypothesis: To provide validation that the Western God-concept is male. Sample: The unit of analysis are students in introductory psychology and sociology classes. Since there was three studies done within the whole study, numbers of students varied from phase to phase. (56, 57, 41,59, and 100 respectively) Method: Three methodologies were used to carry out the study in order to include cultural and personal God-concepts. The first methodology asked for free response descriptions of God. The second methodology was a cued response task to describe cultural God-concepts. The third methodology used was a questionnaire to determine (a) what they thought most people believed and (b) their own personal beliefs. The independent variable is one's concept of God and the dependent variable is one's personal and cultural beliefs. Findings: More than four times as many participants agreed with "God is a heavenly father" as with "God is a heavenly mother," and more than three times agreed with "God is a heavenly parent," than "God is a heavenly mother." Their findings also showed that Christians might be more likely to include a female element in the cultural God concept. Characterizing by gender, 2/3 agreed that God was a father but not a mother. In looking at the personal God concept, twice as many participants agreed with father as mother. there was no significant differences due to the respondents sex or ethnicity. Conclusions: The authors findings support their original hypothesis that cultural and personal God concepts are male. They also concluded that there is some evidence suggesting that students God concepts are male or female or both. Summary/Synthesis The five studies I have compiled include research on religion in relation to prejudices, well-being, and one's concept of God. While each study I have listed above deals with a different aspect of these concepts, all confirm that religion is a major factor in influencing our own being. The studies have discrepancies between them. The second and fourth study support the notion that higher religiosity leads to stronger prejudices, while the thirst study finds that stronger religious commitment reduces racial prejudices. I believe that there is discrepancies for two reasons. First, there is not a general understanding of how religiosity is defined. These studies have defined it in various ways. The third study characterizes it as a behavior pattern (attending church) while the second study characterizes religiosity as an attitude, using various scales. Second, there is no clear, universal scale used in the studies to measure the dependent variable, prejudice. This being so, there is no way to comparatively define prejudice. Pertaining to my own research project, I chose these five aspects of religion in order to help me devise my own hypothesis. The broadened topics have helped me to narrow down the topic I wish to choose. The fifth study, "Measuring Androcentrism in the Western God-Concept," was not originally included. I came across it in my research and it interested me. I included it because I believe it will probably be a direction I will go in. This particular article uses a free response methodology. I think that when questioning a topic such as religion, it is important to gain an understanding of respondents personal ideals. This may be hard to achieve in surveys or simple questions. These studies helped me to critically analyze the many considerations taken when carrying out research. In all five studies, the researchers were very conscious in the way in which they analyzed and conceived the data. In all but the fourth study, the researchers give precise details about the samples. They make sure that the samples are diverse, if necessary and representative of the group studying by using randomness. I also observed that while a precise research question was being asked in each of these studies, other conclusions were drawn from the data collected. Such is the case in study five. The authors intention was to provide validation that the western God concept is male. After collecting data they also had reason to believe that students' God concepts can be male or both female and male. In affect, these research studies gave me a thorough overview for basic sociological research. The information I compiled on the studies gave me a direct look at the study, which is conducive in seeing the deductions made. The sample and methods used in the studies abled the authors to deduct conclusions and raise additional research questions. References Chalfant, Paul H. and Peek, Charles W. 1983. "Religious Affiliation, Religiosity and Racial Prejudice: A New Look at Old Relationships." Review of Religious Research 25(2):155-161. Easing, Rob, Felling, Albert and Perters, Jan. 1990. "Religious Belief, Church Involvement and Ethnocentrism in the Netherlands." Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 29(1):54-75. Foster, Rachel Ann and Keating, John P. 1992. "Measuring Androcentrism in the Western God-Concept." Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 31(3):366-375. Genia, Vicky and Shaw, Dale E. 1991. "Religion, Intrinsic-Extrinsic Orientation, and Depression." Review of Religious Research 32(3):274-283. Perkins, Wesley H. 1992. "Students Religiosity and Social Justice Concerns in England and the United States: Are Thet Still Related?" Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 31(3):353-360. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Life Outside Our Biosphere.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Life Outside Our Biosphere The fragile balance of the Earth's ecosystem is constantly being disrupted. Overpopulation is placing heavy strain on the world's resources. We are burning all our fossil fuels to create the energy we need, and clearing our rainforests to make enough farmland to feed everyone. The ozone layer is slowly eroding, exposing us to harmful UV light. The room we have on this planet is just enough to provide for our population now! As the population grows, we will find ourselves more and more crowded, with no room left to expand. Solution: Transfer part of the population off the Earth, to colonies established either on other planets or on orbiting space stations. This will lessen strain on the world's land resources by providing more agricultural area, and will help solve problems associated with overcrowding. In our solar system, a few planetic possibilities exist for colonization. Mars, one of our closest neighbors, was previously a prime choice until it was explored more in depth. Scientists have now found it to be a red, rocky, barren desert with little atmosphere, no water, and containing no life. If Earthlings were to settle on Mars, we would remain totally dependent on the Earth's resources. Another close planet is Venus, the second from the sun. This "sister planet" of Earth proved to have extremely hostile conditions. Scientists were hopeful when they found traces of water vapor in the upper atmosphere, but were disappointed when concentrations of sulphuric acid were discovered mixed with the water. Venus has surface temperatures of around 600 degrees Fahrenheit, and an atmosphere one hundred times as thick as the Earth's. (This produces pressure equivalent to pressure two miles under water on Earth.) These conditions project a less than comfortable life on Venus. The Moon has held Man's curiosity since we were created, leading to such missions as the Apollos. These space missions have taught us a lot about what life on the moon would be like. The moon has little to offer us in the way of settlement: it has little to no atmosphere, and only one sixth of the gravity of Earth. Although the moon might not be the best place for colonies to settle, it would be an excellent source of resources for nearby space stations. ( Scientists can extract oxygen from the rocks, and glass, aluminium, and other metals as well.) Space stations orbiting in the past have been very dependent on the Earth's supplies for construction and maintenance. The Soviets have launched a brigade of structures called Salyuts. In fact, one of their cosmonauts has lived in space for more than 235 days! They supplied the Salyuts by shuttle craft flying from the Earth and back, carrying supplies and returning with wastes. Americans also launched a space station, called Skylab. This structure, far larger than the Soviets', was too expensive and was abandoned after some months of occupation. These mini-colonies had very primitive conditions, with no gravity and an awkward lifestyle. Scientists predict that space colonies of the future will be much different from these first primitive attempts, but knowing which design they will adopt is difficult. Most engineers agree that they will be in a round configuration, slowly rotating, causing centrifugal force with effects like the Earth's gravity. Some experts believe that colonies will eventually be around 200 km2, with some large enough to house one million people. Because the colony will be environmentally controlled, natural disasters will be almost obsolete. The only things to worry about will be asteroid showers, which only occur about every one thousand years. Factories and other industrial facilities will be nearby, along with the greenhouses. One of the biggest benefits of these space stations is the excellent agricultural potential. The orbiting space station is constantly exposed to the sun's rays, and 24 hours a day of photosynthesis in a greenhouse could give the colony all the food and oxygen it could need. If some of these resources could be sent back to Earth, less arable land would be ruined by over farming for starving people. Massive amounts of energy in the universe are unused, and solar panels constantly exposed to unfiltered sunlight may harvest some of this energy. Huge solar panels attached to the station could provide for all of its energy needs, leaving extra to provide for those still on Earth. The construction of space stations will be a compilation of resources from across the solar system. Initially, we will obtain much of the material from Earth, but we have other sources available to us. Rock, glass, metal, and oxygen taken from the moon would be better than if it were taken from the Earth, because the moon has such low gravity. Our planet has very strong gravity, and removing matter from our planet uses up a lot of energy. Removing metals and rock from the moon is relatively easy, however. Water is another element vital to the survival of future colonists, and some researchers suggest melting ice from Saturn's rings for this valuable resource. Establishing settlements outside the biosphere we have lived in for so long will be very difficult. It will take cooperation from all the nations in the world, at huge expense to the technologically advanced countries. We will always be dependent on the Earth, and some primitive cultures may never leave it. Colonization of outer space, however, is a good solution to the world's energy, overpopulation, and agricultural problems. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Lincolns Legacy is Your Legacy.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ A legacy is something that is passed down from a predecessor. Lincoln's legacy is the teachings that he had wanted all of us, as American citizens, to live by. In the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln explained what our responsibilities as American citizens are. His concepts tie all off U.S. history together and aid the prosperity of our country. In the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln stated that all men are created equal. He was restating the beliefs of Thomas Jefferson when Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence. Lincoln was trying to explain to us that unity plays a major role in our lives. Just as Jefferson stated many years previously, we must treat all men as our brothers in order to keep the American society united. Lincoln also stated that a great civil war is something that is very difficult for a nation to endure. The Constitution states that we must create and maintain a more perfect union. That is impossible when we are fighting against ourselves. Lincoln said that "A house divided against itself can not stand." This is what James Madison, "the father of the constitution," meant in the constitution. We must compromise to solve our disagreements and keep our country together. The idea that many men had died for our country and that we should not forget them was strongly emphasized in he Gettysburg Address. In the Bill of Rights it is conveyed that no person should be deprived of their basic rights. These men that died in order that we could all be sovereign, and that nobody could own anyone else, were deprived of everything when their lives were taken. It is our responsibility to never forget what they have so bravely done for us. Lincoln's legacy has taught us to treat others fairly, to stay united , and to show respect where respect is deserved. We, as American citizens, must follow these teachings. If looked at closely, many people, in many documents, have been clearly been telling us what we can do to create the ideal society. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Linking Media With Fitness Perceptions.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Linking Media with Fitness Perceptions: A Study on the Affect of Media on Fitness and Body Image Abstract This research examined the media and how it affects fitness and body image. This was assessed by collecting data from surveys taken by three groups of ten high school students, five of each sex. Two of the three groups were exposed to different media packages, one depicted images of unnaturally thin individuals, the other depicted athletic figures, while the third group was exposed to no prior data. The results indicate the students attitudes towards social fitness views and self-acceptance. It was my hypothesis that a correlation between media and the fitness concept will be found but the idea of a personal body image will remain fixed as body image is a determined part of one's psyche. A significant correlation was discovered between those who viewed the thin package and their attitudes on social fitness. However a low score in the self-acceptance scale in all three groups suggests a low self-concept within all participants. This supports my statement that there would be a connection between the fitness concept and the media packages as well as a constant self-concept maintained by all participants. Linking Media with Fitness Perceptions: A Study on the Affect of Media on Fitness and Body Image In assessing personal attitudes it is often important to measure not only what an individual feels towards others but also his/herself. Prior research indicates this is especially important when measuring attitudes towards physical issues. It has been found that opposing views may be held simultaneously by individuals in regards to themselves and others. Also concern for how a response will reflect upon his/herself may negate an individual expressing his or her true attitudes. This research sought to assess the attitudes of high school students towards fitness and body image in the presence of different physical media icons. By monitoring the individuals response to both a third person scale and a personal scale, true attitudes can be assumed. In this study, the different groups were the independent variable, here in described as Group A, those exposed to the thin images, Group B, those exposed to athletic images, and Group C, those exposed to no images or the control group, whereas the groups score was the dependent variable. The surveys were distributed to thirty students, ten in each group, five of each sex. The dependent variable, in the Social Fitness Attitudes Scale, reflects the individuals attitude towards fitness in society and in a dating atmosphere. The higher the individuals score the more they are influenced by society, with a score of 46 being the accepted indication of society influence. In the Self Acceptance Scale, the lower the individuals score the lower their self concept with scores between 36-110 indicating low self acceptance, 111-150 average self acceptance, and 151- indicating high self acceptance. Throughout the use of both a general survey and a specific survey, true attitudes of students towards fitness and body image in the light of society have been recorded. Methods Participants Participants of this study were students of F.J. Brennan High School. For the purposes of this study, 30 participants were randomly chosen, creating 3 groups of 10 with 5 members of each sex. Consent was obtained from the individual before being surveyed. Anonymity of the participants was maintained by using no identifying information to make the comparisons. Measures The study employed the use of 2 surveys and 1 sheet of non identifying information. The first survey, Social Fitness Attitudes Scale, was used to study the individuals views on fitness in society and in a dating atmosphere. The second survey, Self Acceptance Scale, was used to illustrate the participants personal views on confidence in regards to others. These were followed by a brief sheet which asked for optional statistical information such as age and fitness status. Procedure Prior to the testing Group A was exposed to a package of images reinforcing a thin body, Group B was exposed to a package of images which reinforced an athletic build, whereas Group C was exposed to no such packages at any time during the survey. Once the testing was complete each participant was debriefed as to what the data would be used for and what each survey would reflect. With the surveys scored using their assigned keys computer analysis was used to obtain an Independent Sample t Test. Results Each survey was scored with its assigned scoring key, as depicted in Psychology for Living. The scores revealed by both Groups A and B show attitudes toward fitness influenced by society, A- t (18) = -4.330, p > 0.05, B- t (18) = -1.732, p > 0.05, with Group A scoring 50 and Group B scoring a 47 out of a possible 54 with 46 and higher being the accepted values of those strongly affected by the media. Group C scored 45, slightly under the value of those affected strongly by the media. This shows that it is not uncommon for students to be affected by society strongly. In terms of self acceptance, A- t (18) = -6.062, p > 0.05, Groups A and C scored below 110, respectively 109 and 102, this score shows evidence of " little self-acceptance and self-confidence." Group B, t (18) = -11.258, p > 0.05, showed a score of 115, a low but average score (111-150) which suggests a lack in self-acceptance in some areas while self-acceptance in others. Discussion Overall the results indicated a correlation between the images of thin media icons and poor fitness attitudes, and a minor relationship between depicted athletic images and poor fitness attitudes as well. It was also found that in general there is a strong influence of the media upon the average student. In terms of self-acceptance, all three groups scored in the lower end of the scale allowing Group B to escape marginally from low self-confidence status. In general, these results can be accounted for in terms of age and the maturing process. During adolescence and particularly during high school, the individual is forming their own permanent self-concept which includes one's body image. Therefore the control groups high score within the Social Fitness Attitudes Scale can be attributed to adolescents need to rely on media interpretations since they are in the midst of creating their own interpretations. This does not, however, dispute the fact that the score for those exposed to media packages was higher than that of the control group. In regards to the Self-Concept Scale, the low scores of all three groups as well as the close proximity of each of the scores can also be attributed to the adolescent creating their own self-concept for the first time. Since the student would be unsure of themselves due to this stage of adolescence it would appear that the participant had a very poor self-image and low self-confidence. Another factor in the Self-Concept Scale scores may be that it has been proven that the average person is bombarded with 1 000 advertising messages a day, and with the increased use of the human form in advertisements, a general feeling of unworthiness may prevail. These results indicate that, at least in high school students, media images and society play a significant role in shaping one's attitudes towards fitness and body image. It is also indicated that among the participants a low self-concept, and self-confidence can be seen. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Literature of Protest.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Over the centuries, one of the most important tools available to protesting groups was literature. Some of the most famous protest literature in the world has its roots in American history. For example, some great American authors of protest literature include Thomas Paine, Thomas Nast, John C. Calhoun, and Martin Luther King. Through eloquent, sometimes subtle means, these authors became the spokesmen for their particular protest movements. Thomas Paine was an English-born man who seemed to stir controversy wherever he traveled. Paine's forceful yet eloquent prose made him a hero for the three great causes to which he devoted his life; the American Revolution, religious reform, and the natural rights of man. At the age of 37, Paine strove for the fabled shores of America, determined to forget his past. He made the acquaintance of Benjamin Franklin, and settled in Philadelphia. There, Paine was eventually hired into the profession of editor for the Pennsylvania Magazine. He published a series of minor essays, but his first important work was an essay written for the Pennsylvania Journal in which Paine openly denounced slavery. This was Paine's first foray into the world of protest literature, and it clearly whet his appetite. Paine soon became fascinated with the ongoing hostility in Anglo-American relations, and, much to the dismay of his publisher, could not seem to think of anything but. Therefore, in late 1775, Paine had begun what was to become a 50-page Pamphlet known as Common Sense. In this work, Paine stated that: Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one: for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a Government, which we might expect in a country without Government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer. Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built upon the ruins of the bowers of paradise (Fast 6). This very biting and controversial stance is what characterized Paine's writing. He went on to dismiss the King as a fool, and stated that natural ability is not necessarily related to heredity. Paine argued that the colonies existed only for British profit, and that the colonies must unite quickly if they were ever to form a single nation. This latter argument was more than likely influenced by Franklin's famous "Join or Die" cartoon. Finally, Paine argued that the only way to gain the rights desired by the colonists and help from outside powers was to claim total independence. In Paine's own words, "Until an independence is declared, the continent will feel itself like a man who continues putting off some unpleasant business...and is continually haunted with the thoughts of its necessity" (Coolidge 31). While Paine was working on Common Sense, the war had changed theatres into New York. Paine felt it his duty to fight in the cause he wrote so valiantly for, and thus enlisted in a Pennsylvanian unit in August of 1776. After fighting at Fort Lee, New Jersey, Paine's unit joined with General George Washington's army in its retreat. Here, Paine gained a quiet respect for Washington, and began the first of thirteen papers that would become known as The American Crisis. Again, Paine's eloquent prose struck the hearts of patriots and laymen alike, and earned him a large following. It is in the first of these Crisis papers that one of the most stunning lines in protest literature is written: "These are the times that try men's souls." (Coolidge 38). Paine signed the pamphlet "Common Sense", and this furthered his reputation. Washington was so impressed by this work that he ordered it read to the men to bolster morale just before the first major offensive of the war. Reinforced by the dramatic coup which Washington scored at Trenton, the first of the Crisis papers helped to inspire many thousands of men into joining the war effort. The second Crisis paper was a great chance for Paine to launch a personal attack of George III, whom he deemed incompetent and unintelligent. His third paper was directed against the American Tories, and particularly the loyal Quakers of Philadelphia, whom Paine scathingly rebuked for their lack of courage. In his fourth Crisis, Paine gave a call for his fellow man to join in the fight against the yoke of British oppression, stating that "Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it" (Fast 54). This helped to draw new members into the faltering Army, and also to convert some of those who were considering leaving into freedom fighters. Another great talent of Paine's was in explaining events, as was evidenced by his version of the events of the winter of 1776: Look back at the events of last winter and the present year, there you will find that the enemy's success always contributed to reduce them. What they have gained in ground, they paid so dearly for in numbers, that their victories have in the end amounted to defeats. ... He (Howe) has everybody to fight, we have only his one army to cope with, and which wastes away at every engagement: we can not only reinforce, but can redouble our numbers; he is cut off from all supplies, and must sooner or later inevitably fall into our hands. (Fast 54) Although somewhat braggadocios (it is very unlikely that the Americans could have doubled their numbers), Paine sends a clear and powerful message to all those who read his works. He further insults the British by comparing their army to a "band of ten or twelve thousand robbers" and implores the American people to continue the fight, stating that the only way the British could possibly conquer so great a nation would be if the people "sit down and suffer them to do it" (Fast 54). Paine further pictured General Howe as a "chief of plunderers" (Fast 55). Through his clear language and remarkable imagery, Paine left no doubt as to the poignancy of his arguments. Paine's other influential protest work was his Letter To Washington. Paine, after long sufferings in Europe, had appealed to America to help rid him of his imprisonment, and been many times denied. He did not realize that Washington had nothing to do with this refusal to help, and as such Paine narrow-mindedly attacked Washington. As always, Paine was not gentle, striving merely to prove his point, and not heeding the consequences and people he may have hurt. For example, Paine bluntly accuses Washington of complacency, stating that Washington was obviously conniving to keep Paine jailed, and that Washington was the last person Paine would have suspected of treachery. These damning terms showed a bitter, resentful, shallow Paine rather than the man of objectiveness and intelligence he had once been. In a statement that is humorous today, Paine states that the only logical explanation to Washington's silence was "that every thing is not as it ought to be amongst you" (Fast 334). He further accuses various officials as "prate", "pompous", "offensive, suspected, and ridiculous" (Fast 334). Paine also was disenchanted with the development of the Federalist party, and could not bring himself to understand how a country that had fought against injustice for its own freedom could issue a proclamation of neutrality and refuse to help another country trying to gain independence. He concludes by expressing regret for having lost the friendship of a man he once respected: I am sorry you have given me cause for doing it (writing the letter); for, as I have always remembered your former friendship with pleasure, I suffer a loss by your depriving me of that sentiment. (Fast 336). This cynical piece of literature showed how much of a personal fight Paine's protest of the development of America had been, and the degree of his disenchantment with it spurred him into writing one of the most scathing protests ever. Protest literature is not confined to the written word. For example, another very important American to protest "literature" was Thomas Nast. When one mentions protest literature, Nast is not a name that many people would refer to, mainly because much of the general public thinks of him as "only" a political cartoonist. However, political cartoonists can be considered authors of protest literature; after all, they oftentimes can point out problems with one illustration much more efficiently than a journalist who writes a lengthy story. Also, political cartoons often invoke humorous images in order to send a message, and many people let political cartoons give them a fresh perspective on events. Nast began his career at the age of 15, being hired by Leslie's Weekly. In 1862, Nast became employed by Harper's Weekly, an throughout the Civil War he penned many patriotic drawings, exhorting Northerners to join in the fight to crush the Rebels. Nast protested that the Rebels were in violation of the Constitution and as such must be dealt with harshly. President Lincoln was so impressed by Nast's work that he complimented the cartoonist for being "our best recruiting sergeant" (Levenstein 75). After the war, Nast was particularly involved in protesting Andrew Johnson's attempts to weaken Reconstruction. For those who tried to undermine the rights of blacks, Nast was equally vocal. By exaggerating the features of his intended "victims", Nast revolutionized the art of political caricature, and his work reached new heights. He has also been accredited with creating the Democrat donkey, after he deemed their ideas to be asinine, as well as the Republican elephant, for their heavy-footed, slow manner of action. One of Nast's favorite targets was the corrupt organizations of machine politics; in particular, Nast unrelentingly attacked New York's infamous Tammany Hall. Although this and William "Boss" Tweed were the subject of numerous Nast cartoons, perhaps the most well known is the "Tammany Tiger" cartoon. Set to look like Roman entertainment, this cartoon shows the political machine of Tammany Hall, signified by a vicious tiger, attacking and devouring the "innocent citizen" of the Republic, as Tweed (dressed as a Roman emperor) watches the show and enjoys various "spoils" in the background.* In an illustration compromising no more than half a page, Nast showed the view of the common man in protesting the viscousness and total control that the political machines exercised to come by their goals. Nast is also warning people of the danger to come if they do not fail to break the power of the machines. His arguments may have helped lead to Tammany Hall's eventual downfall and Tweed's imprisonment (Levenstein 75). Mr. Tweed is quoted as telling Nast at one point: "Let's stop those damned pictures. I don't care so much what the papers write about me -- my constituents can't read, but damn it, they can see pictures." That such an argument could be stated with little by way of words and in such graphic terms is truly a testament to the power of the political cartoon as protest literature. Nast didn't stop with protests about machine politics, however. In another of his most famous cartoons, Nast lashed out against government corruption and political lobbying groups. This illustration showed members of the "Tammany Ring" standing in a circle, each pointing at the person to his right, with "Boss" Tweed figuring prominently. On each man's jacket is written the name of a company or lobbying group, who are pictured as either bloated or wiry. Nast made his point even more blunt by entitling this work "Who Stole the People's Money?--Do Tell. 'Twas Him."* This illustration protests the corruption of the government, and attacks the common bureaucratic policy of "passing the buck." Again, very little was needed lexically, and the resulting statement is as poignant as any written article on governmental corruption. Another American giant in "traditional" protest literature was John C. Calhoun. Most well known for his "South Carolina Exposition and Protest," Calhoun blended fiery emotions with the eloquence of an esteemed author. In 1828 the cotton-growing states of the South, especially South Carolina, were furious at what they bitterly called the "tariff of abominations." They claimed it levied tribute on the South for the benefit of New England manufacturers. Calhoun then wrote the "South Carolina Exposition and Protest" anonymously. In it he ingeniously claimed the right of states to nullify federal laws that they deemed unconstitutional. He argued also that a state has the constitutional right to refuse to obey a law, which would in effect be declaring that law null and void within its limits. This work was based on the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, written by Madison and Jefferson some years earlier, as well as Jefferson's Compact Theory. The nullification controversy came to a head in 1832 when South Carolina declared the tariff laws null and void, to which President Jackson responded with the threat of force. The stern and resolute attitude of Jackson, combined with Henry Clay's compromise tariff, prevented an armed clash, although in 1861 a plan Calhoun had drafted for seceding from the Union would be called upon. Calhoun and Jackson, once amiable, became bitter enemies. What began as a protest against tariffs eventually led to a North-South power struggle, culminating in the Civil War. Finally, Martin Luther King can be said to have been an important player in the forum of protest literature. A crusader for black civil rights, King had three plans for achieving complete black equality. Literature comes in during King's third segment, known simply as "Plan C" (Preston 110). During the 1960s, the embodiment of the deep-South mentality was found in Birmingham, Alabama. The entire city, it seemed, was dedicated to "keeping Negroes in their place." King felt that if he could succeed in gaining rights here, than his dream would flourish everywhere. As such, beginning on April 3, small, isolated sit-ins and church meetings. April 6th marked the first real event, a march on City Hall, where 40 blacks were arrested. This began a movement which inspired previously despairing blacks into joining the protest. Massive marches and sit-ins began, and arrests piled up. The NAACP nearly bankrupted itself paying bail for the so-called "Freedom Riders," much of it was never recovered. As it became impossible to pay bail, close friends of King urged him to lead the battle from the sidelines, without actually participating. They feared that if King was arrested, the gains that they had gained would revert. King, however, could not ask others to risk arrest if he was unwilling to do so, and as such he took place in a march in direct violation of a court order. He was immediately arrested, and taken to Birmingham Jail. Here King wrote a letter protesting his imprisonment and the unjust laws which held him. Written on borrowed paper and addressed to his fellow ministers, the letter stated: I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. There are two types of laws: There are just laws, and there are unjust laws. ... We cannot forget that everything Hitler did in German was 'legal' and everything the Hungarians fighting for freedom did in Hungary was 'illegal.' I have no fear about the outcome of our struggle in Birmingham, even if our motives are at present misunderstood. We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is freedom. In this short letter, King not only protested the unjust laws of a society which refused to accept him as an equal, he also argued the case of Negroes as a race, and pleaded with President Kennedy for legislation guaranteeing blacks equality. The effects of King's literature in Birmingham, coupled with his non-violent approach, were the elimination of segregation in public places, an end to discrimination in employment, the release of jailed marchers, and the formation of a joint black-white committee to discuss problems in the city. Nationally, King gained thousands of supporters, and on June 18 President Kennedy presented to Congress a sweeping civil rights bill. The short and emotionally-charged letter which King wrote did much to motivate people to accomplish these goals. As we have seen, literature is a very potent and influential tool for protesting groups. Literature is a medium that enables the masses to easily grasp and form opinions on a subject, and as such has often been an instrument of significant value to leaders of protest movements. The manipulation of words and images has made literature one of the most successful means for expressing discontent with the status quo. The works of authors such as Thomas Paine, John Calhoun, and Martin Luther King, along with the illustrator Thomas Nast, have proven beyond a doubt that protest literature gains results. One merely has to browse the annals of history to find examples of literature enhancing protest. The eloquence and skill of the above easily ranks them with the most important leaders of American protest ever. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Little Lushes A Big Problem.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Little Lushes: a Big Problem Underage drinking is wide spread through out the United States. According to Klaidman, of 10 million people under the age 21 who admitted they'd had a cocktail in the last month, 4.4 million said that they are "binge drinkers," or people who have had more than four drinks in a row. Also, alcohol use among 12 to 17 year olds has risen .9% over the past three years (137). Lack of entertainment on college campuses and easy availability of alcohol can lead to underage drinking as well. Here at UWEC, it is easy to find a party where alcohol is provided to underage drinkers. There is also not much else to do in Eau Claire, unless one has access to a motor vehicle. "For 20 year-old Iowa State junior Scott Christy, acquiring alcohol is not a problem. All he has to do is contact a friend... and within half an hour he can have the drink of his choice" (Frerking). Because underage drinking is such a problem in today's society, measures must be taken to reduce the problem. One solution to the problem of underage drinking is to lower the drinking age from 21 years down to 18 or 19 years. At first glance, this seems like a good idea because a large portion of underage drinkers, mainly college students, would now no longer be underage and would be able to drink legally. Problem solved, or is it? According to Reginald Smart, in 1971 the Canadian province of Ontario lowered its drinking age from 21 years to 18 years, thinking this would help alleviate its underage drinking problem. At first, the new age law seemed to be working. Soon, bar owners complained because the young drinkers scared off the above 21 crowd, just took up space, and did not drink as much as the above 21 crowd. People in Ontario also started to notice more accidents involving alcohol and more public displays of drunkenness by young people. School officials also were distressed by the fact that students were allowed to drink at lunch, and then returned to class too intoxicated to take part in the learning process. Also, school functions, such as dances and sporting events became occasions to drink. It seemed the only people still supporting the new age law were the young people who gained the privilege of drinking from the new age law. Finally, in 1978 the drinking age was raised (90,93,105). Also, lowering the drinking age is not a good solution because it completely ignores minors aged 12-17 which according to the aforementioned statistic, are starting to increase their consumption of alcohol. To sum up, lowering the drinking is not a viable solution to the problem of underage drinking. Another solution to the problem of underage drinking is enacting stricter penalties on those who choose to drink under the legal age. The consequences of underage drinking can range from fines to jail time to driver's license suspensions to community service (What Are the Facts of Underage Drinking). According to Renee Fisher, Kansas legislators lowered the limit of intoxication from .08 to .02 for underage drinkers. This means it takes less alcohol for someone under 21 to be legally intoxicated. According to the Associated Press, New Jersey legislators approved a bill that would allow police to arrest people under the age of 21 who possess alcoholic beverages on private property. In Michigan, people underage can now be charged for attempting to "purchase, consume, or possess" alcohol (Rhodes). Although it is good that the government is taking steps to curb underage drinking, these measures will probably not have much of an effect. When people under 21 go out to drink, they are not thinking of the consequences of their actions, they just want to have fun. They worry about being caught, but this will make them more cautious, not stop them from drinking. Even if they are caught, this probably will not stop them from drinking again. According to the Collegian Editorial Board, "... even if a person gets arrested for a violation of the fake ID law, that doesn't mean they won't try again." In summary, stiffer penalties will not solve the problem of underage drinking. Prevention is the only solution that can drastically reduce underage drinking. Children need to start being educated about the dangers of alcohol when they are young. Not only the dangers associated with drinking, such as alcohol poisoning, but also dangers such as rape, assault, and drunk driving. Parents should also talk to their children about underage drinking and about drinking responsibly and parents should be at home when their children have a party (What Are the Facts of Underage Drinking). In the home, alcohol should be locked away just like a gun, because it can be just as, if not more deadly than a gun. Neighbors, or neighborhood watch groups should report underage drinking to police (What Are the Facts of Underage Drinking). This way, police can stop parties before they start. Finally, according to What Are the Facts of Underage Drinking, people should report those who sell or give alcohol to people under the age of 21. If people under 21 can not get alcohol, obviously they can not drink it. In conclusion, prevention is the best solution to the problem of underage drinking. The problem of underage drinking can not be solved in a day or two. The solution that has been provided will take a longtime and a lot of effort, but if it is followed, then underage drinking will continue to decline until it is no longer a problem. "What are the Facts of Underage Drinking?" Untitled: 5 pars. On-line. Internet. Available http://www.ovchin.uc.ed.../hopeline/underage.html Associated Press. "Assembly Passes Bill to Fight Underage Drinking." Untitled: 7 pars. On-line. Internet. Available http://www.smartline.com/ap/ap621101.html Collegian Editorial Board. "Current Drinking Laws Need to be Re-evaluated." Collegian Opinion: 12 pars. On-line. Internet. Available http://collegian.ksu.ed...nion/ed-board- 9.13.html Klaidman, Daniel. "Here's the Straight Dope." Newsweek 21 October 1996:37. Fisher, Renee. "New Bill Tightens Limit on underage Drinking." Untitled: 12 pars. On-line. Internet. Available http://www.spub.ksu.edu...0-tolerence-fisher.html Frerking, Tim. "Underage Drinking is Up." Untitled: 13pars. On-line. Internet. Available http://www.daily.iastat...-9-96/f01-frerking.html Rhoades, Rebecca. "Tougher Laws Created for Underage Drinkers." Lode: 10 pars. On-line. Internet. Available http://www.grp.mtu.edu/...ws/threenews092995.html Smart, Reginald G. The New Drinkers. Toronto, Canada: Addiction Research Foundation, f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Living with the man.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ O'Brien 1 Ms Springhorn Humanities 11 (H) October 25, 1996 LIVING WITH THE MAN The Middle East is an extremely volatile region of the world, and much of the current instability may be due to one man, Saddam Hussein. During the last few years, under Hussein's direction, Iraq has gone from being an oil rich country to a country that is suffering major embargoes and is low on supplies. Iraqi leaders are trying to leave as they realize how power can corrupt a man. If Hussein stays in power, the future looks bleak for the Gulf region. Iraq used to be a prosperous country. Oil was the main source of income for the area. During the Iran-Iraq War (Gulf War 1), which was from September 1980 to August 1988, Iraq went from being a wealthy country to a very poor country, nearly over night. Hussein had used all energy available in that war, and he came out of it losing over 1/3 of the entire male population of Iraq (Allman 61). Saddam feels that is actions were justified because he believes the Iran-Iraq war was a conspiracy by the US, Britain, and Israel to undermine Iraq (Kondrache 11). This leads people of the world to believe that this is a man who will stop at nothing to achieve what he wants. He was willing to risk his whole nation for a more money. High financial priorities? Survey says "yes". The basis on which Hussein is in power is controversial. He was not elected to his position, he took it. There was a military coup in 1968 that led him and his Ba'ath party to power. He was not elected, as until last year, there had not been an election since the coup (Cooperman 49). This says that Hussein has been a tyrant from the start, and his O'Brien 2 need for power is incredible. He wants complete domination of the Middle East, if not the world. Iraq is now a country struggling to survive. It is in the midst of an embargo, and the people are suffering. Death rates are up, and the amount of food available is declining. Saddam is displaced from his people, though. He is not feeling the same effects as they are. The Pursian Gulf War erupted in 1990 with Hussein ordering an invasion of neighboring Kuwait, on the grounds that Kuwait was stealing oil from in Iraqi oil field. The US became involved in this war for the next year, and they successfully pushed Iraq out of Kuwait. Iraq, however, feels that it won this war. The leaders of Iraq were still in power after the war ended, so the popular idea in Iraq is that they won the war. An Eastern European diplomat commented "Victory is when the ruler stays in power, no matter how many people he kills, no matter how much the country is ravaged" (Allman 62). The Gulf War was a moral victory for the Iraqis, or that is what Saddam has led them to believe. He gained nothing for his people but a second of hope. This hope may have already flickered out. After the Pursian Gulf War, the US imposed an embargo on Iraq. Nothing comes in or goes out of the country. As a result of this, there is a shortage of food and medicine. The UN sees this problem, and has offered Saddam an option. If he agrees to Resolution 986, the country would be able to sell oil in order to buy supplies for it's people. However, the UN would have control over how much and to whom the oil was sold. Saddam says no, as these rules are too strict. If the UN does not ease up, thousands of Iraqis will die. Hussein has made it look as if the UN, not himself, will be responsible for those deaths. Saddam says "Our struggle against the embargo is a holy war" (Allman 62). This bit of word play may be enough to keep Saddam out of trouble, but it shows that he O'Brien 3 is not willing to compromise as he is too greedy. Perhaps he believes that he will be able to sell the oil on the black market and make more money, which he will undoubtedly keep for himself. Hussein himself is a troubled man. He is the paranoid ruler of a poor country, but he is quite rich. He has so much money that our government even has no idea what he is worth (Church 47). He has more than 50 palaces in Iraq, and about 20 of those are in Baghdad (Roberts 55). His people are living in the gutter but he is sitting pretty. His family is right with him. Nearly all of his immediate family is in power, but Saddam is not afraid to kill one of them if they do something he does not agree with (Bhatia 15). His son is just as bad, if not worse than Saddam. Uday Hussein is a violent man, who has engaged in a gun fight during a family dinner, and he ended up killing a few women and injuring his uncle. He holds lavish parties where he coerces young women into copulation (Roberts 52-54). Uday does not care about his actions because he is so powerful. He is number two in command of Iraq (Church 46). Saddam's family is corrupt, and their power is huge. They can do anything, and this scares many people. One of Hussein's top men, Lieutenant-General Hussein Kamel al-Majid, has recently defected from Iraq. He is willing to speak out against Saddam. He was the head of Iraqi weapons, and he feared that if he became too powerful, he would be killed because he was not a member of Saddam's family. When Kamel escaped, he took $30 million with him (Sid-Ahmal 16-17). This says that even Saddam's most powerful men are afraid. Pilots are given only enough fuel to complete their mission, as it is feared that they will try and leave the country. If this is the case, and people want to leave, this is a sign that Saddam may be losing support. His top officials are ready to speak to international powers about the human rights violations taking place in Iraq, such as when 400 prisoners were shot to create room in an Iraqi jail (Bhatia 15). Saddam is O'Brien 4 proving that there is something wrong with the way he is running his country when incidents like that occur. There seem to be mixed feelings toward Hussein from his people. Some people are "grateful for all he has done for them," which doesn't appear to be much except providing jobs for a few people who could be influential over the area's in which they live. All Iraqi religious leaders back Saddam. Even Devil-worshippers like him because he has given them the same religious rights as Christians and Moslems (Allman 63-65). Not every one is satisfied, though. A vote for president, the first since the Ba'ath party came to power, turned out as a 99% landslide for Hussein. However, it was said that if you did not vote for him, you would have your food rations stripped for a month and you would be sent to live in the desert. Jowad, a Shiite Muslim said, "we vote for Saddam because we have no choice" (Cooperman 49-50). If you cannot win an election fairly, perhaps you have too much control over your country. At this rate it seems Saddam will be in power forever. No one else can do anything. What can be done? There is a president of a country who is only concerned with making money. He does not seem to care about his people, he just wants to do anything he can and get away with it. So why doesn't someone just bump him off? One of his men just go up and fill the old guy full of lead? Why not a US sniper, or a bomb? Won't that solve all the problems? Unfortunately, there is no proof that Saddam's predecessor will be any less of a tyrant. Next in line is Uday, who we know is violent. The US government doesn't really want to go after and kill Hussein because the fear is that Iraq will become a new Haiti for us, and we have enough problems already (Kramer 45). There was hope that after the Gulf War a coup attempt would successfully bring down Hussein, but that didn't materialize. Our only hope now is that US sanctions will be able to force Saddam's regime from power (this would be necessary for Iraq to fulfill the requirements of the O'Brien 5 sanctions) (Hashim 14). He cannot lose power, but he cannot stay in it either. What will happen? Who knows. This area is so extreme in belief and emotion that anything may occur. Hussein has misused his power to create a country that is stricken with famine and disease. He rules the country, seeking to dominate everything and to strike fear into the hearts of people all over the world. He hurts his own people and they seem to love him for it. He manipulates his constituents into electing him, and portrays himself as a savior. He is a menace and must be stopped. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Louis XIV.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Louis XIV Louis XIV was a good leader for many reasons, some of which will come out in this essay. Louis ruled with an iron fist, he didn't let anyone mess with France, and if they did , he made them suffer. Second, Louis had mercy on those who betrayed him, a trait rarely seen in his day and age. Third most he did his best to bring down the nobles of France, particularly the more richer ones who thought they were above the law. Louis ruled with an iron fist he didn't let anyone mess around with France, if anyone had the guts to even think about challenging his power over the people of France he would do he would go out of his way to make them suffer. (*1) "At the same time he regarded himself as God's deputy in France and would allow no challenge to his authority, from the Pope or anyone else" Louis got into many wars while he was ruler of France, he was quick to the draw and did not hesitate to start a war. To show the Catholics that he was still a catholic king ,Louis kept mounting pressure on the French Protestants, until 1685 when he revoked Edict of Nantes. Then he forbid anyone to practice Calvinism. To the people of France this showed great strength on the part of Louis, the fact that he could keep he kept everyone in France inline at the same time. everyone in France obeyed him because he was such a grand, rich, fair king. Louis got into many wars with other countries over the stupidest things, when Charles II were to die with no kids, he made he offered to make Louis's grandson the sole beneficiary of the vast inheritance to be left behind, Louis Accepted the the offer out of pure greed, but that dicision meant war with Austria. Although, Louis was already getting half of the money he still greedily accepted the offer, if he had not accepted the offer war could have been avoided, but hey we all make mistakes The second thing about Louis that made him a good leader was that he had Mercy on those who betrayed him which was something rarely seen in that time. Most rulers just murdered those who betrayed them, but Louis would jail them. In the case of Louis's most important lieutenant, named Mazarin, He was charged with peculation and found guilty then sentenced to banishment from France. Instead of letting the whole ordeal go down Louis intervened and changed Mazarins sentence from banishment to imprisonment for life. Mercy was a rare trait at the time of Louis time of reign over France. Mercy was something to be proud of, because it showed great restraint and overall showed an even greater strength to govern the people of France, something even I'd admire if Louis was my king. Louis worked hard to bring down the nobles of France, they thought that they were above the law. the way Louis did this was very interesting. He had built this palace with 226 rooms and living capacity of 5,001, and he invited nobles from all over France to come and live with him in Versailles (the name of his palace). At Versailles they had everything you could ever want and the best part about it was that you could have it. so how did he bring down the nobles? well in coming to Versailles, the Nobles left their villages, castles,towns,what ever the had at home where the normally lived and moved to Versailles.They left their home and stopped making decisions for their villages, castles, towns, whatever and when no one heard from the nobles again and Louis said that he wanted to run things the villagers said "Alright" and the nobles lost their power and Louis gained some more land and power, pretty smart huh, give the nobles all the stuff they wanted because it was like pocket lint to you and then turn around and take their land, it was kind of a fair trade, I guess, everyone got what they wanted, I mean The nobles got all the stuff the could ever want and got to live in Versailles and Louis got what he wanted, more power. Louis worked very hard everyday , he always put in a good days work. He never missed a meeting of his council. Louis couldn't just sit around all day he had to be doing something he always had to be moving which was good because it kept him on top of things. Louis always knew what was going on in his country. Louis liked to hand pick everyone of his generals ,bishops and other governmental figures himself I think this was to guarantee effiency, which was highly regarded by Louis because he started a whole movement towards a more efficient French government. Louis controlled everything in France nothing went down in France without his approval or him having his input into the matter at hand, I guess you could say that Louis kept a pretty tight leash around France's throat. As you can see Louis XIV was a good leader because he had mercy on Mazarin, the lieutenant who was charged with peculation. He didn't let anyone mess around with his country, France. He stood up behind the Catholic religion. Louis Brought down the nobles of France by intising them into leaving their home and living with him in Versailles. Louis Worked hard for the people of France he never missed a meeting ,he hand picked his government. Louis also made some mistakes which showed to the people of France that he was human. So I guess you can say that Louis was a cut above the rest kind of leader, I know I think so. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Love and Rejection Breaking Up.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Love and Rejection: Breaking Up Some felt they were a modern day Romeo and Juliet. The reality, however, is that they were a heartbreaking example of what can go wrong with adolescents. Christian Dalvia, 14 and Maryling Flores, 13 were sweethearts who were forbidden by Flores' mother to see each other. In early November, 1995, the young couple met one last time. Standing at the edge of a Florida canal, they joined hands and jumped 15 feet into the cold, murky water to their deaths. Their deaths may sound romantic, even heroic to other teenagers when, in actuality, it's just plain stupid. There were probably many other reasons for their deaths, but ultimately, the thought of not being together tortured to the point of wanting to take their own lives. This is a very extreme example of what can go wrong with teenage heartbreak. One minute they're inseperable - sharing their most intimate thoughts and details - the next minute they are faces across a crowded room or polite acquaintances at best. These are the consequences that come along with a breakup. We teens hear about love all around us, in music and movies, on TV, in stories. We hear that love will make us happy. We hear that single people are lonely. We are told that if we are not part of a couple, we are not complete. We all want to be part of this thing called 'love'. Okay, we get a boyfriend or girlfriend, now everything should be perfect. But, it's not perfect, because life never is. It is easy to become disappointed. Feelings can change. One person may decide to say good-bye. When that happens, the one left behind will feel rejected. Rejection means choosing between one thing and another. The one who feels rejected thinks as if they are not good enough. It hurts. When the person you love decides to leave you, it is even more painful. Does rejection mean failure? No. The end of a relationship means that the boyfriend or girlfriend decided that s/he wanted a change. The reasons for this are within the ex - not within the rejected person. No one is a less valuable person because their boyfriend or girlfriend's feelings have changed. What To Expect There are nine stages of rejection that almost all "dumpees" must go through. The pain may be awful, but each stage is part of the healing process. The stages may not follow in an exact order, but they will all be experienced. The Denial Phase: "This can't be happening." During this stage, people may find themselves waiting for the phone to ring and not believing that the relationship is over. Solution: Acknowledge your feelings about what has happened. Accept, but do not dwell on shame and embarrassment, and all the 'shoula/woulda/coulda's'. The Bargaining Phase: Driving yourself crazy, thinking that, "If I get my hair cut," or "If I don't call her for a week," s/he will change his/her mind. Solution: Accept that it's over. The Loneliness Phase: Feeling as if no one understands or cares. Solution: Surround yourself with people who do care, and those who openly say so. Remind yourself often that you are loved. The Heartbreak Phase: Feeling like your heart is really breaking. You may even feel pain in your chest, or want to throw up when you think of the person or see the person with someone else. Solution: You can go on. If you're feeling really bad, snap your fingers to interrupt the thought. The Blame Phase: Pointing the finger at you or at your ex for what each of you did wrong. Solution: Decide that neither of you are at fault and both of you are responsible for the breakup. The Depression Phase: Feeling sad, worthless, and foolish. You have trouble eating and sleeping and you may imagine you'll never love again. Solution: Allow yourself to feel pain but don't wallow in self-pity. Keep busy with exercise or projects. The Anger Phase: Feeling furious for being rejected. Solution: Experience the anger, but don't exaggerate it. Don't let yourself become bitter. The Acceptance Phase: Finally believing that it is over. You no longer expect your ex to call and you begin to feel at peace. The Healing Phase: Getting your life back. Ready to meet new people and you're no longer dwelling over your ex. These phases are all healthy ways to recover from a breakup. The Wrong Moves Just as there are ways to properly cope with ending a relationship, there are also unhealthy ways that some of us are drawn to do. In trying to cope with a breakup, many use manipulative methods to require personal power (the freedom of choice and movement). Some of these manipulative methods are by going through the ex's best friend and playing detective (is he seeing anyone? is she still upset?), threatening incapacitations (I won't be able to concentrate, do go or you'll make me depressed), making impossible promises (I'll do whatever you ask, If I ever lose my temper, just snap your fingers and I'll calm down) - your ex doesn't believe these, you don't believe these, so don't say them. - and finally, by threatening revenge. A personal example of this is a friend who we'll call Christine. When school started, Christine was dating Tom who eventually left her to date their mutual friend, Megan. Christine was extremely upset and she told Tom she would get back at him. She told him she would tell his mom he'd been doing drugs. Obviously, Tom got angry and told Christine to stay away from his family. As it turned out, Christine never followed through on her threats. They were just an underhanded ploy to make Tom upset. This is not a mature way of handling a breakup, which is true for most teenage heartbreak. Another incorrect method of recovery is harassment. The harasser is the person who, for example, is obsessed with driving by the ex's house or place of work, calls the other just to hear his or her voice and tries to cover it up with lies like, "I was just in the neighborhood," and "I think I dialed the wrong number..". The severity of the obsession is measured by the time that is spent on it, the degree of stress it causes, lack of control, and interference in one's life and responsibilities. In severe cases, medications can help. As many as one in forty Americans have some sort of obsessive compulsive disorder. Along with harassment, physical abuse is yet another extremely wrong way to handle rejection. Physical abuse includes such things as slapping, kicking, hair pulling, shaking, and arm twisting. People who are being abused are advised to avoid all possible contact with their furious ex. People who are abusing are urged to seek help and break off all contact with the person they're abusing. Extreme depression cases due to heartbreak may also lead to physical violence towards oneself. The teenage suicide rate is up nearly 200% in the past twenty years. Teens must realize that no matter how bad things seem, everyone goes through it and everyone gets over it. All of the above methods are completely wrong ways to regain personal power. When attempting to let go, one should break contact and avoid hanging around places where you know he or she will be. You should accept that it's over, stop asking why, realize and accept your emotions, decide to let go of the past by staying away from emotional traps, by learning from your mistakes and by looking forward to the future. Repairing The Hurt What makes breaking up so traumatic? Often, there are many unresolved emotions and unfinished business. If you see an ex too soon, you risk triggering those unresolved feelings and fantasies, which will prevent you from moving on. But when the time is right, such reunions can also be a valuable opportunity to work through the unfinished business. Sometimes you'll discover that all of the feelings of unworthiness or rejection that you've been harbouring are overblown. Such realizations allow you to move on to new relationships. Don't rush a reunion with your ex - give yourself plenty of time for the wounds to heal. When you are both ready, get together and review what happened. Explain the things that hurt you, what you wanted, what you feared, and what you miss. With distance and a fresh perspective, any lingering pain may ease, and a new love may emerge. Many of us entertain the fantasy of seeing an ex and having him or her say, " You were right all along, take me back!" This would restore your feeling that you and your love mattered, but it actually only happens in a few cases so you shouldn't let your hopes skyrocket. If all of these steps are both followed and avoided, the dumped individual would've gone through all the tearful, sorrowful, raging, self-blaming and forgiving feelings that compromise the emotional progression of ending a relationship, and they've come a long way towards their emotional healing. On The Other Hand... Now, we've concluded that teens can sometimes overreact when they've been dumped (suicide, depression, obsession, etc). As compared to adult breakups which tend to be more civilized on average, teens really have no reason to be severely depressed due to the fact that they have their whole life ahead of them. Adults on the other hand, have much more to worry about than teenagers. For example, adults have to worry about taking care of finances that were previously shared, the effect the breakup will have on their career, and how their children will react. In most cases, they don't have the time to waste on harassment or obsession. Sure, they'll be upset, but not to the suicidal point as teens too often are. Because children look to their parents to keep them safe, the lack of a family member could heighten their sense of vulnerability. The parent who remains with the child or children has to assume the role of the other parent in the financial, physical, and emotional aspects. From a personal viewpoint, adults have a lot more to worry about than teenagers do so logically, they should be the ones overreacting, but they're not. It probably all boils down to the teenage self-esteem issue. It's way up when they've got a boyfriend and when a breakup occurs, it plummets down and they lose control of their emotions. This is when the "wrong moves" come into play. If there was only a way to ensure high self-esteem in today's teenagers we wouldn't have to worry about teen's being pushed to the limit by their overwhelming emotions. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Lyndon Baines Johnson.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Lyndon Johnson led the country for five years (1963-1968) after President John Fitzgerald Kennedy died of gunshot wounds on November 22, 1963. He formulated many policies and carried out many others that Kennedy could not finish. He faced many foreign problems as well, including the Vietnam War and the Cold War. How he dealt with foreign problems put him near last if not last in foreign affairs, when compared to other presidents. Johnson always talked to tourists and met reporters informally. He entertained many distinguished guests at his ranch in Texas. Also, Lyndon and his wife Claudia (Lady Bird) Johnson held formal and informal dances at the white house. His presidency left added a lot in the history books. If it were not for his leadership and ideas, many parts of society today would not exist.(Peter Lisagor, 148-152) "We have suffered a loss that cannot be weighed. For me, it is a deep personal tragedy. I know that the world shares the sorrow that Mrs. Kennedy and her family bear. I will do my best. That is all I can do. I ask for your help and God's," quoted Lyndon Johnson after the assassination of friend, colleague, and leader President John Fitzgerald Kennedy at one-o'clock on November 22, 1963(Peter Lisagor, 151). Johnson took on the large role as president aboard the presidential Air Force jet at Love Field, Dallas exactly ninety-nine minutes after Kennedy died. Coincidentally becoming the second vice president with the last name Johnson to succeed an assassinated president and nearly one hundred years apart.(Hugh S. Sidey, 1-2 & Hans L. Trefousse, 1-2) Within a short time after he became president, Johnson announced a five hundred million-dollar budget cut and urged a strong civil rights bill. Both of these were previously proposed by Kennedy. Also, he proposed a national War on Poverty. This included creating new jobs and building up areas where the economy had faltered. This was approved by Congress without a problem. A new housing law provided five billion dollars in federal funds to help the needy buy houses and rent apartments passed in 1968. Congress also passed a tax cut for both individuals and corporations. (Peter Lisagor, 148-149) Civil rights was a large part of Johnson's presidency. It did not take him long to develop civil rights laws. A new civil rights law opened to Negroes all hotels, motels, restaurants, and other businesses that serve the public. It guaranteed equal job opportunities for all people. Also, Congress passed a voting rights law that ensured voting rights for Negroes and outlawed literacy tests as a voting requirement. The Civil Rights Act of 1968 ended racial discrimination in the sale or rental of houses and apartments. To add the civil rights developments by Johnson, he appointed the first Negro cabinet member and first Negro Supreme Court judge. Robert C. Weaver was selected to be the secretary of housing and urban development. (Peter Lisagor, 149- 151) Thurgood Marshall was set as the first Negro Supreme Court justice(Robert S. Summers, 2). The Railroad Crisis, in April of 1964, plunged Johnson into on of America's toughest labor disputes. After years of disputing between union workers and train companies over work rules the companies announced new rules that resulted in a union strike. Johnson arranged a fifteen-day delay of the strike and put company and union leaders in a White House room and under pressure from Johnson the dispute was settled in only twelve days.(Peter Lisagor, 149) During his first full term he used even more policies and passed even more laws. In May 1964 Johnson stated ". . . we have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society, but upward to the Great Society." The term Great Society was used to describe many of his domestic programs. Congress passed his Appalachia bill which improved the living standards in the Appalachian Mountain region. It also passed his proposals for increased federal aid to education, a cut in excise taxes, stronger automobile safety measures, and the establishment of the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Department of Transportation. Lyndon Johnson also succeeded in passing his Medicare plan.(Peter Lisagor, 150) Johnson inherited many of the foreign affairs problems concerning the United States. A Cold War with Russia and other Communist countries kept the world in continual danger of a nuclear war. This problem has been around for some of Kennedy's term. The first real crisis in foreign affairs for Johnson was in early 1964 when anti-U.S. riots broke out in the Canal Zone. The tension eased after Johnson agreed with Panama's president to discuss outstanding problems.(Peter Lisagor, 149) Johnson stated soon after becoming president, "This nation will keep its commitments from South Vietnam to West Berlin. We will be unceasing in the search for peace; resourceful in out pursuit of areas of agreement even with those with whom we differ; and generous and loyal to those who join with us in common cause."(Peter Lisagor, 149) The United States continued its technical and financial assistance to South Vietnam. In August 1964, North Vietnam torpedo boats attacked U.S. Navy destroyers in the Gulf of Yonkin. Johnson ordered U.S. planes to bomb North Vietnam's torpedo boat bases. In the spring and summer of 1965, he ordered the first U.S. combat troops into South Vietnam to protect American bases there and to stop the Communists from overrunning the country. America stepped up the bombing of North Vietnam. Casualties and the cost of the war increased sporadically. By 1968 the United States had more than five hundred million troops in South Vietnam. A bitter debate in the U.S. developed which separated the country into hawks (those who supported military action) and doves (those who called for the cutback of United States involvement in Vietnam and eventual withdrawal). The two chief critics of the war were Eugene McCarthy and Robert F. Kennedy. Opposition to this country's increasing role in Vietnam increased. Demonstrations took place throughout the nation and riots broke out in Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Los Angeles, New York City, and Newark that were against the U.S.'s involvement in Vietnam. Many people began to doubt statements by the administration on progress of the war. Soon Johnson's popularity dropped because of his drop in credibility. He rejected any chance of reelection as he announced the reduction of bombing in Vietnam. The beginning of peace talks with North Vietnam representatives stated on May 13, 1968. The United States bombing on Vietnam was halted on November 1, 1968. Peace between the U.S. and all of Vietnam soon followed.(Peter Lisagor, 149-152) To conclude, President Lyndon Johnson deserved his rank. After all his great accomplishment in civil rights and his war on poverty he could have been near the top of the list. Unfortunately everything started to collapse near the end mainly because of his involvements with Vietnam. His many achievements left a mark in history. If it were not for him, many civil rights would not exist. He added on two whole cabinet departments and appointed two of the first Negro government officials. These accomplishments kept him high on the list. Many people would consider him last in foreign affairs because the people of the country did not always agree with his involvements in Vietnam. This most likely brought his rating down. Sidey, Hugh S. "Lyndon Baines Johnson." Microsoft Encarta. 1995 ed. Lisagor, Peter. "Lyndon Baines Johnson." The World Book Encyclopedia. 1992 ed. Summers, Robert S. "Lyndon Baines Johnson." POTUS Internet Public Library. 1996 ed. Trefousse, Hans L. "Andrew Johnson" Microsoft Encarta. 1995 Ed. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Machines are they helpful or too much trouble .TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Machines, are they helpful or too much trouble? The historiography and various phases of the Industrial Revolution were very important. Population increase and the expansion of capital, credit and commerce were one of the phases. The role of entrepreneurs, workers and inventions in boosting production were another phase. Textiles, coal, transport and public services started becoming of value to people. The social consequences included women and children working in factories and mines. Hard living conditions, crowded rooms, and many diseases. There were many positive effects, new inventions, that helped made living comfortable, and saved many lives. A vaccination was created saving many lives, telephones helped people to communicate, light bulbs gave light at night and when rain was falling. As people needed employment, they traveled to London to find work, which caused the population to increase. Developers built multi story building(apartments), and row houses making streets less crowded, and gave the people a newfound wealth and security. Steam engines made it easy to transport goods, the cotton gin made it easier to clean cotton, and made more money. Then technical schools began to develop, helping young people finish grammar school. Women also started working, they were very obedient and men started giving them more respect. Along with positive, were also negative. Most people worked twelve to fourteen hours a day, six days a week, they had to pay constant attention to the machines and risked losing limbs in the machines. Child labor was another problem, they usually worked from 6 am to 7 p.m., getting paid only 10 percent wages of men to children. They would be severely beaten, and usually was deformed from machines. Many working-class children were not able to attend schools, because they couldn't afford clothes. Women usually spent long hours away from home and were unable to take care of children. They usually had a deformed chest or rib from the machines, and sometimes their hair and long skirt were caught in the machines. Some people had to work in mines, the mines were damp and ark, workers risked suffocation from the dust and drowning from underground floods. As population grew, people moved into urban areas. This was a very big problem, crimes and diseases increased, sometimes twenty families had to share the same toilets and water pumps. The industrial revolution had many problems, but here are some solutions I would propose. I would have limited work, better wages, and more windows, the people sometimes got lung cancer and suffocated from too much smoke. The children, well, I would probably say they couldn't work until they were 11 or 12, but if they had to work before 11 or 12 I would give them less hours and more breaks. For women, better pay and hours. In the coal mines, they should've built better support, and at least warn the people of explosions. Schools should've been built for poor children and paid by the government. More houses built and trees cut. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Marie Antoinette.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Marie Antoinette was the wife of King Louis XVI of France. She was born in 1755 in France and was the daughter of the Great Emperor Francis I and Maria Theresa of Austria. Because here parents came from two countries at war with each other, their marriage formed a peace treaty. Marie was very spoiled and grew up with an extravagant lifestyle. She herself became the wife of the next heir to the French throne to further keep the peace. The heir was Louis XVI, who was a very dull and unsociable person. She was the opposite. She was beautiful, vivacious and bent on pleasure. She became very insensitive to the plight of poor people. When she was queen, her spending only aggravated the difficult economic crisis of the country. She didn't seem to care. A famous story about Marie has to do with a court official coming to her to tell her that the people didn't have any bread to eat. She laughed and just said, "Let them eat cake, then!". Whether or not she really said this, the truth of the matter was that this story portrayed the way she really thought. She was either completely naive about the problems of the common people, or she thought that they were of no value. In 1774, Louis XV died, and his son Louis XVI became the true King. People were dying of starvation and most of the people were blaming it on the Queen Mari Antquonette. On Oct, 5 during the French revolution, thousands of people marched from Paris to Versailles (The Palace) to present there food demands to the king. They some how forced the royal family to come with them back to Paris. After spending months in the Parisian Palace as prisoners, the Queen and King tried to escape to the eastern border. Unfortunately, they did not make it. They were recognized and forced back. On August 10, 1972, revolutionaries stormed the Palace of Tuileries and killed all of the Swiss Guards. The Royal family was imprisoned. On September 22, France was proclaimed a republic and on October 14, Louis XVI was beheaded and on Jan 21, The queen was sentenced to Treason and became a victim to the Guillotine. Marie Antoinette is very famous, but not for any good deeds. She is well known for her selfishness and self indulgence. This story shows that even powerful royalty is useless without followers. It shows how the poorest people, with so little power, can overthrow a great monarchy. Marie Antoinette was the last straw for the people. Even though she didn't exactly cause the Revolution, she was a great target for hatred which fanned the fire of revolution. Even if she wasn't such an insensitive person, she probably would have been killed anyway, since she represented the authority. Marie's big mistake was that while she was prisoner, she might havee rallied the people to a new constitutional monarchy similar to England's. Instead Marie convinced her weak-willed husband to refuse tributes to the people, and seeked military aid from the other rulers of Europe. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\MarranosA Lost People.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ November 19, 1996 Marranos- a lost people Some people might call them New Jews, some New Christians, and others call them Marranos. The majority of the world population has no idea who the Marranos are. To begin to explain these secret people, one must first receive a lesson in World History. We will begin in the 1492. In school, we are brainwashed to connect the year 1492 with the year that Columbus discovered the New World. Yet, if we look at the year 1492, there are other occurrences which are noteworthy. For instance, in the year 1492, Spain, the country which sent Columbus to America, decided to officially expel the Jews from Spain. The Jews were forced to either leave Spain, convert to Catholicism, or be put to death. This was not a surprise to the Jews of Spain. Since 1931, there had been anti-Jewish riots throughout Spain. For years, the Jews had been converting to Christianity to escape religious persecution. These Jews were called conversos. The twist to this tale is that these conversos actually were only putting on a front. They still considered themselves Jews. They practiced in secret.1 The Spanish made every attempt to search out and punish these conversos. Some Jews chose not to convert and they moved to Portugal. . Unfortunately, Portugal, in 1497, expelled the Jews from its borders as well. Anti-semitism was growing in Western Europe and the Jews needed to escape. The prime choice seemed to be so obvious. The Jews went to the New World. The immigration of the Marranos to the new world might have begun with none other than Christopher Columbus. This, of course, is not definite, but there has been research which has shown that Columbus was indeed a Marrano. Apparently his parents were Marranos.2 Even though there are some disagreements about this fact, there is strong evidence to support the claim that Columbus was Jewish. As the Marranos arrived in the New World, they were not able to reveal their secret identities and practice as Jews. This was because the Spanish government established inquisition offices in the New World. These office's sole responsibility was to hunt down Marranos and bring them to justice. The inquisitors had to visit every town once a year and gather evidence of "non-believers" of the church. They would reward anyone who came forth with information. The information could be days old or forty years old, it made no difference to the Inquisitors. The punishments for being caught were varied, never merciful. The mildest form of punishment was Scourging. This was when the victim was forced to strip to the waist in public and receive hundreds of lashes. The victims could also just be sent to the galleys. Women often had to go work in hospitals or correction facilities without pay. The worst and most common punishment was being burned at the stake. This was the punishment which the Crown decreed applied to all who swayed from the church.3 For example, in 1649, 109 Marranos were rounded up in Mexico's capital and killed.4 The Marranos were forced to live in hiding and in fear. One can compare this to the Jews in hiding during the Holocaust. They had to always be careful of what they said and what they did. The fact that the Marranos kept their religion hidden meant that their entire process of religious practice had to be transformed. This encompassed prayers, holidays, scriptures and customs. The Marranos could not keep Jewish books or religious materials and therefore everything had to be memorized and passed down orally. This, of course, lead to a decline in religious knowledge through each generation. Another obstacle was that the Marranos had to profess their loyalty to the Catholic church. They often became involved in the church, as to help conceal their true identities. There is a story of a Rabbi who converted to Catholicism and he eventually became a bishop in the church. This is just an example of the extremes that the conversos would go to in order to conceal their religion. Holidays took new forms during the Spanish Inquisition. The holiest holiday of the Jews is Yom Kippur. During this holiday, Jews beg G-d for forgiveness and they fast for 24 hours. Instead of praying all day, the Marranos would only pray for a few hours. They did fast, but if they went outside they would place a toothpick in their mouths in order to fool the Christians. The Jewish holiday of Passover was also observed in an abnormal way. Normally the holiday consists of two seders (meals) during which the story of the Jews escaping slavery and leaving Egypt is told. The Marranos could strongly relate to this story as they felt that they were being enslaved by the Inquisitors. The Seders are followed by a week of observance during which no leavened bread is consumed. The Marrano Passover began without the reading of the Passover story. During the week of observance, many Marranos decided to fast because they had become accustomed to fasting during Jewish holidays. As for the unleavened bread, Jewish doctors would prescribe it to Christians with stomach aches. Therefore, during Passover, the Jews would contend that they had stomach aches and had to eat the matzah (unleavened bread).5 The Marranos kept their beliefs alive with a specific saying, which said,"...salvation was possible through the Law of Moses, and not through the Laws of Christ." Marrano children were raised as devout Catholics. The Jewish tradition of a Bar Mitzvah was replaced to keep their identities hidden. At the age of thirteen, the child was taken aside and told the truth about his religion and the Laws of Moses. The interesting aspect of Marrano life was the role of the women. The women became the "Spiritual Leaders." Throughout history, it has been shown that the women are the ones who refuse to assimilate. The Marrano women were the, "vast majority of the few who maintained their Judaism." The women were also known to have a familiarity with the Jewish Prayers. But as for the Hebrew language, this became practically extinct.6 Marranos could not take the chance of being overheard speaking Hebrew. They also refused to write in the language. Because of this fear, Hebrew disappeared from the later generations of Marranos. The removal of Hebrew lead to the removal of all Jewish texts. The only remaining text which the Marranos could use was the Bible. This was learned literally. As for prayers, the majority of them were original. Unfortunately the prayers had been lost in the silence and the Marranos were forced to create their own prayers. Marriage was another difficult aspect of the Marrano transformation. The primary concern was that the spouse had to be Jewish.. Intermarriage was never an option. Yet, even more, the spouse had to be a "learned" Jew who was neither ignorant of the religion nor non-practicing. The couples could not be married by a rabbi, so they were married in the church and then blessed by a rabbi at a later date. The marriage process was indispensable to the Jews, as it was their only guarantee of the continuation of their religion.7 Food was another issue with the Marranos. The Marranos tried their hardest to keep the laws of Kosher. They refused to eat pork and they would even tell their children that," those who ate pork would be turned into pigs." They attempted to not cook food between Friday night and Saturday night, because this would be breaking the Sabbath. The Marranos also tried to keep the Sabbath. They would light a candle for the Sabbath and not extinguish it. In regards to the Jewish tradition of charity, the Marranos would give charity, paying special attention to the poor marranos.8 Marrano communities have been discovered worldwide. A group called the Karaites has shown up all over Europe and now even in Israel. This tribe is a good example of how the Jewish traditions changed as generations passed on their heritage. For instance, at the entrance to the synagogues of the Karaites, there are shoe horns so that people can remove their shoes before prayer. This is a practice of Moslems, but not Jews. The Karaites also do not separate milk from meat. Instead they interpret the saying "Thou shalt not seethe a kid in it's mother's milk," to mean that they literally do not cook a kid in it's mother's milk. These people also do not blow the shofar (ram's horn) on the Jewish new year of Rosh Hashanah. Their calendar is different from the Jewish calendar. Another interesting difference is that the Orthodox Rabbis determine the religion of a child by his/her mother's religion. Yet the Karaites determine the religion by the father's religion. One can see from the Karaites, how the religion changes when the Marranos were forced into hiding.9 Now with an understanding of the Marrano's situation, we can begin to discuss their immigration to America. Before this immigration is detailed, there must first be an understanding that the secrecy of the Marranos does lead to some varying interpretations of their immigration. The Marranos , by the 1600's, had been keeping their religious beliefs secret for over 100 years. At this point, many of their customs had become transformed, and were no longer as fortified as before. Many kept only a few customs, and those customs were a combination of Jewish and Catholic customs. Therefore, tracing the immigration of the Marranos has proven to be a difficult task. The only way of assurance that one was a Marrano was a detailed history of one's family. This was even more difficult to determine since later generations rarely spoke of their Marrano families or they just plain forgot about their past. We must therefore rely on scattered pieces of historical information and assumptions to trace the progression of immigration of Marranos into America. It is certain that the first Marranos to enter America, arrived in New Mexico and Texas. This is of course because these were the territories that the Spanish began to colonize. The Marranos saw New Mexico as a type of safe haven, away from the inquisitors of Mexico.10 Many believe that the Marrano's ability to hide their identity definitely out-weighed the power of the inquisitors to investigate each person entering the new territory. There are two main types of evidence of Marrano existence in New Mexico. These are genealogical and speculative. The genealogical evidence stems from present day Jews who have traced back their ancestry to Mexicans in the 1600's. But this type of evidence is wary because most of the Marrano beliefs has been lost through the generations. The speculative evidence is what has convinced researchers that Marranos did indeed settle in America and still exist today. This speculative evidence stems from random occurrences of practices foreign to a specific religion. This evidence began to arise during the late 1800's. It was during this time that missionaries in New Mexico were speaking to some young Hispanics. The missionaries noticed that the only stories the youths knew from the bible were stories of the Old Testament. A more recent occurrence was in New Mexico in 1979. A woman was at a Doctor's appointment and the doctor noticed that she wore a Jewish Star of David around her neck. When he asked her about it, she responded that her mother had given it to her on her deathbed, asking her to "return to the old religion." There is recorded history that a family in New Mexico today still believes in their Jewish religion and they still light candles for Moses as a saint. This is an excellent example of how Jewish beliefs were combined with Christian beliefs. Moses is from the Jewish bible, yet the act of lighting candles for a saint bares evidence of Christian customs. Even present day Catholics in New Mexico have memories of playing with "dreidels" when they were young. This reveals a memory of celebrating the Jewish holiday of Chanukah.11 Temple Albert in Albuquerque claims to have approximately 15 Marrano members. The only problem is that these members have no traceable past. Along the Rio Grande in Texas other evidence of Marrano existence has surfaced. Some families eat unleavened bread during Lent, which is close the time of Passover. A Russian Orthodox Priest, Rev. Symeon Carmona, knew about his Jewish heritage since he was twelve years old. He remembers in detail his family's secret observance of Jewish law. His mother's way of preparing food and the act of lighting candles on the Sabbath are just a few of his vivid memories of his Marrano past. He estimates that there are at least 1500 families in New Mexico who are still keeping their Jewish past hidden.12 The story of the Marranos is a tale of tragedy and a tale of triumph. One could never imagine having their identity stripped from them at the threat of death. One can never imagine having to be someone who you really were not, only to be hiding the truth. The Marranos had to live with the daily threat of annihilation. They were forced to stray away from their G-d, who was the only one left to turn to. The Jews ran from anti-Semitism, from Europe to Mexico and then to America. By the grace of G-d, they were able to come out alive and still holding on to their precious religion. The Marranos are the example of how religion intermingles into American culture. They reveal the dangers of assimilation and triumph to hold on to your past. The Marranos never forgot. They made every attempt to be the Jews that generations before had been . And as long as there is one child in America who knows of their Marrano past and is proud to be Jewish, the Marranos did indeed win their battle. 1 Roth, Cecil. A History of the Marranos. New York: Schocken Books, 1974. pp. 30-45 2 ibid., pp. 271 3 Liebman, Seymour B. The Jews in New Spain. Miami: University of Miami Press, 1970. pp. 106-112 4 Roth, Cecil. A History of the Marranos. New York: Schocken Books, 1974. pp. 282 5 Liebman, Seymour B. The Jews in New Spain. Miami: University of Miami Press, 1970. pp. 64-68 6 Roth, Cecil. A History of the Marranos. New York: Schocken Books, 1974. pp. 170-180 7 Liebman, Seymour B. The Jews in New Spain. Miami: University of Miami Press, 1970. pp. 75-76 8 ibid., pp. 73-75 9 Ross, Dan. Acts of Faith. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1982. pp. 120-140 10 Tobias, Henry J. A History of the Jews in New Mexico. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1990. pp. 10 11 ibid., pp. 18-19 12 ibid., pp. 20 f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\McDonaldization.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ McDonaldization, is the term Ritzer derived from the McDonalds' fast food chain to describe the state of our society. Ritzer claims our social institutions have become completely dehumanized in the form of a bureaucracy. Health care is an example of one institution that is characterized by the four components of bureaucracy: efficiency, predictability, control and quantification. In the past, health care was more simplistic in nature. House calls were no unheard of, and doctors knew all of their patients and their families on a personal level. The doctor who delivered your parents would deliver you as well as your future children. Follow-ups were quite normal; doctors were concerned with your progress for their own peace of mind. Over time the modern health care system emerged into the bureaucratic organization that it is. All the characteristics depicted by Ritzer are easily seen when one examines health care. From a normal trip to the doctor for a routine check-up or even a specific ailment to rush trip in the emergency room predictability, control, efficiency, and quantification are obvious. Quantification is easily seen when you first step into a hospital waiting room and a huge sign tells you a number before you are even able to speak to anyone. After waiting a while your number is called, you must give your health card number to the receptionist before continuing. You are then given a file number, which is your only identity for the time you spend within the hospital environment. After seeing the doctor you may come out with a few prescriptions which furthers your nameless ordeal. When you drop nameless ordeal. When you drop into a pharmacy to have a prescription filled the first thing they ask is if you know your prescription number. If you cannot remember it, your actual name is a secondary possibility as a means of identification. Before paying you may have to show your Blue Cross card number or other insurance cards as well, in all it is a very dehumanizing, impersonal process. Efficiency is another characteristic that is prominent in the hospital situation. To make sure things more smoothly you must call ahead and make an appointment with the receptionist. This appointment is to avoid long lines of people waiting to see the doctor. When making rounds a doctor goes from each examining room to another where patients are already waiting. After assessing one patient the doctor visits another one while the nurses bring another one into the empty room. Hospitals are also very time efficient. By having nurses make a preliminary examination (temperature, pulse rate, etc.) simple cases like the flu can be diagnosed without having to wait to see the busy doctor. This saves the patient from having to wait for a long time as well as giving the doctor more time to look at priority cases. Another area efficiency is necessary is at the pharmacy. By calling ahead to have a prescription filled long lines can be avoided, or in some places you can have them delivered to your home with little hassle. Predictability is a big characteristic. Everyone knows what happens when you go see a doctor. First you go to the receptionist to fill out the necessary papers and inform them you have arrived. You must then wait until a nurse comes into the waiting room and announces, "The doctor will see you now". Most times this is not true, it really means I, the nurse will take your temperature, pulse rate, and blood pressure. Just like a robot the nurse will measure vital signs and note her findings with as little conversation as possible. After the nurse leaves you must wait until the doctor comes in with the nurse's recordings in her hand. The doctor then asks a variation of that same old question, "What seems to be the problem today?" You then proceed to list off all of your symptoms and wait for a diagnosis. The doctor either gives you a prescription or advice to stay in bed and drink lots of fluids. If it is necessary she may request further testing such as blood work or x-rays as she sees fit. If you need further treatment you basically go through the same routine on another day with different people. When prescriptions are required you get the prescription filled, pay a lot of money (unless you have a drug plan or additional medical coverage), and listen to the same warnings about finishing all of the prescriptions, side-affects, the dangers of interacting drugs and alcohol, and the instructions stickered on the side of the bottle. The fourth component of control is very important in the health care industry. Doctors and nurses have control over our health and physical well being. Although doctors do not have the same kind of power and responsibility that they had in the past, their influence is still tremendous. Just by forcing you to sit and wait for another person exhibits their control over you. Doctors have supreme control in such places as the emergency room. They determine which patient is more critical than the others are. By making this decision they are choosing who will get treated first. In the end this decision could mean the difference between life and death. Yet another area of control is organ transplants. Doctors must evaluate each case carefully. Once a possible donor is found a doctor may then try to influence the patient's family that harvesting the organs would mean other lives could be saved from their tragic loss. Viable matches must be made from the list of candidates waiting for a transplant. By looking at such things as blood type, doctors must determine who would be the most suitable match. This is an example of the most ultimate control; who lives and who must continue hoping. Other health care workers have a subtle control over us that we seldom recognize as such. When calling for an appointment the receptionist will usually suggest a time that is best for them, one that you must be able to fit into your schedule. This is much like the McDonalds' worker who assumes you will want Cokeâ with your combo meal. Those are the four components of bureaucracy, but to meet Ritzer's standards of formal rationality it must have irrationality to it as well. There are many examples of how the health care system is irrational, like by making a specific appointment you try to get there on time to see the doctor. Only the doctor is usually not ready and you must wait; sometimes for hours. Another irrationality is how you must take up a doctor's time to get a referral for a specialist for such things as physiotherapy. It would be much simpler to make a referral by phone. The "iron cage" of the health care system is how people can feel trapped by an overburdened organization of too stressed workers. When doctors become tired patients may not get the specific attention they require to properly diagnose their problem. Patients may feel that the doctor is not really listening or seeing them as only a faceless file with a list of complaints. There is nothing more frustrating than knowing that there is something wrong with your body and having a professional tell you it appears that there is nothing physically wrong. This misdiagnosis could lead to further complications. In general it also may cause the patient to lose faith in doctors. One of the biggest irrationalities is that a relationship between doctor and patient, which is very intimate in nature, has become so impersonal. This change from human to robot-like health care workers has come in the face of a demand for efficiency and quantification. It is hard to say who is victimized most by this dehumanization; the doctors who must deny their humanity or their patients who must go to them for treatment. In conclusion when one applies the four components of McDonaldization to our present health care system one discovers that they are aptly applicable. Quantification is seen when one thinks about how our medical identity is comprised of a series of different numbers. Efficiency is supposed to occur with phone-in prescriptions and appointments. Control is assured by a doctor's capacity to make life or death decisions. As for predictability it is common knowledge as to what routine one follows to receive treatment. The irrationality is how impersonal and inefficient the whole system can become through overworked doctors and other professionals. The iron cage is how the patients of these stressed doctors feel from these doctors' ignorance and neglect. In all it is true that the health care system is one social institution that does successfully meet all of Ritzer's requirements for a McDonaldized institution. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Media Trends applied to Mad Magazine.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ MAD Magazine is a counter culture publication that was founded in the 1960's by William M. Gaines. The magazine satirizes everything from popular television and entertainment, to important political issues and government leaders. Despite the fact that MAD contains no advertisements, it has flourished for more than three decades and is still widely read today. In today's media advertisement has become a necessary part of the business, Ads fill the pages of newspapers, magazines, even comic books. In this clip journal project, I am attempting to determine why MAD Magazine has survived over the years without the aid of advertisement. I have come up with three main factors that could explain MAD's success. The first factor that has made Mad's survival over the years possible is it's foundations. Its creation was during the sixties, when counter culture was at its peak, a time when rebelling against "the system" and not "selling out" were the ideals of popular culture. The fact that the magazine held within its covers no advertisements catered to the ideal of not selling out, which drew a faithful audience. The second factor is tradition. As is true with most MAD readers of my generation, My first encounter with the magazine was when I was a kid, going through some old things of my father's in the attic. I came across an old issue of MAD and became interested in it although I only understood a few of the satires that it contained. It is a fact that most young people who read the magazine have parents who have read or still read it. The final factor is that MAD often contains lurid subject matter, which attracts a lot of younger readers. This would attribute to it's current success, along with a television show that was created for the FOX Network that was based on MAD. The success of MAD, I believe, makes it one of the most extraordinary publications of today's media. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Medicare.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Medicare in the '96 Elections Government 11 / 25 / 96 Among the many differences between President Bill Clinton (Democrat) and Presidential Candidate Bob Dole (Republican), lays a common debate topic, Healthcare. The issue is the fact that funding in Medicare's budget will not last but another four years. Both Republicans and Democrats have ideas on how this budget should be reformed, but the two have not yet come to a median resolution. In the beginning of the Presidential campaign Medicare was a hot topic. It will be shown that as Election Day drew nearer Republicans were forced to attack President Clinton's policy because they had no substantial plan of their own. Prior to 1965, payment for a particular medical service was paid for either directly by the recipient of the care or by the recipient's insurance company. Usually to get full coverage or even coverage with a low premium the rates are outrageous. For this reason many poor, elderly and severely disabled Americans were unable to receive proper medical treatment. Then, in 1965, Lyndon B. Johnson proposed one of his Great Society programs, Medicare. Medicare would allow those who were severely disabled, elderly or poor to receive quality medical treatment without worrying about the cost . This government funded program would subsidize the service of physicians, inpatient hospital care and some limited home care. The money would come from that money set aside for Social Security. Medicare, along with its sister program, Medicaid, allow broad access to physician and hospital care to all disabled Social Security recipients, most all elderly and some of the poor. Medicare has two parts, A and B. Part A, which covers all enrollees, covers hospital costs only. Part B, also known as Supplementary Medical Insurance (SMI), is an optional plan for which a premium is charged. The SMI plan covers 80 percent of office visits, preventive medicine, surgery and diagnostic specialties (x-rays, etc.). What Medicare does not cover include: hospital stays over 60 days, extended nursing-home care, or the cost of lengthy illnesses. In the cases where Medicare will not cover costs, recipients usually use secondary retirement programs either from pension plans or retirement programs such as AARP (American Association for Retired People). Those who do not have such plans, are forced to drain their assets until they qualify for the sister program Medicaid. Medicaid is a program set up the same as Medicare but primarily for those who fall short of the state-specified income level. Costs covered by Medicaid are close to those covered by Medicare differing only by nursing-home care and treatment in state mental hospitals . In 1965, at the same time the U.S. began bombing Vietnam, those who were involved with planning the budget for Medicare failed to foresee the fact that funding would not last past the year 2000. This error is what led each party to devise its own plan for reforming the program. Richard Feinberg, Ph.D. the Executive Director at Purdue Retail Institute in his writing, The Clinton Health Care Reform Proposal, outlines a few goals and restrictions of Clinton's proposal. The three main goals are as follows: Control the costs of Health Care, Guarantee comprehensive coverage, and improve the quality of care. President Clinton began his campaigning in what looked to be like a relatively clean manner, as one reporter put it, "It looked in the beginning as if President Clinton were already a 'shoe-in'... he clearly stated his actions and anticipation for the direction of Health Care." The confidence of President Bill Clinton was prevalent. He spoke of his actions as definite future President and not "if I become...." This confidence allowed him to focus on the important issues such as making clear his position on Health Care and outlining steps to take in order to accomplish his goals. While Republican hopeful Bob Dole criticized the President's plan, he had no concrete plan of his own. According to Senator Bob Kerry, the Republican "balanced" budget plan is a phony; "we'll tax our children to poverty -- unless we get control of Medicare." GOP Senator John Danforth agrees that the Republican proposal is tenuous but goes on to say, "...it [Medicare] should definitely be means-tested, without a doubt." By means-tested, Senator Danforth means each potential recipient of Medicare should be screened: the more money one has, the less government support he/she should receive. This sounds good in theory, however, when everyone receives the same deductions from their pay, they tend to want equal claim to their portion of the support. President Clinton's Plan would give everyone equal access to the service. To support this he would require employers to subsidize 80 percent of the costs of a standard benefit package , other financing would come from a new tax on tobacco and alcohol products which is projected to raise $100 billion over the next six years. Clearly we see that President Clinton's plan has been thought out and analyzed quite a bit more than that of the Republicans. This is due in part to the confidence President Bill Clinton had on the campaign trail. He was able to maintain domestic relations and negotiations while actively seeking reelection. Obviously doctors are a key target in the proposals. The President can draw upon two options: Force doctors to accept Medicare patients and receive only a set amount of reimbursement, or Offer certain benefits to those doctors who accept Medicare patients. More than likely, these "benefits" would entail a higher reimbursement for the doctors, which would clearly come from Medicare's budget, and in turn require more money to be allocated. In Doctor Feinberg's write up of Clinton's plan, An Analysis by the Professionals, he says, "Yes, it will limit our [doctor's] options, yet we gain the safety of the Proposal's Malpractice clause" The malpractice clause of which Doctor Feinberg writes would limit the amount doctors and their hospitals could be sued. This would prevent the cases blown out of proportion from ending in million dollar settlements. This cap would only be eligible for those doctors who are members of particular regional alliance. The question raised by Lewis Lord of U.S. News and World Report is why not require the doctors who are already members of particular medical associations (alliances) to treat a certain number of Medicare patients in order to maintain coverage under that association. The Assistant Manager of Vascular Services for Good Samaritan and Bethesda Hospitals, Susan Mueller, says that in some cases doctors would rather maintain a relatively private practice where they could earn a good deal more than being in an alliance and take their chances with a malpractice lawsuit. Many experts believe that with a Republican majority in Congress, numerous minor propositions will be added in favor of the Republican view. These propositions are expected not to change the final Reformation Proposal but rather to shape the Plan into a "balanced" plan that should be agreed upon by both parties. " Republicans will definitely reform Medicare, most likely evoking less opposition than what was aroused in the campaign year ... passing 'little things' such as expanded medical leave for parents of sick kids." It is expected that Republicans will attempt to make minor changes to the overall Democratic Reform Policy, and in the eyes of Michael Barone this is good for maintaining a balance between the conservative and liberal ideas for reform. As Mr. Barone goes on to say, many of the changes that the Republicans make will draw far less attention as they would if they were done during the campaign/election process. This is due in large part to the fact that political leaders can twist the meaning of their opponent and make their intentions seem unthinkable to the common man. No matter what the Reform Policy ends up including, the one thing both political parties agree upon is the necessity of the Plan soon. Statistics show that without a Reform Policy this country, by the year 2005, will be 407.8 billion dollars in debt to Medicare ONLY . Now we can see that amid the differences between both parties lays a common solution; the ways by which to reach that solution may differ, but the country is aware that the longer our government plays childish debate games, our economy slips deeper and deeper into debt. Much like in 1965 when President Johnson's department established Medicare, it solved an immediate dilemma, but resulted in problems in the future. Odds say that Clinton's plan is solving an immediate problem but may create problems in ten to fifteen years when the baby-boomers begin to retire. As in everything else, says Lewis Lord, you fix the only things you can see. It seems that when Clinton finally gets the Reform Proposal passed it will fix only what we can see. Bibliography Barone, Michael. "What a New Crew Might Do." U.S. News and World Report. (September 23, 1996). Cohen, Joel. Grolier Electronic Publishing. "Medicaid" (1993). Cohen, Joel. Grolier Electronic Publishing. "Medicare" (1993). Dole, Bob. "Meeting Challenges of the Next American Century." USA Today. (November, 1996). Feinberg, Richard Ph.D. "An Analysis by the Professionals." Purdue Department of Political Science, 1996. Feinberg, Richard Ph.D. "The Clinton Health Care Reform Proposal." Purdue Department of Political Science, 1996. Folz, Ann-Marie. An Ounce of Prevention. New York: Simon & Schuester, 1988. Gaffney, Janet. "1996 Election in Review." USA Today. (November 1996). Klein, Joe. "Pretty Close to Awful." Newsweek. (September 16, 1996). Lord, Lewis. "A Bankrupt Medicare." U.S. News and World Report. (June 17, 1996). Stevenson, Daniel. "Health Care Reform Requires Passage of Clinton Plan." San Francisco: Tech Publishing, 1996. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Men will rise from the dark depths of prejudice to the majest.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Men Will Rise from The Dark Depth Of Prejudice to the majestic Heights Of Brotherhood Men will rise from the dark depths of prejudice... What is prejudice? The Websters dictionary defines it as "a biased opinion based on emotion rather than reason." This is most certainly the case. Through out history groups of people of the same race, religion, color, etc. have had unspeakable acts committed against them by others who think with their "...emotions[s] rather than reason." Because one is a different color they think that that person is odd, or inferior. Or they see some one of a different religion as a person who is rejected by God. These are both examples of prejudice. Many people have seen the effects of prejudice and sought to put an end to it. one such person was Dr. Martian Luther King. By the time Dr. King became involved in civil rights he was already an ordained minister. He had married and he and his wife had four children. His civil rights activities began with the protest of an incident that occurred on a public bus. Rosa parks had broken the law by not getting out of her seat to allow a white person to sit in her seat or row. An organization was formed to boycott the buses and Dr. Martian Luther king was asked to be president of it. In his first, and in my opinion, most powerful speeches Dr. Martian Luther King stated "First and foremost we are American citizens...We are not here advocating violence...the only weapon that we have...is that of protest...The great glory of American democracy is the right to protest for right." Dr. King and the organization succeeded. The Supreme Court ordered the city to have equal, integrated seating. This was only the first in many battles lead by Dr. Martian Luther King. Dr. Martian Luther King had a dream. A dream to unite all mankind as one. A dream to see an end to prejudice. A dream to reach the promise land. Although many of his goals as far as discrimination have been met, Dr. Martian Luther King never got to see this. He was shot and killed on April 4, 1968. In 1983 congress passed a national holiday in his honor. It celebrated on the third Monday in January. Dr. Martian Luther King Became the second person to have a national Holiday, the first being George Washington, the countries first President. One of his Ideals that has not yet been achieved nor properly addressed is that of brotherhood. The Majestic heights of brotherhood. Anyone who has ever experienced prejudice can appreciate the significance of this idea. All men of all races, colors, ethnicitys, religions united peacefully as a single world brotherhood. The one reason we can not come to peace with those who are different than us is that we, as humans, have a natural fear of the unknown. Some turn this fear into curiosity and learn about others and come to have a respect for other cultures and their respective peoples. On the contrary, some people take this fear and turn it into something dark and evil, Prejudice. Prejudice is what denies us the chance to truly be viewed, and view others, as brothers. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Michael Collins.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ (justified) Chris O'Kane There are many conditions under which Ireland was divided into two nations. Two main men were the main leaders of this split, Emon de Valera and Michael Collins. Sinn Fein also played a large role. Their differing visions for an Ireland free of British rule was the root motivation for the split. Born in New York City in 1882, Emon de Valera was described as a 'tall, spectacled, schoolmasterly, of Jewish cast' as Tim Healy said. Edward Norman, the author of A History of Modern Ireland, added that de Valera was an 'austere theoretician' (Norman, 265). Michael Collins was born in 1890 at Clonakilty, Co. Cork. Edward Norman said his personality was to be to the contrary of de Valera's; he said Collins was not an intellectual and was a man of violent impulses. He took that statement further when he said the Collins would go as far to tumble his colleagues on the floor and bite their ears in playful attention. Now that de Valera's and Collins' personalities have been established, we can now analyze the events and actual conditions under which Ireland was under that led ultimately to her freedom. All across Ireland people were repulsed by the executions which they considered to be needlessly brutal. What they lacked was new leadership to focus the restless energy of the Irish into effective political action, but it was not long in coming. At Christmas 1916 all rebel prisoners who had been interned without trial, those that the British had considered insignificant, were released as a goodwill gesture to the United States which had been very angry by British conduct regarding the rebels. This proved to be a costly mistake. Among those released was a cadre of IRB men who had spent their time in prison educating and organizing themselves into what came out to be a formidable political and military force. The leader of these efforts in prison was Michael Collins, who was still a little known Volunteer at the time. Despite martial law, Collins contacted the members of his secret organization throughout Ireland and set in motion a clever plan to obtain political power. Using Sinn Fein as cover, the IRB began to run its members as candidates for parliament. Their successes throughout 1917 against Redmond's Irish Parliamentary Party candidates shifted power to Sinn Fein and caused a turmoil of public support for the republican movement throughout Catholic Ireland. After Collins release in June, 1917,Eamon de Valera, the oldest of the surviving 1916 rebels, joined Collins. De Valera was lucky for he had been spared by the British because of his American citizenship. De Valera was a hero to the Irish and he was elected as MP in July. In October he was elected president of both Sinn Fein and the Irish Volunteers. Sinn Fein became popular amongst the people. In September the death of Thomas Ashe, a released 1916 rebel and close associate of Collins who had again been arrested for sedition, had also contributed to Sinn Fein's popularity was. Ashe went on a hunger strike while in British prison and had died from injuries he received when prison authorities tried to force feed him. Collins turned Ashe's funeral into an enormous production that glorified the republicans and demonized the British. This in turn established a tradition of using funerals as propaganda ceremonies. In 1918, two British 'fools', as put by Tim Pat Coogan, handed Sinn Fein more political capital than the 'propaganda bonanza' of Ashe's funeral. As World War I was continuing, Britain needed more troops to send off to fight in Europe. Unable to recruit or draft enough men from the rest of the Empire, the British announced in April that she would extend conscription (drafting Irish people to fight) to Ireland. The Irish were outraged. Huge protests erupted. Trade unions called for a general strike, all political parties, except for the Protestant Unionists, spoke against the draft, and the Irish Parliamentary Party MP's withdrew from the House of Commons. The British dropped the Irish draft, but did so too late to satisfy the republican and nationalist feelings. Having miscalculated on the draft, the British further alienated republican sentiment when it appointed a military 'viceroy' to govern Ireland under martial law, claiming the it was legit with nebulous evidence that Sinn Fein was conspiring with Germany. Sinn Fein was outlawed and hundreds of Irish nationalists, including de Valera, were arrested. This was more than the Irish could handle. In an unhappy coincidence for the British, the first General Election to be held in 8 years was scheduled for December, 1918. Sinn Fein ran a full slate of candidates for the 105 open seats. Through a combination of successful campaigning, hard work, chicanery, voter fraud, and genuine heartfelt support, Sinn Fein won an outstanding 73 seats in Parliament. Among the newly elected MP's were men who were held in prison and others who were on the run as wanted men. Rather than go to Parliament, however, the 27 MP's who were not in jail gathered in Dublin on January 21, 1919, where they constituted themselves as the Dail Eireann, the Assembly of Ireland, and then declared the formation of an independent Irish Republic. On that very day, the first two murders of Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) members by Volunteers took place in County Tipperary. From then on for the next few years ruthless violence would be brought along with the creation of the Republic. At the second session of the Dail, Collins was elected Minister of Finance and de Valera, only recently freed from jail in a daring escape masterminded by Collins, was elected President. While Collins remained in Ireland to oversee the management of the infant Republic, de Valera traveled to America to raise desperately needed funds and to try to influence the United States to formally recognize the Republic. In September during de Valera's absence the British outlawed the Dail and began to crack down on Sinn Fein in a futile but bloody attempt to regain control over Ireland. Collins responded to this by reconfiguring the Volunteers into the Irish Republican Army, the IRA. Not clearly under control of the Dail, but definitely following the orders of Collins, the IRA carried out a program of terror and assassination directed at the RIC. The RIC struck back with great ferocity but the IRA kept intimidating the RIC so the British began to lose control of the situation. Determined to prevail, the British responded by reinforcing the rapidly thinning RIC ranks with British troops whose hastily supplied and mismatched uniforms gave them the unforgettable name of the Black and Tans. To supplement these new RIC members, Britain also began recruiting decommissioned British war veterans to form a special Auxiliary Force. Eventually the British forces assembled against the republicans whom had 50,000. Together these proved lethal opponents to the IRA in what rapidly degenerated into a bloody guerrilla war in which hundreds died on each side from bombings, shootings, burnings, and torture. Relations between the British and the nationalist Irish were permanently scared by a nasty cycle of attacks in which intentional brutal massacres of combatants were punctuated by episodes of inhuman treatment of non-combatants as well. The level of violence inflicted during 1920 was so extreme with neither side able to prevail that both the British and the Irish began to recognize they were trapped in a bloody stalemate. Thus, Ireland was granted her initial wish of existing free of British rule. Consequently, the nation was divided into two nations. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Michelangelo.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Michelangelo Buonarroti was born in 1475. He was born in a small town called Caprese, in Tuscany, Italy. Michelangelo was one of the most famous artists of the Italian Renaissance. According to Charles de Tolnay Michelangelo's three greatest works of his later life, were the Tomb of Pope Julius II, the Sistine Chapel ceiling, and the Medici Chapel(37). Michelangelo's specialty was painting the human body unclothed. In order to learn to paint the human body so well he would dissect human corpses. His artistic talents were noticed at a very early age. Michelangelo went to study with Domenico Ghirlandago, who taught him about painting. He then went on to work with Donatello to learn about sculpture. Between the years of 1490-1492 Michelangelo lived in the house of Lorenzo de' Medici and was influenced by Neoplatonic thought. Some of Michelangelo's early painting showed the influence of Giotto and Masaccio. Also many of his early sculptures show the influence of Donatello (Columbia University Press) . Michelangelo's artistic career can be divided into two periods. In the early period he focused on realism. During this early period Michelangelo's works included the "Pieta" and the "David." At the age of 24 he completed a statue called the "Pieta," showing the dead Jesus Christ in his mother's arms. In 1501 Michelangelo returned to Florence, Italy to sculpt the famous nude sculpture called the "David." The "David" measures 18 feet tall, and is so massive that it took 40 men to move it from Michelangelo's workshop(World Book 5016) The second period of Michelangelo's career was based upon his imagination. In 1505 Michelangelo was summoned by Pope Julius II to fabricate his tomb. Michelangelo was so excited about making the tomb for the Pope that he spent many months looking for the perfect piece of marble to make the tomb. A short time after starting the tomb Pope Julius II selected Michelangelo to decorate the Sistine Chapel ceiling. The Sistine Chapel is in the palace of The Vatican in Rome. The Sistine Chapel was built by Pope Sixtus IV in 1473. The Sistine Chapel ceiling took over four years to complete, 1508-1512. Michelangelo was able to accomplish this enormous job in such a short amount of time because of his desire to finish the tomb(Janson 359). The walls of the Sistine Chapel were painted twenty five years prior to the painting of the ceiling. One of the walls in the chapel told the story of Moses, and the other wall told the story of Jesus Christ. Michelangelo used the subjects of the paintings on the walls to determine the subject of his frescos,"...there remained only one subject he could use to complete the two preceding ones, that is the story of humanity..."(Tolnay 41). The ceiling is made up of scenes from the bible. Michelangelo took the text of the bible and painted it on the ceiling the way he interpreted it. According to Robert S. Liebert MD, "...the ceiling is an inseparable amalgam of the biblical text of Genesis, the sin and fall of man, the foretelling of redemption and Michelangelo's own imagination"(145). Pope Julius II gave Michelangelo the freedom to do what he wanted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel(Liebert 140). The ceiling is made up of 343 figures, two hundred of these figures are between 10-18 feet tall. The subject of the ceiling deals with "...the Creation of the World, Mans Fall, and his ultimate reconciliation with the Lord"(Janson 359). In the center of the chapel are five pair of beams that divide the mural. There are nine scenes from Genesis, Creation of the World, to the Drunkenness of Noah. Michelangelo's relationship with Pope Julius II influenced the paintings of the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Pope Julius II was criticized for choosing Michelangelo to paint the ceiling without any experience in fresco painting. Michelangelo needed to be persuaded by the Pope to paint the ceiling because he really did not want anything to do with the ceiling. Forty two letters were found which were written by Michelangelo during the four years in which he painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling. In his letters he does not mention anything about the artistic details , but rather writes about the monetary aspects. Pope Julius II withheld money from Michelangelo. Michelangelo justified it by saying in a letter to his father that his work did not deserve payment. In his letters he mentions that he has no friends and does not wish to have any. Michelangelo surveyed his boyhood friend Francesco Granacci and four other fresco painters from Florence to help him paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Michelangelo was not happy with their work, and within a few months Michelangelo dismissed them from the Sistine Chapel forever. The only help that Michelangelo had was assumed to be a person to help make the paint and another person to help mix the paint. The fresco technique that Michelangelo used was applying paint pigments into moist plaster, and then letting the paint pigments dry inside the plaster. When other artists were asked to paint ceilings they lied down on the scaffolding. Michelangelo painted in a standing position which caused him much discomfort(Liebert 146-147). Michelangelo wrote a sonnet in which he described the pain in which he felt while painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling. My belly's pushed by force beneath my chin My beard toward Heaven, I feel the back of my brain Upon my neck, I grow the breast of a Harpy; My brush, above my face continually Makes it a splendid floor by dripping down My loins have penetrated to my paunch My rump's a crupper, as a counterweight, And pointless the unseeing steps I go In front of me my skin is being stretched While it folds up behind and forms a knot And I am bending like a Syrian bow (Liebert 148). During the first half of his painting of the Sistine Chapel he lived in misery. Michelangelo's only world was the world in which he created through his paintings. Michelangelo had an inner conflict concerning his relationship with the Pope."He believed that despite his great effort and accomplishment, he had not pleased the Pope"(Liebert 151). Because of Michelangelo's unhappiness with the Pope it caused him not to express his true feelings to the Pope. This made Michelangelo more upset and frustrated. Michelangelo's relationship with the Pope became a vicious cycle(Liebert 152). Michelangelo was one of the most recognized artists of the Italian Renaissance. He was a great sculptor, painter, writer, and poet. He was a true Renaissance man. One of his best works was the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Even though he was unhappy with the outcome of the Sistine Chapel ceiling, the ceiling turned out to be magnificent List Of Works Cited De Tolnay, Charles. The Art and Thought of Michelangelo. New York: Random House, 1964 Janson, H.W. History of Art. New York: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1966. Liebert, Robert S MD. Michelangelo, A Psychoanalytic Study of His Life and Images. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983. "Michelangelo." Concise Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia. Online. Columbia University Press, 1994. "Michelangelo." The World Book Encyclopedia. 1959. Vol. XI. pages 5015-5016. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Middle EastIsraeli tensions.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1996 has been a very turbulent year for Israel. This lies in the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin on November 4, 1995. Rabin's great work in the peace process with it's Arab neighbors has been nearly reversed by Israel's newly elected Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who actively opposed the peace process in the election. Netanyahu's term of service has not only affected Israel politically but also socially, intellectually, religiously, and economically. In dealing with Yasser Arafat and the Palestinians Netanyahu was originally quoted saying that he would only meet with Arafat under special circumstances and that, "the era of one-sided giving was over." Warren Christopher, Secretary of State for the U.S., was able to arrange a peace conference with Arafat on the Gaza border. One article called it a , "Psychological breakthrough" (Netanyahu meets with Clinton). The issues at hand were Israel fulfilling it's pledge to the Palestinians to redeploy it's troops stationed in the West Bank town of Hebron so that they will only guard the 440 Jews who live there, from the tens of thousands of Palestinians. Also at issue were the exit permits given to Palestinians allowing them to go from there jobs in Israel to there homes in Gaza and the and the West Bank. That leads to another issue over whether or not a rail link between Gaza and the West Bank should be formed. The major problem with that would be the cost. In the next round of Israeli-PLO peace talks, both sides could not reach a compromise and after four hours talks failed. To complicate matters further 3,000 houses were approved to be built in the West Bank by the Israeli government. "Peace Now spokesman", Alon Arnon, called the housing, "A final burial of the hope of peace." (West Bank Settlement Approved) Netanyahu also ended the month by opening a tunnel to Muslim and Jewish Holy sites that resulted in bloody riots that killed 76 people. The month of October cooled down a bit with an ice breaking summit in Washington. Netanyahu returned with a change in attitude calling Arafat a person whom he could resolve problems with. But aside from his change in demeanor no substantial agreements were made. In November Israel went on high alert in fear of an attack planned to disrupt the peace process, possibly on the one year anniversary of the Jihad's leader Fathi Shakaki. Again the peace effort was thrown back when the Israeli government announced plans to double the number of Jewish settlers in the West Bank. At one point Netanyahu asked the U.S. and Germany to help use their influence in Iran and Syria to hold the terrorists at bay. Arafat also grew tired of what he considered to be stalling on the part of the Israeli government. He called for plans already agreed to, to be put in motion. Netanyahu then makes a statement that he envisions, "A Palestinian entity with broad power," but fell short of declaring full independence. One article called this a sign that Netanyahu was, "moving towards the Israeli political center."(Netanyahu Mulls Palestine Land) Towards the end of November peace talks tookplace about the redeployment of troops in Hebron. The main issue that stalled the talks was Israel's insistence on written agreements that Israeli troops could chase Palestinian suspects into the city. In December, peace talks continued and as of now a decision was on the verge of being reached once final details were worked out. On January 1, 1997 a Jewish military officer, believed to be mentally disturbed ,walked into a Palestinian market and opened fire. Waving after being arrested he said, "Hebron, always and forever." Israel also had some serious problems with it's Arab neighboring countries. In September Israeli forces launched air and ground attacks to counter Lebanese guerrillas who had ambushed an Israeli patrol. The guerrillas are part of Hezbollah, or party of god. Shortly after the attack Lebanon moved 300 commandos to the southern border to, as a Lebanese statement says, "cope with any Israeli venture in the region." Both Israel and Lebanon are under investigation to find if they had broken any cease-fire agreements. Jordan, Israel's closest Arab ally issued a blunt statement to Israel declaring, "Anything can happen if peace is not achieved."(Rift widening quickly between Israel and Jordan) Hussein attended a luncheon with Netanyahu, Clinton, and Arafat saying, "What you need sir, is not the arrogance of power but the vision that Rabin had... Maybe one day you will have it." Israeli-Syrian relations also were greatly strained. Syrian peace talks have been greatly strained since the May terrorist attacks. As a precondition for opening up peace talks Syria is demanding the Golan Heights, an area of tremendous strategic value and Israel's only ski resort, to be given back to them. In September, Syria pressured Israel by moving troops closer to Israel along the Lebanon border. But eventually both sides withdrew. As of now both sides are at a stand still while Netanyahu continues to approve housing for the Golan Heights. The increase of Jewish settlements also angered Egypt another of Israel's allies in the Arab world. The West Bank housing will, said an Egyptian official, "Destroy trust between Israel and it's Arab neighbors." Socially Israel has it's share of problems. In November an Israeli lawmaker who advocated a crackdown on violence against women was "under the spotlight" for allegedly beating his own wife. Haim Dayan was once talking about wife abusers and said, "I would slice their hands to pieces so that would be the last time they ever raised their hand to a women."(Israeli Lawmaker under spotlight) The women's rights group, Naamat, estimates that one in every four women are or will be assaulted by their partners. The reason for this says Naamat spokeswomen, Carmel is, "The level of violence and anger is very high ...and it's influences the family situation. Another Israeli agreed, "Israelis still live by the sword" Violence is also frequently seen in the Israeli abuse towards Palestinians. In November two Israeli border guards were arrested after being video taped beating and kicking six Palestinian laborers. Israeli and Palestinian human rights activists claim that such beatings happen all the time and are designed to instill fear in Palestinians so that they will not try to get into Israel illegally. In response Yasser Arafat said he would distribute video cameras to Palestinians living near the checkpoints to monitor further violence. Another trend with Israel socially is the ever growing flow of foreigners into Israel from Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America. The foreigners complain of discrimination and abuse from employers who pay low wages and house them in rat infested hotels. The Labor Ministry estimates that there are 300,000 foreign workers in Israel and two thirds of them have overstayed visas and are there illegally. One immigrant commented on the abuse saying, "Society tolerates it because these people are not Jews." On the lighter side there has been a dramatic increase in the UFO sightings over the Israeli skies. Skeptics say, "Israelis are simply being swept away by the U.S. pop culture." The movie Independence day and the series X-Files are big hits in Israel. A recent Israeli pole finds that one in every two people believe in Aliens. Intellectually there has been little change in Israel. One Palestine city was connected to the internet in November. When a West Bank University tried to lease dedicated lines to be hooked up to the university it got the run-around from Israel, so it turned to a new technology developed in Israel, wireless microwave communications. The technology's founder says he estimates to have 3,000 clients a year from now hooked up to the internet. Religiously there has been many developments in Israel. On September 22 Israel marked a day of atonement, Yom Kippur. Yasser Arafat called Netanyahu to wish him a happy New Year. On Christmas eve thousands of pilgrims filled Bethlehem's 1,600 year old church to celebrate Christmas. At the mass's sermon the priest criticized Israel's rough treatment of Palestinians and religious leaders on both sides that foster extremism. Economically Israel has suffered under Netanyahu's hard-line attitude. Some cold facts include: Exports rose only 4 percent(a third of the recent average increase) Tourism is down 10 percent Unemployment rose with Israel's high tech industry reporting losses. The GNP spent on the military, currently a 10th is now rising. Netanyahu argued that these problems are inherited but experts cite rising Arab-Israeli conflict scaring away foreign investment. Koor Industries, Israel's largest industrial company reported their third quarter losses at ten percent. The cause for the loss CEO, Benjamin Gaon, says is Israel's high interest rates and the shekels rise against the U.S. dollar. Towards the end of December Israel, in an attempt to lower the 300 million a month deficit by raising taxes. This, experts claim is a result of Israel's economic slowdown. Jacob Frenkel, the governor of the bank of Israel says that the government should try to focus more on reducing the government spending(50% of the GNP) than raising taxes. Either way Netanyahu has a tough road ahead of him to try to keep down inflation and taxes while still trying to reduce Israeli's debt. Under Netanyahu Israel has seen rough times in all aspects. Netanyahu's slow change towards the political center will better serve Israel, but is it going to be in time? Netanyahu's continued West Bank Housing projects keep infuriating the Arab world. In Israel's future I see more bloodshed but hope still exists for the peace that Prime Minister Rabin had hoped for before his assassination. Politically I see peace on the horizon with Arafat and the PLO but see future conflicts with Syria over the Golan Heights. There will be renewed terrorist attacks with the Israeli pullout from Hebron because political extremists will not be settled until they obtain all of what they want. The middle east is one of the most volatile regions in the world so no one knows for sure what awaits it. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Muhammad.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Muhammad Muhammad was born about AD 570 in the city of Mecca, an important trading center in western Arabia. He was a member of the Hashim clan of the powerful Quraysh tribe. Because Muhammad's father, Abd Allah, died before he was born and his mother, Amina, when he was 6 years old, he was placed in the care of his grandfather and, after 578, of his uncle Abu Talib, who succeeded as head of the Hashim clan. At the age of about 25, Muhammad entered the employ of a rich widow, Khadijah, in her commercial enterprise. They were married soon after. Two sons, both of whom died young, and four daughters were born. One of the daughters, Fatima, acquired special prominence in later Islamic history because of her marriage to Muhammad's cousin Ali. About 610, Muhammad, while in a cave on Mount Hira outside Mecca, had a vision in which he was called on to preach the message entrusted to him by God. Further revelations came to him intermittently over the remaining years of his life, and these revelations constitute the text of the Koran. At first in private and then publicly, Muhammad began to proclaim his message: that there is but one God and that Muhammad is his messenger sent to warn people of the Judgment Day and to remind them of God's goodness. The Meccans responded with hostility to Muhammad's monotheism and iconoclasm. As long as Abu Talib was alive Muhammad was protected by the Hashim, even though that clan was the object of a boycott by other Quraysh after 616. About 619, however, Abu Talib died, and the new clan leader was unwilling to continue the protective arrangement. At about the same time Muhammad lost another staunch supporter, his wife Khadijah. In the face of persecution and curtailed freedom to preach, Muhammad and about 70 followers reached the decision to sever their ties of blood kinship in Mecca and to move to Medina, a city about 400 km (250 mi) to the north. This move, called the hegira, or hijra, took place in 622, the first year of the Muslim calendar. In Medina an organized Muslim community gradually came into existence under Muhammad's leadership. Attacks on caravans from Mecca led to war with the Meccans. Muhammad's followers obtained victory at Badr but were defeated at Uhud a year later. In 627, however, they successfully defended Medina against a siege by 10,000 Meccans. Clashes with three Jewish clans in Medina occurred in this same period. One of these clans, the Banu Qurayza, was accused of plotting against Muhammad during the siege of Medina; in retaliation all of the clan's men were killed and the women and children sold into slavery. Two years later, in the oasis of Khaybar, a different fate befell another Jewish group. After defeat they were allowed to remain there for the price of half their annual harvest of dates. Since AD 624, the Muslims of Medina had been facing Mecca during worship (earlier, they had apparently turned toward Jerusalem). Mecca was considered of primary importance to the Muslim community because of the presence there of the Kaaba. This sanctuary was then a pagan shrine, but according to the Koran, it had been built by Abraham and his son Ishmael and had therefore to be reintegrated in Muslim society. An attempt to go on pilgrimage to Mecca in 628 was unsuccessful, but at that time an arrangement was made allowing the Muslims to make the pilgrimage the next year, on condition that all parties cease armed hostilities. Incidents in 629 ended the armistice, and in January 630, Muhammad and his men marched on Mecca. The Quraysh offer to surrender was accepted with a promise of general amnesty, and hardly any fighting occurred. Muhammad's generosity to a city that had forced him out 8 years earlier is often quoted as an example of remarkable magnanimity. In his final years Muhammad continued his political and military involvements, making arrangements with nomadic tribes ready to accept Islam and sending expeditions against hostile groups. A few months after a farewell pilgrimage to Mecca in March 632 he fell ill. Muhammad died on June 8, 632, in the presence of his favorite wife, Aisha, whose father, Abu Bakr, became the first caliph. God's Messenger According to Muslim belief, God sent Muhammad as a messenger from among the Arabs, bringing a revelation in "clear Arabic" ; thus, as other peoples had received their messengers, so the Arabs received theirs. As one who had lived "a lifetime" among them before his calling, however, Muhammad was rejected by many because he was simply a man among men and not an angelic being. As Moses had brought the Law and Jesus had received the Gospel, the Prophet Muhammad was the recipient of the Koran. He is "the Seal of the Prophets", and the Koran is the perfection of all previous revelations. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Multiculturalism In Canada.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Multiculturalism Multiculturalism is a part of any country.There are Jews in Germany, Poles in Ireland, Asians in Canada and so on. I believe multiculturalism is a good idea. It provides a wealth of cultural activities, foods, and different views of life. No one is really a true Canadian besides the native people. We are all part of a vast society we call Canada. In Canada we pride ourselves in being a mosaic, so to speak,unlike the United States where they are a so called melting pot so that if it doesn't fit they make it fit where as we change to adapt. The many cultures existing in Canada have created a rich cultural experience. An example is our Heritage Day celebrations where we celebrate our various diversities. Did you know that the most commonly spoken language in Vancouver is Mandarin Chinese and other dialects of Chinese? People may be shocked but it's true because we are a free country and allow lots of immigrants in. The fact is that we may have to close our doors to immigrants because sooner or later the social system will break down. We will not be regarded as the great free country that accepts so many immigrants.Although I hope we do not come to this point,I fear it will happen. Language is a part of multiculturalism. Evidence of this can be found in some many cities and towns. You will see signs in English or French and under them, you will see German ,Japanese ,Arabic etc..Other examples of this are newspapers and media productions in varying languages. People that have a choice as to where they want to immigrate to , usually choose Canada because Canada is a great place to live according to U.N. statistics. Some people don't like multiculturalism and form cults, an example of which is the KKK. They are dead set against black people and believe in white supremacy. Such people are injust and completely wrong because everyone is equal in the eyes of the law. I think that we as a world community have to go through some drastic changes in order to cope with the problems of racism, prejudice and stereotyping. We all must learn to be more tolerant and accepting of different peoples and their beliefs. In my corollary I think multiculturalism is a great thing. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Murder.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Murder "And Cain talked with Abel his brother: and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him." (Genesis 4:8) Back in those days, murder was pretty clear cut. If you killed someone, it was called murder. Of course, if you had a reason, then it was justifiable. Back then, it was an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Or a life for a life. But in these fast paced and politically correct times, is there justifiable murder? Webster's Dictionary says that murder is "the unlawful killing of another human being, especially with premeditated malice." Unlawful killing of another human being. And most people would tend to agree, that there are circumstances in which killing someone else is just fine, and even desirable. But what are those circumstances? What exactly is justifiable killing? Is abortion OK? How about war? Euthanasia? These are topics that are in hot controversy these days, as civil rights groups battle political standings that have been around for dozens of years. Capital punishment is among those instances of justified killing that has been debated for years, and continues to be an extremely indecisive and complicated issue. Adversaries of capital punishment point to the Marshalls and the Millgards, while proponents point to the Dahmers and Gacys. Society must be kept safe from the monstrous barbaric acts of these individuals and other killers by taking their ability to function and perform in our society away from them. At the same time, we must insure that innocent people such as Marshall and Millgard are never convicted or sentenced to death for a crime that they did not commit. In February 1963, Gary McCorkell, a 19 year old sex offender, was scheduled to hang. But just days before his execution, the then Liberal cabinet of Lester Person commuted McCorkell to life in prison. His actual term was only a percentage of that. Less than 20 years later, McCorkell was arrested, tried, and convicted for the kidnapping and rape of a 10-year old Tennessee boy. He was sentenced to 63 years in prison. Once again, his term was reduced, and he moved to Canada. Prior to leaving Canada, he was sought by Metro Police in the attempted murder of an 11-year old boy. What has been gained by this? Had McCorkell been executed in 1963, two boys would never have gone through the horror of being sexually abused. He killed two boys, and assaulted two others, leaving one for dead. He knew exactly what he was doing. What right does this man have to live? He ruined the lives of 4 children. What kind of a life would the state have been taking away in this case? An innocent life? A forgiving life? No; a life that was beyond the realm of reform, and did not care to be. There are those who claim that capital punishment is in itself a form of vengeance on the killer. But in the same light, locking a human being behind steel bars for many years is vengeance as well. Adversaries of capital punishment claim that incarceration is far more humane than having the state execute that individual. Is it "humane" that an individual who took the life of another should receive heating, clothing, indoor plumbing and 3 meals a day while the homeless who has harmed no one receives nothing? Capital punishment is not murder. Murder is "unlawful killing." Should it remain lawful? Definitely. Capital punishment is retribution. Capital punishment is a penalty for actions a person has committed. Will it reform criminals? Perhaps, perhaps not. But capital punishment should not be dismissed because it might not effectively reform criminals. Capital punishment should be kept, in fact, because it removes from society permanently those individuals which are undesirable and unhealthy to the rest of the community. Capital punishment should remain lawful, and therefore, not murder. Abortion has also been hotly debated over the years. Is abortion lawful killing? Although both sides seem to be in utter disagreement, there are many agreements that neither realize. Both would agree that the life of a child is a precious thing that must be protected to the fullest extent of the law. They would also agree that it is a woman's exclusive right to make decisions concerning her own body. But what determines whether or not abortion is murder or not is: Is the fetus a person? That question is what has been fought over for decades. In 1981 the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee held hearings to discuss the question of when biological life begins. The testimony was revealing. An overwhelming majority of the experts answered emphatically that biological life begins at conception or implantation. Although pro-abortionists failed to produce an expert witness who would testify that life begins at some point other than conception or implantation. they did present an interesting point of view, which has become popular over the last several decades. This alternate viewpoint basically sees all life as a continuum with no specific beginning. It considers the continuum to run from sperm to egg, to singlecell zygote, to multi-cell blastocyst, to embryo, to fetus, to newborn, etc. This view supports the rights of each mother and doctor to individually choose when, in the continuum, the fetus becomes a separate individual. Aside from the biological arguments, social issues have always been part of the controversy. Many of the mothers that get abortions are teenagers. Women from ages 17-21 have the highest abortion rate in a recent study by the University of California. Babies born to these mothers are often subject to poor lifestyles. The mothers are not fully capable of supporting themselves without a child, and with the added burden of a new baby, they are often driven to poverty. The child grows up in an environment that is unhealthy, and often leads to violence. Additionally, more mothers in this age group than any other abuse drugs and alcohol during pregnancy. The results are premature birth, fetal alcohol syndrome, and low birth weight. These children have to go through life with defects, malnutrition, and are often, throughout their lives, underweight. By aborting these children, the unprepared mothers spare their children from lives of misery, or even mental health problems. Pro-life advocates suggest that an alternative to this is adoption or foster care. These services, while sometimes productive, leave children feeling unwanted, unloved, forgotten by their real parents, and still miserable. Also, adoption does not save these children from fetal alcohol syndrome, or other birth defects. The children will still have unproductive and generally unhappy lives, if even conscious of their surroundings. Adoption does not spare these children from lives of unhappiness, and can often produce, from its effect, criminals from the neglect they felt as children growing up. Abortion is not murder. The fetus is a living organism, yes; but so is the sperm that provides of its genetic code, and the egg that provides the other half. A plant is a living organism, but is not treated with such high reverence. The fetus is not a living person, and thus abortion is not "unlawful killing of another human being." A woman has rights over her own body, and should be allowed to do with it as she pleases. The fetus would not survive without the nutrients provided by the mother, and therefore it is still an extension of her body. Abortion is not murder, but an effective way to deal various social problems ranging from unplanned pregnancy to the criminal population. Euthanasia is the final topic of this paper. Euthanasia is the most recent addition to the list of controversial methods of death. It was 1990 in Michigan that Dr. Jack Kavorkian received national attention for his physician assisted suicides. Is euthanasia murder? Should euthanasia be made "lawful killing?" Euthanasia is the process of bringing death to patients that are willing, because of incurable, painful illnesses, to die. We deserve the right to choose when we will die. In a life full of unknowing, we should have at least the small comfort of knowing that if we are deathly ill, we can choose whether or not we will live in pain. There are now guidelines for physician assisted suicide. The guidelines involve minimum amounts of time before euthanasia can be done, and methods of going about it. The guidelines ensure that the suicide can't be done in error, that the diagnosis is 100% correct. They also ensure that there will no lawsuits from anyone, and that each member of the parties invloved have had ample time to think about the decision. Last year, Janet Good, age 72, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and on August 31, underwent a 10 hour surgery at William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak. The prognosis was terminal. She went through hours of incredibly painful radiation therapy to slow the cancer's progress, but to no avail. Every day is an ordeal. To simply get out of bed, she must take medicine to deal with the pain. She has been working with Dr. Kevorkian since her operation. She believes that every individual who is stricken with lifethreatening illness should have the legal right to die, if and when they see fit. The doctors that assist in these suicides are not murderers, they are heroes. They spare their patients months or even years of excruciating pain when the final paramount to all their suffering is death. By helping their patients die, they help them reach their inevitable goal of death without the pain and suffering. Euthanasia is not murder. The patients make a willful decision to die, and the if the circumstance are right, the doctors help them by making their passage into death as painless and quick as possible. Physician assisted suicide is by far one of the most humane things to do. Horses are put to death if they break or even sprain their leg because the leg will never heal. Dogs are put to death if they contract incurable diseases to spare them the pain. Extending this service to humans is natural and humane. In today's society, murder has become a controversial word. No longer is it as simple as Cain and Able. Murder is not simply the killing of another human being, but the unlawful killing of someone else. If that person commits an act that is horrible and vicious enough to warrant death, then that is precisely what that person should receive. If a mother does not wish to be pregnant, then it is her right as a person to abort the fetus before it is born. If a person who is in insufferable agony and pain wishes to die, then the only right thing to do is to give them their wish. But the controversy surrounding these and other instances of death will probably continue to divide the nation in two, and only when we, as a country, define murder in absolute terms, can there be political and social peace. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Mussolini.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Mussolini Benito Mussolini was the founder of Italian Fascism and premier of Italy ruling as a dictator from about 1925 until his dismissal in 1943. Mussolini was born to a socialist blacksmith. As a child he was unruly and undisciplined. He shared his fathers views picking up other ideas from authors of the time. Mussolini became a schoolteacher and journalist. He spent several years in Switzerland and took Rachele Guidi as is wife, they had five children. In 1913 Mussolini became editor of the Milan Socialist newspaper Avanti! When World War 1 began in 1914 he first opposed Italy's involvement, until he changed his mind, saying that Italy should take a stand with the Allies. This got him expelled from the socialist party. He soon founded his own paper, Il popolo d'italia, which became the backbone of his Fascist movement. He then served in the Army until he was wounded in 1917. In 1919 Mussolini and some other war veterans founded a nationalistic revolutionary group called the Fasci di Combattimento. His movement turned into powerful radicalism, obtaining support from landowners in the Po valley, industrialists, and many army officers. Fascist blackshirt squads carried on civil war with Socialists, Communists, Catholics, and Liberals. In October 1922 Mussolini secured permission from King Victor Emmanuel lll to form a coalition government. In 1925-26, after a lengthy crisis with the parliament following the killing of the Socialist leader Giacomo Matteotti, he imposed a Totalarian Dictatorship. His Corperative State came to terms with Italian Capitalism but abolished the free trade unions. In 1929 he ended conflict with the church through the Lateran Treaty of 1929. In the 1930's Mussolini turned to an aggressive foreign policy, conquering Ethiopia(1935-36) and helping General Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War. In 1936 he joined with Hitler's Germany and soon formed a military alliance(1939). In 1939 Mussolini ordered his armies to occupy Albania. However he kept out of World War ll until 1940, when the fall of France was imminent and the Germans seemed to be winning the war. After a series of Italian military disasters in Greece and North Africa, the leaders of his party abandoned him. The king dismissed him on July 25,1943 and had him arrested. On September 12 the Germans rescued him, making him puppet head of a government in northern Italy. In April 1945 Mussolini and his mistress, Clara Petacci, tried to run from advancing Allied forced. Captured by Partisans at Lake Como, they were shot on April 28 and their bodies were hung in a public square in Milan. Mussolini was later buried at Predappio, his birthplace. Although popular with most Italians until the late 1930's, he lost their support when he dragged his people into a war they were unprepared to fight. Few regretted the overthrow of Fascism or his death. Today many of Mussolini's writings and speeches are available in English including an autobiography written in 1939. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\My Experience Principles of Management.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Principles of Management Prof. Eser U. Belding December 18, 1996 My Experiences: I believe that the Principles of Management course provided me with invaluable information which will help in furthering both my professional as well as personal life. I believe that learning is a process by which an individual undergoes certain changes. Also, during the learning process, many of the beliefs which a person holds are challenged. I underwent various changes during this course. This paper will explain those changes. Furthermore, I will detail the concepts, ideas and situations which had the greatest impact on me. Before taking this course, my definition of the concept of management would have been strictly based on power relationships within an organization, how to use power to achieve your goals and how to manipulate people. Although this definition might seem totalitarian, my background in Political Science supported my initial misconceptions of management. I am a political science major and the questions most often asked in political science courses deal with power within a structure and how this power is used, abused and expressed by those in control. Therefore, I came into the Principles of Management course with the notion that I was going to be learning about power. This notion was challenged as I learned that there are three different perspectives that are used to analyze an organization. There are three different perspectives used to view organizational behavior and processes: Strategic-Design, Political and Cultural. Initially, I was looking at the organization and the process of management from the political perspective. This perspective deals with the use of power and influence throughout the organization. However, I also had to learn about the strategic-design perspective, which dealt with the differentiation, efficiency, strategy, coordination and integration of various tasks within the organization. I also had to learn about the cultural perspective which focused on the way in which people assigned meanings to their respective work experiences. I was beginning to understand that management and the organization are not just an arena for power relations. Instead, a variety of factors compose management. Management deals with the tasks, structure, culture and decision-making processes within an organization. In order to be an effective manager one has to study and analyze the organization using all the perspectives. This was the first phase of my learning: I was beginning to understand that the perspective from which I had been viewing the organization was insufficient because I was missing other important aspects of the organization. Therefore, I needed to use a multi-perspective lens to analyze the organization. I also learned about the roles that are present within an organization. These roles are: director, producer, facilitator, mentor, coordinator, innovator and broker. Each of these roles has a distinct function within the context of the organization. These roles can complement and supplement each other. After doing the in-class exercise, I discovered that I fell in Quinnís Rational Goal quadrant and was oriented towards director and producer roles. A director is expected to clarify expectations through processes, such as planning and goal setting. Directorís define roles and tasks, generate rules and policies and give instructions. After studying many of my everyday activities, I noticed that I was inclined to give orders and that I was highly competitive and goal oriented. I was also oriented towards the producer role. A producer is supposed to accept responsibly, complete assignments and maintain high personal productivity. By identifying the roles towards which I was inclined, it made it easier to track and remedy my negative tendencies. For instance, the my most negative tendency emanating from the director/producer role is that fact that I can be insensitive to an individualsí needs in the face of accomplishing my goals. After a process of self-examination I identified my problems and negative tendencies. At times, I possess an almost fanatical desire to achieve my goals. This fanatical desire is so strong that it can override friendships, destroy relationships and alienate people. I also began to notice that I had the tendency to act quite insensitive, inconsiderate and not be approachable. Once I had identified this problem, I realized that I needed to diversify myself by adding elements from the other roles, such as mentor and facilitator. I believed that if I complemented my director/producer roles with elements from the mentor or facilitator roles, then this would enable me to foster a collective effort, be sensitive towards the needs of individuals and still be able to achieve my goals. This was the second phase of my learning: I had identified a personal deficiency and needed to work towards complementing my director/producer roles with roles from the Human Relations quadrant. One of the key concepts of management and the key themes of the course was teamwork. We were organized into teams and the team was the unit by which the Professor measured our performance. By working in a team-environment, I was able to learn the value of multiple perspectives and the need to use different roles depending on the situation. In analyzing Synergy, Inc., I learned that we had fused the three perspectives to create a unique identity and structure. For instance, in the strategic design perspective, tasks were organized around a need-basis and assignments were shared. Politically, we had no formal authority or decision making body. Instead, all the members of Synergy, Inc. were carefully listened to and their opinions evaluated and discussed. Culturally, Synergy, Inc. formulated its own distinct culture, which consisted of certain rituals and routines before team meetings. When problems began to occur and breakdown the team process, it was necessary to study the different perspectives in order to determine the origin and possible solution to the problem. In solving team problems, we needed to identify the symptoms and treat the causes of these symptoms (not the symptoms themselves). Also, the problems which arose forced us to evaluate our present processes and attempt to create new processes. We had to learn to adapt to the new environment. One problem which occurred and caused us to ?re-inventî ourselves was the absenteeism of team member Raquel. Due to various health reasons, Raquel was unable to attend team meetings. We had just lost a valuable team member, whom we were counting on for essential work on performance evaluations such as the book report, interactive cases and the news report. What did we do to prevent the loss of one team member from destroying our entire team process? We re-assigned tasks and began to coordinate other ways of finishing the assignments. For instance, team members Will and Jeb were assigned Raquelís interactive cases and team member Josh was assigned Raquelís presentation for the news report. By creatively manipulating the Strategic Design perspective, we were able to resolve a potential problem. Another important aspect of the team was that each person had different roles. For instance, I believe that Will was the team director and facilitator. Generally, Jeb and Elizabeth and myself participated in the role of producer. Furthermore, I attempted to take on a facilitator role in order to improve my Human Relations quadrant skills. I attempted to accomplish this by building team cohesion and morale, also by trying to obtain input from all participants in team meetings. I found myself uttering the phrases, ?What do you think about that . .î and ?What are you opinions concerning the subject . . .î more than I had ever before. I also attempted to diffuse potentially volatile situations by using humor and other pressure-relieving tactics to show that all issues have a lighter side. Perhaps the class activity which I found most rewarding were the interactive cases. These cases dealt with everyday issues which confront managers and challenge you to use all of your skills and experiences in bringing about a successful resolution to the situation. The cases provided me with an opportunity to put to practice many of the concepts which I had learned in class. I found the motivation and ethics cases to be the most interesting. The motivation case was interesting because it proved that everyone is motivated by a different reason. There can be no "textbook" approach on how to motivate people. Instead, a manager has to sit down and communicate with the person and find out what is behind the motivational problem. In this particular case, all of the people that had low sales figures had a unique reason and motive behind their problems. The ethics case was interesting because there was no clear answer on what should be done to remedy the situation. This case was difficult because one had to balance the interests of the company with the ethical issues and consequences. It is very difficult to come to a resolution when the needs of the company conflict with what is ethical. I believe that the discussion of the future was an integral part of the Principles of Management class. In the beginning we started discussing the past models of organizational structure. We talked about Max Weber's Bureaucratic model. This model was once an efficient and orderly way of structuring the organization since the organization was in a stable environment. However, today it is obsolete. The current and future models will stress flexibility, freedom from rigidity, networkability and flatness. Organizations designed in this manner will be able to exploit the quickly changing environment. The future environments will be characterized by chaos, complexity and contradiction. Increasingly, managers will have to deal with tumultuous work environments instead of the stable environments of the past. A metaphor used to compare the past management environment and the future business environment is: "The old environment was like sailing. The new environment is like a kayak race." The calm, secure conditions of sailing best reflect the old business and management environments. However, the new environment is best represented by the chaos and instability of a kayak race. "At any time your canoe can capsize and leave you to drown," said CEO Michael Cooper of METCECH Incorporated. This is further emphasized by the increased competition present in the marketplace. The high levels of competition are making it so that only the companies which are most in tune with their customer's needs and are most efficient survive. In conclusion, after identifying and integrating the first and second phases of learning, I was able to work towards transforming myself. The transformation process does not end when I hand this paper in or with the end of the course. Rather, the transformation process is a constant struggle between myself and what I have learned. If I choose to apply the lessons which I have learned, then I will win that struggle. However, if I ignore the lessons then I lose the struggle. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\My travels.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ It has been my observation that there is a direct relationship between knowing and traveling. The fact is that the kinds of people who are attracted to the traveling lifestyle are usually curious, eager and active. There's something about "seeing it, feeling it, being it," that makes my travel experiences more meaningful than reading about the places I've seen in books or seeing them on television. My cross-country trip provides many examples of what I mean. I witnessed the number of travelers or tourists I saw at parks and monuments devoted to famous events in our past. Gettysburg, for example. It is one of those places where you get to feel as well as see history. If you go through the audiovisual offerings first and read some of the literature provided, you will probably enjoy and understand the actual tour of the battlefield better. It would be difficult for a person to spend a full day (better yet, two) at Gettysburg and not have a good comprehension of that famous turning point in history. Now about those geography lessons I got as I toured the various regions of the United States. I feel sorry for people who have only read about the largest and best-preserved prehistoric cliff dwellings and pueblos in the United States, particularly in southwestern Colorado at Mesa Verde National Park; or for those who have never experienced the top-of-the world feeling you get as you stand and look down into nature's greatest example of sculpture, the Grand Canyon in northern Arizona; or savored the feeling of grandeur that comes with viewing the huge heads of four great presidents: Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Roosevelt at Mount Rushmore near Keystone , South Dakota; or watched and heard the water pouring into torrents over the cliffs at Niagara Falls between New York and the province Ontario. The list of wonderful places is endless, but as an avid traveler my family and I kept looking and learning. Besides seeing places, I saw how people vary in their ways of living. I recognized that America means many different cultures: a dose of sociology along with history and geography. In my travels my family and I strayed from the main highways once again to Dinosaur National Monument, Colorado, and got a glimpse of the paleontologists' discipline. How remarkable to see our prehistory revealed by their patient labors. The scientific mind gets abundant opportunity to expand in visits to the many museums and exhibits available to the avid traveler. For example, those intrigued by space travel should visit NASA facilities at Houston, Texas; Huntsville, Alabama; and Cape Kennedy, Florida. For those more inclined toward the arts, how about the lessons you learn when visiting some of the hundreds of wonderful art museums around the country. In closing, students of nature have opportunities everywhere and of every kind to satisfy their thirst for knowledge. Our great parks, national, state and local, offer a fabulous wealth of flora and fauna ranging from the cypress islands and 'gators of the Everglades to the lichens and grizzly bears of Alaska. The USA is a wonderful schoolroPOST /autoupdate2.cgi? HTTP/1.0 Accept: */*, q f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\NAFTA.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Introduction I believe that the North American Free Trade Agreement was an inevitable step in the evolution of the United States economic policy. The globilization of the world economy due to technological advances in computers and communications have shrunk the world to the point where no single country acting alone can effectively compete on the foreign market. Even the United States, with its vast resources, can not have an absolute advantage in all thing that it produces. It does not have unlimited factors of endowments and must do its best to make these available to the companies within its borders. There are two basic sides to the argument over the North American Free Trade Agreement. The Pro-NAFTA side views the treaty as a way to provide a large, efficient production base for the entire geopolitical area. This would result in lower cost to consumers and an increase in exports to Mexico and Canada. The multiplier effect would then take place producing growth in all areas. The Anti-NAFTA group feels that Mexico will be an unequal partner due to the lower wage rates of the Mexican populace, causing the loss of thousands of jobs in the United States and Canada. Environmentalist fear that pollution will spread across the continent. Farmers fear that produce grown in Mexico will be contaminated from pesticides banned in the United States. These are but a few of the arguments for and against NAFTA. What does NAFTA mean A Free Trade Area is, by definition, an area where all barriers to trade are lifted. This is not the case with regards to NAFTA at this point. Currently most of the trade barriers between the United States and Canada are lifted but those with Mexico have largely been kept in place. This is an obvious disparity on the part of the Mexican government but is due largely to the proportional loss of income to the governments in each country. The Gross Domestic Product per individual in Mexico is one seventh of the other two countries. Therefore, the loss of revenue would have a major impact on the daily life of its population and the operation of the government . Never before has a major economic power like the United States considered a free trade area with an under-developed third world country. The major difference between a Free Trade Area and Common Market is that a Free Trade Area primarily deals with trade, while a Common Market has this in addition to no barriers on factors of production and a common external trade policy. While on the surface it seems that a free trade area would always be a good thing, it is easier said then done. The majority of people that oppose NAFTA do so because of the potential for loss of employment. Mexico with its cheap work force, will tend to make manufactures requiring extensive manual labor more likely to move to the lower cost area. A loss of sovereignty may also be a stumbling block, since some economic policy decisions are taken out of the governing bodies' hands. Another factor is the extent of trade creation versus trade diversion. The difference is if high cost domestic producers are replaced by low cost producers within the trade area then trade creation occurs. If trade diversion occurs, it would have a major impact on consumer prices. This practice is evident in the textile industry and will be discussed later. History of NAFTA In 1988, the United States and Canada agreed to enter into a free trade agreement. This went into effect on January 1, 1989 and was widely accepted as a logical course of action. Canada is a highly developed nation and has a lot in common with the United States. Its per capita income and hourly wages are equivalent to the U.S. and has long been considered our brother to the north. Then in 1991, Mexico entered into talks with Canada and the United States that concluded on 17 December 1992. The treaty was ratified and came into effect on 1 January 1994. The treaty called for the elimination of all tariffs between the three nations over a ten year time span. Some of these tariffs are listed below. 1992 Mexican Imports from U.S. IMPORT VALUE TARIFF % TIME FRAME Motor Vehicle Body Parts $1.3 Billion 10% - 15% 5 Years Motor Vehicle Parts (other) $1.3 Billion 10% - 15% 5 Years Oil, not crude $809 Million 10% 10 Years Radio -TV parts $749 Million 10% Immediate Ignition Wire Sets $657 Million 15% 10 Years Source: FAIR TRADE? TARIFFS WITH AND WITHOUT NAFTA, TIME MAGAZINE DATED 11/25/95 Mexico's turmoil since NAFTA The political turmoil in Mexico has added a great deal of controversy to the issue. On the same day that NAFTA was implemented, some of the poorest regions of Mexico in the Chiapas highlands revolted. After twelve days an accord was reached with the rebels. In march, the Mexican president's chosen successor was assassinated. This forced the president to pick Zedeillo who eventually won the race for the Presidency. Just after the new year, the peso was allowed to be floated against the dollar causing up to a 40% loss in the value of the peso. This caused 12% of Mexico's Foreign Direct Investment to leave the country. The United States, which holds more than half of all direct investments in Mexico, arranged a peso-rescue package of as much as $13 billion which helped to stop the downward spiral of the peso. This devaluation should have little direct impact on the United States except that some companies may find Mexico is even more attractive to move to. Commercial lending rates and credit card interest rates in Mexico have almost doubled and hover around 40% and inflation is expected to reach 20%. These factors are expected to impact the poor and middle class of Mexico the most and possibly cause more unrest in the already unstable areas (LACAYO AOL). Facts Against NAFTA National origin is determined by the country in which the product was last substantially transformed. Trade diversion has occurred in the textile industry due to the triple rule of origin for apparel manufactures. This rule requires that not only the clothing be sewn in North America but that the yarn the cloth was made from comes from North America. Wool suits are one of Canada's most successful apparel exports, and since Canadian apparel makers import most of their fabric from Europe, the triple rule of origin will throttle their trade with the United States. The Caribbean Islands are also large producers of textiles and if tariffs were kept in place on those countries and lifted on our trade partners it could devastate their economies. There would also be increases to the cost to consumers. The average cotton shirt will increase $12 and a wool skirt could rise $22. (BOVARD 24) Companies that are labor intensive will tend to move their manufacturing facilities to Mexico. The overall figures for jobs lost as a result of the free trade accord so far total 42,221, according to the Labor Department. Another 226,030 jobs have disappeared as result of trade pressures from other parts of the world since Mr. Clinton came into office (Landers AOL). The following are statements published by Ross Perot's Afta-NAFTA update: (Jones AOL) * "Nintendo of America announced on Jan. 10, 1994 that it was moving 136 jobs from its U.S. payrolls to Mexico. Because of NAFTA provisions, these unemployed workers qualify for federal entitlements, including welfare benefits paid for by U.S. tax dollars" * "Phillips Lighting laid off 60 workers, including some that had worked for the company for 27 years, as the company moved its operationss to Mexico" The loss of sovereignty issue for Mexico revolves around its oil industry. This is a nationalized business in Mexico and they do not want Foreign Direct Investment invading it. This has been addressed by President Clinton with special concessions that are not part of the NAFTA treaty. The major sovereignty issue for the United States is immigration of Mexican nationals into the United States. This would cause the eventual lowering of wages in the border states and higher social system costs. There is no empirical data to support this claim and I believe the opposite will occur. The major reason that illegal aliens enter this country is for economic reasons. With the establishment of new manufacturing facilities and an increase in the standard of living the result should be lowered amounts of illegal immigration (Write AOL). The environmental concern of pollution overflowing into the United States has been addressed by a supplementary agreement that has been amended to the NAFTA treaty (Levine 6). This agreement limits the amount of dumping and aids in establishing waste water treatment facilities in Mexico. I believe the pollution that a country produces is directly related to the standard of living of the people. If the general population does not have enough food to eat or a place to sleep, they really don't care about the environment or how their actions affect it. If you raise the comfort level of the people involved they will naturally evolve to address these higher level concerns. Facts For NAFTA The signing of the NAFTA treaty has created a home market base of 360 million consumers. This in itself has had a tremendous impact on the three countries involved. One of the greatest fears expressed by NAFTA's staunchest opponents was that a "giant sucking sound" would result from an unequal trade flow. Dollars would chase the cheaper Mexican products south. This would make the peso precious, lessening the pressure to devalue the peso. The United States imports from Mexico did grow by $7 billion to reach an unprecedented $40 billion but United States exports increased $8 billion to $42 billion. This maintained Mexico's trade gap which is the reason that the peso plunged (Wright AOL). To the north, trade between Canada and the U.S. hit $260 billion in 1994, this is up by 50% from 1988, when they first signed a free trade agreement. This is due largely to the relative cheap Canadian dollar. In autos, for example, it now costs "20% to 25% less to assemble a car in Canada then in the US." says David Adams, director of policy for Canada's Motor Vehicle Manufacture's Association. Ford Motor Company alone has spent $2.2 billion to upgrade its car and truck manufacturing plants. This surge in auto manufacturing has caused a boon for machinery and equipment manufacturers in the United States. Exports to Canada for this type of equipment has risen 500% in the last decade. Canadian exports to the U.S. grew by 21% in 1994 and are expected to have another double digit increase this year. Ontario alone imported more U.S. goods than our second largest trading partner (Symonds AOL). More jobs have been created than lost as a result of NAFTA. According to the f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\napoleon.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Dan Darouvar 1/9/97 History 10 Paper NAPOLEON Napolen Bonaparte was born in 1769 and died in 1821. Napoleon was a military genius for the loyalty of his troops, and for his spectacular victories. The many change of the government in France, against the background of war, made possible the rise of a military dictator. Since childhood, Napoleon was taught stratagies and tactics to help him succeed through battles. At the age of fifteen, he entered the advance military school, the Ecole Militaire in Paris. Napoleon was promoted to a general at the age of twenty four, where he was put in charge of the Italian campaigns. After conquering most of the Italian Penninsula, Napoleon gained the support of the government and earned the respect of Sieyes and Tallyrand. They identified Napoleon as their strong man in the Coup of Brumaire. In 1799, Napoleon introduced a dictatorship to bring order to the chaos in France. He instituted many reforms, for example in the civil service and treasury. He guaranteed the Frence people equality and fraternity. In exchange, he took away their liberty. Another reform was the creation of the national eduction system. This was a pleasant addition because it adds knowledge to the Empire. Another was a knew constitution, in this he presented to the public in a plebiscite that required them either to accept fully his version or to allow him to govern without the restrictions of a constitutions. This was a lose, lose situation for the people. The support of the army was a major factor in his successful dictatorship. Napoleon put the three consuls in charge of the new executive branch in which he was the first consul. Napoleon also introduced many foreign policies. One was the continental system, this forbade the impotation of British goods into Europe. In th first coalition, England joined with Austria and Prussia. The French was deafeated because of their embarrasing loss in the Mediterranean. They lost most of their supplies which doomed theur chances for a victory. Austria alianced with Russia and England to form the second coalition. This war was concluded by a brief interval of peace, which lasted from 1801 to 1803. A third coalition was formed by an aliance between England, Austria, and Russia. The French were conquered at sea, but with perseverence, successfully dominated at land. After their defeat, the Frence army became invincible. This shortly came to an end after the French were embarrased in the invasion of Russia. Of the 600,000 troops that entered Russia, 400,000 died and 100,000 were taken prisoner. The biggest factor in the decline of Napoleon was his defeat in Russia. England, Prussia, Russia, and Austria joined forces to begin the war of liberation. In this battle, Napoleon was forced to surrender when her was attacked from all sides by his enemies. By terms of the surrender, Napoleon was forced give up the throne. In his place, Louis XVIII took over the throne. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\NASA.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ INTRODUCTION In the book Organizational Communication Imperatives, by Philip K. Tompkins, we are introduced to a chapter that deals with an organization that is held under high prestige by not only those who are employed by it, but by a country as well. This American organization is NASA, (National Aeronautical Space Administration), and although a very prestigious place to work, it is not free of its share of wrongdoing and counter productive ways. Ten years ago (1986), NASA was faced with its biggest catastrophe, The Challenger Explosion. This preventable event , which claimed the life of a crew of seven, left many questioning the ability of communication throughout NASA. The idea that a crucial element of the space shuttle, O-Rings, would pass inspection, although many scientists doubted the success of these, would be the ultimate cause of the crew's demise shortly after lift off. It seems these scientists' doubts were overlooked by a higher authority who gave the go ahead knowing the risk at stake. The United States Army, well known for its maintaining of order and conduct, has fallen into a most peculiar and shameful predicament due to lack of communication. The New York Times brought its readers to the attention that all was not right in the military. An organization that shares a similar prestige to that of NASA, an organization who has exemplified its leadership time and time again by becoming a force, so powerful, that it is sometimes considered to police the world, has fallen into a sex abuse scandal. It seems that several women have come forward to proclaim their mistreatment from various acts ranging from rape to verbal harassment instilled upon them by members of the military. These women feel, had there been a genuine form of organizational communication, the study of sending and receiving messages, they would not have fell victims' to such hideous crimes. Senator Barbara Boxer stated (New York Times 11/96) that the complaints made by the women who came forward immediately were lost somewhere along the line in an attempt to reach a higher authority, signifying a need for some type of restructure. STRENGTHS In the minds of many people today the United States Army Is considered to have one of the best structured organizational communication networks. This is based upon the specified code of conduct that the Army is underlyingly ruled by. This is upheld by the specific chain of command which is easily distinguished by rank and uniform. Strict punishment is carried out upon those who violate rules and conduct, commonly accepted by this organization. The authority figures, in the Army, set tasks, and relay a common purpose to all subordinates down to the lowest level in the organization. They also oversee that actions and conduct are carried out in line with the organization ideology. Luckily for NASA, during Werner Von Braun's tenure at the helm, there were many strengths in this company's organizational communication structure. A more than adequate system of communication was established and overseen by Von Braun that centered upon the theory of upward communication. This theory was designed around the principle, that workers closest to the problem had a large "hand in" the decision making. The term, penetration, was key for this organizations checks and balances. It established extensive contact between contractors and NASA officials at the Marshall Space Flight Center. Von Braun's system of the "Monday Notes," kept communication between each level of this organization at an informed stature This was a two-way direct form of communication where feedback was present in both parties. The high level of redundancy in this organization can be attributed to the success of the Monday Notes in the communication process. NASA's lateral function kept different labs up to date upon each other, and its workers possessed a "willingness to serve," a principle where workers had the necessary skills and training to perform their jobs. WEAKNESSES Believe it or not, the Army, as strong as it may appear, contains several weaknesses to coincide with its strengths. This can be attributed to the Army's system of downward communication. This system is based upon the giving and taking of orders, with an understanding that no questions shall be asked of authority. The lack of checks and balances in the Army leads to enormous amounts of discretion held by any officer with a considerable amount of power and prestige. This can sometimes lead to hostility and moral masochism, the act of abuse and overextension of power towards subordinates. Feelings of persecution, fear, and intimidation of superiors are associated with this trend as stated by the New York Times. (November 8, 1996) These feelings made evident with the circumstances that have taken place. As one of the most successful organizational systems established in NASA, this organization did indeed have its flaws. Von Braun never looked at problems as a whole, instead he looked at each problem individually and did not study the problems collectively in the big picture. There were problems between different branches in the organization. This was also apparent in the problems that divided the scientists and engineers. Due to Von Braun's "Monday Notes," which was a strength, actually led to a flaw. He never fully solved problems between the different groups and labs. The invisibility of the boss resulted in weaker attitudes as subordinates assumed Von Braun to be uninterested in their work. The last weakness in the organization was the perceived inequality in upper level positions. American born managers felt that they were shut out of higher offices, saved for the German's, Von Braun a native of Germany himself, which established a layer of investment within the organization. After years of success under the leadership of Werner Von Braun, NASA, now under the control of a man by the name of Lucas, was introduced to a system of "Kill the Messenger". A seemingly poor way to transfer communication because it entails the idea that the subordinates bring bad news to a superior only to have the superior either ignore the problem, blame the messenger and even take action against the messenger. The communication is not open and as candid as seen in these cases where female officers did not report sexual abuses to proper authorities. COMPARISON In comparison between the Army's organizational communication and NASA's organizational communication, both have effective means, but differ in structure. The Army is based upon the concept of downward communication for reasons of national defense since its establishment was first implemented. Downward communication is not looked down upon in the military because authoritative positions are harder to be promoted to, due to time in service, honors, and ethos. NASA is difficult to climb the ladder, but unlike the military, NASA promotes based on intelligence, capability, and understanding in a quicker amount of time. While the military recognizes their members as equal and promotion doesn't take place until an appropriate and acceptable allotment of time has been served. An unaddressed problem in the Army deals with the fact that women, who were closest to the problem, sex abuse, have suffered due to rank and history. Because of the difficulty they faced, their complaints and plea for affirmative action, were unable to climb the ladder of authority. NASA on the other hand , with their means of an upward communication system, are equipped to handle a situation of such, by access to complaining to a higher level through the use of Monday Notes without the fear or difficulty of reaching those who have final say on matters of organizational conduct. The Army is set up with a set of tasks that are fairly routine with each company given a designated responsibility. Each patrol is not required to, nor authorized, to interfere with another company. Under a term known as, Automatic Responsibility, members of NASA were held accountable for all that took place in their working environment. This meant that if something was wrong you should report it, even if it is not in your jurisdiction. CONCLUSION If one were to analyze these two organizations and judge which has a more favorable distinction in handling the flow of communication through their organization's respectively, they may experience difficulty in that both NASA and the Army are faced with different objectives entirely. NASA is primarily about growth and constant change, staring at the threshold of space above and beyond. Whereas the Army fields a more conservative view about the likeliness of breaking the mold. It is certain that the Army continues to expand and explore new horizons, but the way they go about conquering these new areas has been the same road they have always followed. The idea of rank, commitment , and only speaking when your spoken to, puts a limit on certain aspects of reinforcing moral dilemmas that should not have taken place to begin with. Perhaps if the military as a whole were to take a more stern approach to such matters as violence, homosexuality (gay bashing), and sexual abuse, a certain threat to morale may take place and cause confusion and uncertainty to those who are affiliated in the armed forces, but how far are they willing to let people get away with such criminal behavior? Or how many lives are going to be lost if members of NASA are not given the opportunity to concentrate, as well as communicate, on specific areas of their work and the scientists' opinions are taken for granted? f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\NatureNurture or Both!.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Adem 1 Nature / Nurture or Both ! The controversy over what determines who we are, whether it is Nature (heredity, our biological make up) or Nurture (our environment) is taking a new shape. Through the past decades, psychologists have developed different theories to explain the characteristics of human-beings; how we feel, think and behave. Usually, these theories were one directional in the nature / nurture question. Today, a new approach to deal with this question is emerging. This new approach finds a middle ground between nature and nurture. The conclusion that nature and nurture are complementary and work hand and hand to shape a behavior (a purposeful and meaningful activity) is not a compromise; it is a result of a vigorous study of each of the components of the equation of heredity and environment and their affects on determining one's development and behavior. In fact, the more we understand about development and behavior, the more obvious it becomes that nature and nurture are similarly influences rather than determinants, not only singly but also in combination. Here below, I will endeavour to expose the leading theories dealing with the question of nature vs. nurture. I will also try to present the third, new-emerging approach meant to solve the mystery of " What is it that makes us who we are?" Adem 2 "Our genes made us. We animals exist for their preservation and are nothing more than their throwaway survival machines." This is what Richard Darwin states in his book: The Selfish Gene. In his international best seller book, he argues that we are merely a product of our genes and our main purpose in life is to serve the genes, become distribution agents and ensure their proliferation. Before we take any stand to Darwin's statement, let us familiarize ourselves with what is meant when the term nature is used. Nature represents what we are born with and cannot control. Our biological make up is determined by the genes we receive from our parents(reside in the 23 pairs of chromosomes, 23 from each parent.) "A gene is a segment of DNA or a sequence of nucleotides in DNA that codes for a functional product," (Tortora, Microbiology. p. 575.) These genes not only affect our outlook, but also play a significant role in determining our behavior and our well-being. "Through new genetic studies, clinical observation, and research on identical twins and adopted children, we are becoming increasingly aware that many of the human characteristics previously taken for granted as products of childhood rearing and environment are rooted in the genetic matrix.", (Neubrauer, Peter. p 38) Studies of identical twins reared apart have provided researchers with a lot of clues about the role of heredity in every day life behavior. Twins (monozygotes) are of extraordinary importance when studying heredity because they share identical copies of genes. An interesting study on twin brothers who were separated at birth and raised in different countries by respective adoptive parents showed that they both kept their lives neat, 'neat to the point of pathology.' Their clothes were preened, appointments met precisely on Adem 3 time. When asked about the reason they felt to be so clean, the first one replied " My mother. When I was growing up she always kept the house perfectly ordered. She insisted on every little thing returned to its proper place,... I learned from her. What else could I do?" When his twin brother was asked the same question he answered "The reason is quite simple. I'm reacting to my mother, who was an absolute slob.", (Neubrauer, Peter P 21) In this example, we see a natural preference based on heredity. Both twins blamed their mothers for their behaviors, while none of the mothers required such neatness. Another study on heredity and alcoholism conducted by Goodwin et al (1973) indicated that adoptees with alcoholic parents were four times more likely to become alcoholics than those without, although there was no such relationship with alcohol misuse in adoptive parents, ( Pelle, Stanton. p 2). Even though scientists have only identified 16,000 out of the total 100,000 genes, many psychological diseases are on the verge of being unraveled. Take for instance schizophrenia, a disease characterized by (hallucinations, delusions, flat or inappropriate emotional expression, paranoia and suspiciousness). New findings point out to its relatedness to genetics. Genetic markers for schizophrenia are founded on chromosomes 22, 6, 13, 8 and 9, ( De Angelis, Tori. Boston globe.) These examples reveal the genetic role in our development. They also expose our predisposition to certain traits and behaviors. Adem 4 The second camp sitting on the other side of the fence is the advocates for nurture. Here, nurture represents our surrounding: parents, class-mates, colleagues, our value system and our society as a whole. People in this camp argue that man is a product of his environment. Some extremists went as far as saying: give us any new born infant and we will shape him/her just the way we want, by placing him/her in the desired environment. " As one grows from infancy to adulthood, social experience plays a critical and constant role in the regulation of growth , behavior and emotions," (Glick, Marion E.) Here we are told that social deprivation at different stages of development can lead to abnormalities in the stress hormone system, which may produce severe and long-lasting physical, neural and psychological consequences. It is also interesting to consider the gender differences due to the change in enviroment. Few deacades ago, women were considered inferior to men in their achievements. Today, eventhough the misconception of gender roles in society is still present, we can clearly see the gap between men and women narrowing due to the change in enviorment. The new school emerging to help bring the nature nurture argument to rest professes that there is no war between nature and nurture. Indeed, such war would be absurd because it is the interaction of nature and nurture that defines our behavior and well-being. Here, a question as " WHY DID YOU STEEL THE CAR? ", cannot be answered by: THE DEVIL MADE ME DO IT, or better yet, MY GENES MADE ME DO IT. In understanding a behavior, both nature and nurture are taken to consideration. Adem 5 " Moreover, it is perfectly obvious that human social life is related to human biology...Of course, neither biological nor cultural determinists ever wish entirely to exclude the significance of the other." (R.C Lewontin. p.267-268.) Many psychological illnesses can be explained as a result of combined genetics and environmental factors. As already stated in this paper, schizophrenia has genetic basis. It is also a fact that this mental disease is triggered by environmental factors including family factors and external stress. Paul Grobstein, in his article"Genes, Environments, and Individual Choice" explains that "In human development and behavior, as in the development and behavior of all other living organisms, the genome and the environment instead productively interact with one another, both contributing unique and valuable information to the emergence of distinctive individuals" It is also noteworthy to mention that no two individuals are the same. Not even monozygotic twins have the same environment. "Every person is a unique and nonrecurrent", (Dobzhansky, Theodosius. p.8) In sum, in this paper we can conclude that our development and behavior are products of the interaction between nature and nuture. Scientists confirm that we are predisposed to certain traits and behaviors, but this predisposition is susceptible to modification by genetics as well as environmental factors. We can no longer dwell on the question "Is it Nature or Nurture That Determines Who We Are?" We learn that it is thcombination of these two vital factors that shape and define our development and behavior. Adem 6 Work Cited Dangles, Tori." Chromosomes contain clues on sxhizophrenia", Bsoton Globe, Feb17-97 Dobzhansky,Theodosius. Genetic Diverisy & Human Equality.1973 Glick, Marion E." Behavior and the Brain:A New View of the Narure-Nurture Debate." Online. Internet.http//:www.rockefeller.edu/pubinfo/neurolecutre.nr.html. Feb.6 -1996 Neubauer, Peter. Nature's Thumprint,1990 Pelle, Stanton.Online.Internet.http://www.frw.uva.nl/acd/isg/drugs/peele/lib/genetics.html. Feb.17-97 5:00PM R.C. Lewontin. Not In Our Genes. 1984 Richard, Darwin. Selfish Gene, 2nd.edition.1989 Torta, Gerald. Microbiology An Introduction, 5th. edition.1995 f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Neandertals.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Staring into the gloom, I imagine the cave's ancient inhabitants, wrapped in bear skins, huddled near a fire. The haunches of a reindeer roast in the fire. A mother nurses her infant. Children playfully throw pieces of bone into the flames. An old woman tends the wounds of a hunter with an herbal ointment. The strong smells of smoke, unwashed bodies, and rotting carcasses thicken the air. Until recently, nobody would have assumed that the above passage (Rick Gore, pp.6) was about how the Neandertals lived. However, recent studies have shown that Neandertals are smarter than we first thought. The geography of the Neandertals domain was quite odd. 230,000 years ago Europe was filled with caves, marshes, and grasslands. It was a very harsh and cold wilderness. The Neandertals were in existence right in the middle of the Ice Age, and although occasional warm periods would create subtropical conditions as far north as England for thousands of years, the glaciers would always return and the Neandertals would always be forced south again. The Neandertals could be found as far north as England and as far south as Spain, from Gibralter to Uzbekistan. Neandertal bones have been found in the Neander Valley and Dusseldorf Germany, in Altamura, Italy and Vindija, Croatia. These are major sites for the European caves the Neandertals lived in. Although the Neandertals went to the southern tip of Italy, they never crossed the Mediterranean Sea to Africa. They migrated from central Europe to central Asia to the Middle East and always came back. Their main mode of moving around was on their feet, and they usually travelled in bands of no more than 30 people. The Neandertals had broad noses, and scientists think this was to warm the cold air. They also had thick browridges, receding chins, high foreheads, and their skulls sloped back over their brains. They learned to hunt in groups in order to kill the bigger game. The Neandertals lived with modern humans for 10,000 years, but they didn't change, and eventually it is believed the modern humans conquered them with their more advanced technology. Although not much is known about the Neandertal's culture, anthropologists have some ideas of how they lived their life. It is believed by many that the Neandertals practiced cannibalism for a death ritual. There is evidence of this on the skulls and big bones of Neandertals. There are cut marks and some bones have been broken open and are without marrow. Why would they do this? Maybe they liked the way their neighbors tasted, or maybe it was a ritual for a religion of theirs. There is other evidence they have a religion. One archaeologist found a carved and polished ivory tooth, and since it looked to have no purpose as a tool, it is most probably a spiritual object. The bodies of people were found in a cave with flowers around them. This also suggests some sort of religion. Scientists had always thought that the technology of the Neandertals was "primitive". However, they have changed their minds. "You need a lot of brains for flint knapping," Jacques Pelegrin of the French Center for Archaeological Research. Recent excavations show that Neandertal tools required a high level of craftsmanship and mental ability. During most of their existence, Neandertals have what is called Mousterian technology- flaked tools (i.e. scrapers and points) and this remained unchanged for 100,000 years. During the last few thousand years of their lives, they developed what is called Chatelperronian technology- hafted points and more complex. It was also thought that the Neandertals couldn't speak. One theory is that they communicated through mental telepathy, due to the large brains. Now though, anthropologists believe that the Neandertals spoke at least a rudimentary language. A hyoid bone(the voice box hangs from it in the back of the throat) was found in a body recently. "They may not have had a language as complex as ours.... but at least they could talk to each other," said Christopher Stringer, a paleoanthropologist at the Natural History Museum in London. The Neandertals were plagued by injuries and disease, but there is evidence that they were cared for by the group. They ate cave bears and aurochs and other big game, slicing off the skin with sharp flints. The skins they cured and wore draped over their bodies, and they made buildings resembling teepees out of wood or mammoth bones and the hides of some animals. The Neandertals had a compassionate side, something not expected from their big and squat appearance. They cared for their sick and injured, and they had families, as a man, two women, and an infant were found buried together with personal decorations on them and pollen from wildflowers. Some think that bodies were also disposed of in large caves for housecleaning. Still, one of the biggest questions of Neandertals today is what happened to them? Nobody really knows. There are many theories, however. The Neandertals inhabited Europe from about 230,000 to 30,000 years ago. About 40,000 years ago the modern humans arrived. They lived peacefully side by side for 10,000 years and then all record of Neandertal life ends. It is thought that the modern humans conquered and destroyed the Neandertals with their advanced technology. Or maybe the Neandertals interbred with the modern humans and got slowly replaced, unable to compete. It is also possible that a natural disaster(like the Ice Age) caught them in the north and they were unable to leave, as they were surrounded by modern humans. It is very surprising that there is no record of violence between the Neandertals and the modern humans. "I see confrontation. People who grow up in the Middle East understand that. We don't like each other. We rarely intermarry, and we kill each other whenever we can. I don't think you can prevent competition among societies," said Ofer Bar-Yosef. If that is so, then maybe the modern humans DID overthrow the Neandertals. All anthropologist know is that 35,000 years ago the Neandertals migrated one last time to the caves on the southern tip of Spain, and yet they never once tried to get over to Africa. Why not? I see them again, chipping at flints and gazing down at herds of elk and aurochs that grazed the rich grasslands below. Now, where their prey once wandered, the ships of many nations anchor. Beyond them, Africa looms through the haze, filling me with wanderlust and questions. (Rick Grey, pp. 35) f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Nelson Mandela Biography.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Nelson Mandela Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela is judged to be one of the greatest political leaders of modern times. Among his many accomplishments are the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize for his dedication to the fight against racial oppression in South Africa and establishing democracy there and becoming the president of South Africa in 1994 following their first multiracial elections. Nelson was born as the foster son of a Thembu chief in Umtata (now the province of Eastern Cape) and raised in a traditional tribal culture within the grips of apartheid, a powerful system of black oppression that existed in South Africa. After years as a poor student and law clerk in Johannesburg, he assumed an important role in the African National Congress (ANC), a civil rights group. He also helped form the ANC Youth League in the 1950's. He was accused of treason in 1956 but was acquitted in 1961. From 1960-1962 Mandela led the NAC's para military wing known as Umkhonto we Sizwe which translate to "Spear of the Nation." He was arrested in August of 1962, sentenced to five years in prison and while incarcerated was again convicted of sabotage and treason and was sentenced to life imprisonment in june, 1964 at the famous Rivonia Trial. During his twenty-seven years in prison, Nelson Mandela became a symbol of resistance to the white-dominated country of South Africa throughout the world. After complex negotiation, Mandela was finally released from prison by President F.W. deKlerk in February, 1990, after lifting the long ban on the ANC. Mandela's release from prison marked the beginning of the end of apartheid in South Africa when he once again became the head of the ANC. He began the process to from a new constitution in South Africa which would allow political power to the black majority. Finally in 1991 the South African government repealed the laws that had upheld apartheid. In May, 1994 Nelson Mandela became South Africa's first black president after the country's first multiracial elections were held. His goal was to provide for economic and social growth for the black majority that had been oppressed for so long by the system of apartheid. Nelson Mandela continues to inspire people everywhere. He is viewed as a vital force in the fight for human rights and racial equality. He stands for the triumph of dignity and hope over despair and hatred and of love over persecution and hatred. At age seventy-eight he still remains a major political figure in South Africa where he enjoys his twenty-one grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\New York the Empire state.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ NEW YORK THE EMPIRE STATE New York is in the northeastern United States. It is one of the middle atlantic states. The Dutch built its first settlements. Then,England ruled New York for more than a hundred years. In 1788,New York became one of the orignal 13 states. First I am going to tell you how New York became the 11th state. On Joly 9, 1776, the provincial congress of New York met in White Plains. It approved The Declaration Of Independence which the Continental Congress had adopted on July 4. The congress also organized an Independent goverment. The next year, New York adopted its first constitution George Clinton was elected governor. About a third of all the battles were fought in New York. New York City was the United States capital from 1785 to 1790. In 1789, George Washington became the first presjident of the United States. He took the oath of office at Federal Hall on Wall Street. In the early 1800s, settlers moved to western New York. Buffalo was begun in 1803. Rochester was settled in 1812. Some people headed even farther west. They moved to states like Illonois and Michagen. These places were on the Great Lakes. Between 1817 and 1825, the Erie Canal was dug across New York. It ran from Albany to Buffalo. The canal connected the Hudson River and the Atlantic Ocean with the Great Lakes. EARLY HISTORICAL FACTS Ancient Indians reached New York more than 11,000 years ago. They hunted animals with spears. Some of thier spear points have been found. Giovanni de Verranzo was the first European to explore New York. He was Italian, but he worked for France. American leaders wrote the United States Constitution in 1787. It created the county's goverment. New York approved the Constitution on July 26, 1788. WEATHER UPDATES f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Nicaragua.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Nicaragua The area of Nicaragua is 50,193 sq. mi. The Nicaraguan highlands, with a elevation about 2000 ft, cross Nicaragua from the northwest to the southeast. Several mountain ranges, the highest of which, the Cordillera Isabelia, reaches an elevation of more than 6890 ft, cut the highlands from east to west. In the west is a great basin, or depression, containing two lakes, Nicaragua, the largest in Central America, and Managua. The two are connected by the Tipitapa River. A chain of volcanoes, which are a contributory cause of local earthquakes, rises between the lakes and the Pacific coast. In the east, the Caribbean coastal plain known as the Costa de mosquitoes (Mosquito Coast) extends some 45 mi. inland and is partly overgrown with rain forest. The four principal rivers, the San Juan, Coco (Wanks), Grande, and Escondido, empty into the Caribbean. The natural resources of Nicaragua are primarily agricultural. Deposits of volcanic material have enriched the soil, which is extremely fertile. About half the land is covered with forests. The country has some deposits of gold, silver, and copper. About 77% of the Nicaraguan population is mestizo (people of mixed white and Native American descent), about 10% is white, and the remainder is Native American (4%) and black (9%). The population of Nicaragua is 3,745,000, yielding an overall density about 75 per sq. mi. Approximately 60% of the population is concentrated in the western part of the country, and more than 55% is urban. Political Divisions and Principal Cities Nicaragua is divided into six regions and three special zones. Managua, with a population of 682,100, is the capital and commercial center. León is an important religious and cultural center. Granada is the terminus of the railway from the main port of entry, Corinto, on the Pacific coast. Spanish is the official language of Nicaragua. Nearly 90% of the Nicaraguan people are Roman Catholic; most of the remainder are Protestant. As in other Latin American countries, the culture of Nicaragua reflects Spanish cultural patterns, influential since the colonial period, combined with an ancient Native American heritage. Nicaraguans hold many colorful celebrations to commemorate local saints' days and ecclesiastical events. The marimba is extremely popular, and ancient instruments such as the chirimía (clarinet), maraca (rattle), and zul (flute) are common in rural areas. Dances from colonial times survive, as do fine examples of architecture. The coast of Nicaragua was sighted by Christopher Columbus in 1502, but the first Spanish expedition, under Gil González Dávila, did not arrive until 1522; it established several Spanish settlements. A second conquistador, Francisco Fernández de Córdoba, founded Granada in 1523 and León in 1524. Nicaragua was governed by Pedrarias Dávila from 1526 to 1531, but later in the century, following a period of intense rivalry and civil war among the Spanish conquerors, it was incorporated into the captaincy-general of Guatemala. Colonial Nicaragua enjoyed comparative peace and prosperity, although freebooters, notably English navigators such as Sir Francis Drake and Sir Richard Hawkins, continually raided and plundered the coastal settlements. In the 18th century the British informally allied themselves with the Miskito-a Native American people intermarried with blacks-severely challenging Spanish hegemony. For a period during and after the middle of the century the Mosquito Coast was considered a British dependency. The so-called Battle of Nicaragua at the time of the American Revolution, however, ended British attempts to win a permanent foothold in the country. Their independence began at the beginning of the 19th century, and Nicaragua declared itself independent of Spain in 1821. A year later it became part of the short-lived Mexican empire of Agustín de Iturbide, and in 1823, after Iturbide's downfall, it joined the United Provinces of Central America. In 1893 a successful revolution brought the Liberal leader José Santos Zelaya to power. He remained president for the next 16 years, ruling as a dictator. Zelaya was forced out in 1909, after Adolfo Díaz was elected provisional president. Following a revolt against his government in 1912, he asked the United States for military aid to maintain order, and U.S. marines were landed. According to the Bryan-Chamorro Treaty of 1916, the U.S. paid $3 million to Nicaragua for the right to build a canal across the country from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans, to lease the Great and Little Corn islands, and to establish a naval base in the Gulf of Fonseca. The agreement aroused protest in several Central American countries and resulted in anti-American guerrilla warfare in Nicaragua. A force of American marines remained in Nicaragua until 1925. Rebellions began when the marines left, and the American force returned in 1926. An election was held under American supervision in 1928, and General José María Moncada, a Liberal, was chosen president. One Liberal leader, however, Augusto César Sandino, engaged in a guerrilla war against U.S. forces for several years. The marines were withdrawn in 1933, leaving Anastasio Somoza commander of the National Guard. Somoza had Sandino killed and was elected president in 1937. During the next 20 years, although not always president, Somoza maintained control of Nicaragua. Nicaragua declared war on the Axis powers on December 9, 1941. In June 1945 it became a charter member of the United Nations. Nicaragua joined the Organization of American States in 1948 and the Organization of Central American States, created to solve common Central American problems, in 1951. In 1956 Anastasio Somoza, who had resumed the presidency, was assassinated. He was succeeded by his son, Luis Somoza Debayle, who first served out his father's term and was then elected in his own right. For four years after the end of his tenure, close associates, rather than the Somozas themselves, held the presidency. Then, in 1967, Anastasio Somoza Debayle, younger son of the former dictator, was elected president. A military-minded autocrat, he repressed opposition with the aid of the National Guard. In August 1971 the legislature abrogated the constitution and dissolved itself. In elections to a constituent assembly in February 1972, Somoza's Liberal party won decisively. In May, Somoza stepped down to the post of chief of the armed forces; political control was assumed by a triumvirate of two Liberals and one Conservative. On December 23, 1972, the city of Managua was virtually leveled by earthquake; about 6000 were killed and 20,000 injured. Martial law was declared, and Somoza in effect became chief executive again. He was formally elected president in 1974. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\no title.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ I am a member of the Puerto Rican American Families research team. I myself grew up in a Puerto Rican American, or "New Yorican", family. The assignment is a field study. The study is on an observation of the religious community. We visited a Roman Catholic church in Buffalo on the west side, which is a predominantly Hispanic area of the city. I myself am also a Roman Catholic. This is a slightly erred site, because I believe that most Puerto Ricans migrated to New York City. However, we were able to make some interesting observations. The group attended mass at Holy Cross; both an English and Spanish mass. It seemed that the group accepted our presence without any apprehension, however, as I stated before, this probably is a result of I myself being Puerto Rican American. There were some striking differences between the English mass and the Spanish mass. The first noticeable difference was in attendance. The Spanish mass had a considerable higher attendance than did the English mass. Also the appearance of the manner of dress. The attendees of the Spanish mass were more formally dressed than those of the English mass. Another major difference was in the music. The English mass had the "traditional" European "angelica" type singing. The Spanish mass, however, had more upbeat music, along with the use of "traditionally" Carribean instruments like maracas, for example. What does this suggest about the religious community of Puerto Rican Americans? I think that it is a balance between assimilation and preserving the culture. I think it is obvious that Roman Catholicism was not the native religion of Borinquen. Borinquen was the name of the island Puerto Rico before the conquest of the Spanish. So since they had already been forced to assimilate their culture into European culture by the Columbians, they found they could easily assimilate into American culture more readily than other cultures. However, we find in the Spanish mass, the use of Carribean instruments. This suggests an effort by the religious community to maintain the Puerto Rican culture. I personally have experienced the efforts to maintain Puerto Rican culture in the form of Santeria. Santeria is a religion practiced by, I guess, many Puerto Rican Americans. It is practiced in the homes of Puerto Rican Americans when they are not in church. It is a mixture of their old native religion from pre-Columbian Borinquen with Roman Catholicism. It is basically the incorporation of the Roman Catholic saints with a form of vodoun. From my experience, in Santeria prayers and offerings are given to the saints for protection from evil. There are many elaborate rituals performed by the followers of Santeria. Most of the rituals include prayers from Roman Catholicism, like the Rosary and the Hail Mary. I think Santeria is the perfect example of the balance being maintained by the religious community between assimilation and preservation. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Observational Report.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Observation Report This observation is of a 10 year old male child during his lunch recess at an elementary school located in the South Bay area. The student participates in a day treatment program for children with emotional/social difficulties. The length of this observation was approximately forty five minutes. For the purpose of confidentiality this student will be referred to as John. In the first section of this observational analysis a brief description of the program which John participates in will be given. This will be followed by an analysis of John¹s activities during the observation. Observation The day treatment program John participates in is located on the campus of a public elementary school, and is supported by a local private mental health agency. In general, children referred to this program experience some form of emotional and/or social deficit. In addition to John, there are nine other students enrolled within the program at present. John currently attends a mainstreaming class three times per week, where he has developed several friendships with his peers. This observation began as the students in the day treatment program were let out for recess following lunch. After leaving the class John ran to the designated play area with another student. The designated play area of the playground where the students of this program are restricted to consists of a ³jungle bar² set ; This play structure consists of ³monkey bars² with tall vertical poles for sliding down attached at each end, three parallel bars of varying height, and horizontal bars constructed in a ladder fashion for climbing on. Additionally, the designated area includes a tether ball court, and a balancing beam constructed in a ³Z² shape. The staff has restricted the students of the program to this area due to these childrens' limited abilities to demonstrate social skills, and in order to better supervise the group during recess activities. However, other children at the school are not restricted from this area and interact freely with the children from the program. After John had arrived at the play area he immediately jumped onto the parallel bars and began to swing back and forth, and launched himself into the air landing awkwardly almost falling down. John preceded to jump up onto the ³monkey bars.² John climbed about half way across, where he was confronted with another student who was crossing in the opposite direction. At this point John jumped off of the bars and ran back to where he had begun, and proceeded to attempt crossing the bars again and made it. John went back to the parallel bars where he proceeded to swing, jumping off periodically. At one point John attempted to gain the staffs attention to watch what he could do on the bars; John swung himself repeatedly and then let one hand go, this spun him to one side where another parallel bar was located, which John grabbed onto. The staff shouted ³good job John,² which seemed to motivate John to repeat this trick a few more times. After playing on the bars for a while longer, John went over to two other peers from his class who were engaging in pretend play. These children appeared to be playing a game of ³army combat,² as they were running about shooting each other. John ran around the play area attempting to shoot his peers with his machine gun, and ended when they began pretending to be in hand-to-hand combat . At this point this point the staff directed the students not to get too physical, and the small group of children ran off. John played with this group for a while longer, as they would shoot at each other periodically and ran around the play area. John disengaged himself from playing with this group as he was distracted by a nearby puddle of water. John jumped over the puddle, and was prompted by the staff not to step in the water. After this warning John jumped over the puddle a few more times before picking up a stick, which he used to poke and investigate the tiny pool. John seemed very interested in this activity, and spent approximately five to eight minutes investigating what he had found before loosing interest and returning to the bars. There were more children now playing on the bars then had been earlier, and John seemed to grow inpatient; There were about four children occupying the parallel bars doing various tasks when John approached the bars. John waited for a short time (about 1 to 2 minutes), and then began to yell at a younger student to move so that he could do something. The child did not respond to Johns request to move, and John crossed his arms and began to pout. After another minute or so, John went to the staff saying that the other kids were just sitting on the bars not letting him get on. The staff prompted the students that they had to take turns on the bars. Following the staffs prompts one of the children allowed John onto the bars. John swung back and forth and then got off by launching himself into the air as he had done previously. This time however John landed more solidly then he did in his first attempt. John was called over to a nearby basket ball court by the staff who asked John if he wanted to shoot some baskets, and John agreed. The group of children who were shooting baskets included two girls, a boy (who were not apart of the unit), and John. John recognized the other boy, and told the staff his name remarking that he was ³a good shot.² John proceeded to shoot baskets with the other children, and seemed to take a particular liking to one of the girls; John would run after the ball after it had bounced out off the back board and give it to the girl, forsaking his turn to throw the ball. John did this several times throughout the time they were playing. When the staff was demonstrating to this girl how to throw the ball and make a basket, John jumped in helping the staff demonstrate how to make a basket and continued to assist the girl in making baskets till the bell rang marking the end of recess. Analysis Although John participates in a day treatment program for children with emotional and social deficits, John interacted much as one would expect a child would of his age. In accordance with Erikson¹s developmental theory, John should be entering (or in the middle of) industry vs. inferiority. This stage of development may be seen in John¹s activities performed on the ³monkey bars;² Where John crossed the bars after his efforts had been blocked by a peer, as opposed to giving up on the task.Thus showing goal directed behavior at the mastery of a skill. This appeared to be an important situation, as John¹s second attempt reinforced his belief in his abilities to complete a task. This attempt at gaining mastery of skills could also be seen in his performance on the parallel bars, where John sought the staffs attention and approval. This instance of the observation can also be viewed through developmental theory of the behaviorists; Where John¹s repeating (and thus attempt at increased mastery) his ³trick² could be seen as being motivated by the staffs voiced approval of John¹s performance on the bars. Finally, John¹s participation in the social activity of playing with a group of peers on the basketball court can be viewed through the behavioral paradigm of social learning theory. It could be argued that John (being somewhat socially handicapped) viewed the staff in a social context with other children. Furthermore, John observed this social contact as possibly beneficial to him (e.g., a chance to make friends outside of the program). The staff acted as a model of those behaviors appropriate to the situation (i.e., cooperation, helpful, outgoing, etc.), and John molded those behaviors once he was involved with the group. And again, depending on the value John might place on such interactions, this might potentially motivate similar social behavior in the future. In conclusion, it would appear from this brief observation that John is approximately at a normal developmental level according to Erikson. John seems to be attempting to gain mastery of those skills which he has difficulties with (i.e., social interactions and motor skills).To aid him, John is using the staff as a model to determine the appropriate skills needed to meet his goals, and is using external cues such as the staffs praises as a guide of his abilities. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Ocean Pollution in the Third World.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Ocean Pollution in the Third World In this introduction, I will try and accomplish this project about the Oceans on the earth which affect the Third World countries and countries all around the world. This topic was very interesting because there were lots of information and overall learning about this problem and the problem is getting better everyday. This topic is about the pollution in the oceans on this earth and what is the effect on the Third World countries and on the rest of the countries in the world This project was very challenging because there were lots of resources but I didn't know what to include into this project. Also some of these resources were very vague and some not applicable. The question or problem I will try to give answers, solutions or opinions to is "The contrast between what are we doing to our oceans here in First World countries and in Third World countries." and also "Why?" we are doing this and to try and get a solution for this problem. This is probably one of the biggest questions for this topic because people keep on dumping waste in the water and this is probably the biggest threat to our oceans because of people throw stuff in our oceans. This question was also good to ask for this topic because this question has a lot of answers and solutions for it like what can people in the First World do to help the Third World people out. The books and my resources found many ways to finish off this problem. I also found some insight to this problem. The resource which helped me a lot was the internet because it had the most up to date news or studies about this problem even newer than stuff in any kind of book.. From all the research, I think this problem can be finished off before our grandchildren are born. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\On Campuses Students Confront A Growing Racial Divide.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Michael Peloso February 12, 1997 Sociology 101 "On Campuses, Students Confront a Growing Racial Divide" In the article, "On Campuses, Srudents Confront a Growing Racial Divide, it discusses the racial issues that occur on college campuses and nationwide racism like the O.J. Simpson trial or the Million Man March. For example, when the verdict for the O.J. Simpson trial came out, a student or a group of students at USC made a flyer that read, "I need to alert all the whites that the niggers are taking over. Take up arms and defend yourselves, my brothers." This quote is discrimination and it should not happen. When the verdict came out for the trial, I am sure not all African-Americans were happy that O.J. Simplon was free. And I am sure that all white people were not mad that he was free. What that student or group of students did was prefudice, he assumed that all black people are against him/her and his/her "brothers." That is not true. On campus at Ohio State I have seen discrimination quite often. White people walking by a group of black people and saying a racial slur or two towards them, but not loud enough that they would hear it. Or, I have seen the same thing vise-versa. Institutional racism plays a big role on campus. One example is at the Metropolitan Institution of Technology where a group of African Americans took over three dormitory floors and named it "chocolate city." It is clear when an ethnic group of any kind says that their group can live there and nobody else, that is Institutional racism. One thing that is being done about racism and more specific, institutional racism, is the leniency of the Scholastic Aptitude Test(SAT). It is said that the SAT is discriminative against minorities. Critics say that the SAT assumes the knowlege of the middle class white culture. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Opposing the Death Penalty.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Opposing The Death Penalty Taking this course has made me ponder on many issues which I never deemed worthy of my thoughts. I always considered the death penalty one of those things which I never had to concern myself with. First of all I'm not planning to commit any vial crimes, and I don't think anyone I care about has those plans either. Secondly, I've never been conscious or concerned with the likes of criminals. When we began speaking on the subject, I thought we were only going to talk about the institution of racism in capital punishment, and was quite unaware of the feeling this subject would arouse in me. Needless to say, I have formed some opinions on the issue which confused even me. I always considered myself pro-capital punishment. I was of the mind that if someone killed me, I would like my death avenged, but pondering on the issue of cultural differences has made me doubt my prior convictions. First of all, I am against the use of the lethal injection. I understand that it is cleaner, but if the law wants to inflict death as a punishment, it must understand that death is not a pretty thing. Criminals are painlessly put to sleep, and die in the same manner that Dr. Kavorkian's patients choose. Personally, if I was faced with the option of living the remainder of my life in isolation, perpetually haunted by pain and images of terror, I would absolutely chose to die by lethal injection. There is no true punishment in this method, except the fear of going to hell, which I strongly doubt is of much concern to most convicts on death row. Assuming that the judicial processes which convict these individuals are legitimate, the only common bond within this group is that they are all mortal, and hold no respect for human life. These delinquents are on death row, because they have committed a crime of such ghastly proportions, that society has deemed them unfit to live. They deliberately and nonchalantly depraved another human of their life. They emphatically partook in reprehensible malice of inhuman dimensions, never bothered by their conscience. They are sick and vile individuals who do not acknowledge social conventions such as religion and the law. They have broken the law, and in leaving it they removed themselves from the protection of the law. The 8th Amendment should no longer apply to these sick dements who deserve none of my compassion. Yet, the bleeding hearts continue to defend them and oppose capital punishment because it is too cruel. In an article in the Chicago Tribune, the Roman Catholic church vented its opposition to capital punishment by affirming that "human life is sacred" and that "a truly just and humane society" is compelled "to protect and enhance" all human lives at every degree of development, "the bishop concluded in the statement that execution are "an inappropriate response on moral and practical grounds." But what this argument refuses to acknowledge is that these individuals ceased to be human when they renounced their humanity through murder. They do not recognize morality or the principles of humanity. They have chosen to go against the laws of every religion and society known to civilization. They have belittled themselves to the stature of animals, and as so, renounce their conscience. Many of them, like those who belong to gangs in LA, don't even consider death a punishment. Dying is a part of life, and "you can be a king or a street sweeper, but everybody dances with the Grim Reaper." (Robert Alton Harris-gassed April 21, 1992) These individuals are so warped, that the death penalty would be among the most pleasant punishments they could receive. They have very little they care about, if they cared they wouldn't have put themselves in this situation, and they are departing this life for the next. Very few of them believe in religion, so they have no hell to fear. More than anything they are being freed from their present dismal situation. The death sentence would only serve as punishment for moral, religious (Christians, Jews, Muslims...not Buddhist of Hindus) individuals who respect human life and have something to live for; in reality, these are not the people on death row. I therefore believe capital punishment too lenient a penalty for these fiend, but at least when they were fried they felt a few minutes of pain to recompense for their victim's suffering. Please forgive my vindictive reaction, but a dear relative of mine was raped and murdered by one of these beasts; he is still at large. Needless to say, I believe a harsher form of punishment should be placed on their lives. I have therefore devised a more austere discipline which, conveyed in the form of fear, would severely downsize heinous crimes, and would also be cheaper. Instead of simply killing them why don't we just maim them to the point where they are no longer a threat to society. First you amputate their legs from the knee down, so they can no longer walk. Then you cut off their arms so they can no longer shoot, strangle, hit or stab anyone. Then you cut out their tongues so they no longer speak their ideas of hate. Then you burn their faces till they are so ugly to look at that they are ashamed to be alive. Then you castrate them to make sure they can no longer partake in pleasure. In this disheveled state you throw them out to the streets so they can see and hear the pain, agony and injustice that they so freely bestowed on their victims. They will truly suffer for their crimes. They will be the new example for future criminals. No longer will the villain be worshipped by the mass media, or by the youngsters on the streets. The gangster will then cease to exist, and only the mentally retarded will perpetuate their heinous crimes. Isn't it sad that our situation has become so grave that we must actually look to these alternatives to solve the problem. I think everyone knows that the only way to help ourselves to a better life is through education, but politicians continue to withdraw funding for schools. We are going about the solution in the wrong way. If we teach people to value themselves and accept others, and therefore dissolve economic and class differences, we will truly begin to put an end to crime. Till then we will have to accept our reality. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Organizational Behavior at Lewis & Lewis P C .TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Lewis & Lewis, P.C. is a small, Jackson-based accounting firm that employs thirty-five people and was founded by Phil Willis in 1968. It exhibits many interesting aspects of organizational behavior, which we will examine below from several perspectives. After examining the company's current policies and practices, we will evaluate its status in the transition from the "old" to the "new" model of organization, and recommend some changes that may improve the way Lewis & Lewis operates. From a Strategic Perspective Physical Description Lewis & Lewis, P.C. is located in a quiet suburb of Jackson, Michigan. It is a forty-five minute drive from Lansing. The two-storied building is built on a slightly elevated hill with spacious parking lots in the back and to one side. The outer walls are of a pleasant beige brick which is in keeping with the calm atmosphere of the community and of the landscape. Right in front of the building there are columns and the large main entrance is toward the rear off the parking lot. The appearance of the building is well harmonized with the surroundings. However, it gives guests the impression of dignity and openness. Directly inside the main entrance to Lewis & Lewis is a small but welcoming lobby, with a natural stone floor, stylish but difficult to walk on in heels. There is a narrow open closet for guests to hang their coats, and several chairs arranged around a table on which are placed the company newsletter and other publications. The receptionist's desk is facing the entrance door, and behind it sits a friendly young woman. The partners' offices are found against the two farthest external walls, noticeably removed from the rest of office. The other external walls are lined with the offices of the professionals, with large windows overlooking the pleasant exterior. The remainder of the office space is segmented with partitioning walls, forming a sort of cubicle labyrinth. In the center of this maze is a small kitchen where employees gather and converse informally. Adjacent to the kitchen is a small work area with copy machines and office supplies. In a corner of this floor is a set of uninviting stairs leading to the ground level, where the conference room is located. The conference room itself is spacious and handsomely decorated, with a large table and comfortable chairs, a video center with television and VCR. The seating is limited to fourteen people. Task and Job Description Tasks are distributed on the basis of specialization: auditing, tax, government and consulting. Very few tasks are performed by routine; each day may include new procedures for each employee. Jobs in this accounting firm are created by the customers' needs, and therefore vary greatly from client to client. Each employee does most of his work based on experience, not according to standard procedure. This individual-style process replaces clearly defined tasks in the firm. However, there is no job rotation between specialties. Coordination Systems Information flows very informally and on a personal basis. While this may create problems that will be discussed later, there are many positive aspects to this arrangement; it contributes to the family-like atmosphere that is very evident to the casual observer. The lack of a formally defined flow of information is in part caused by the many client contacts within the firm, but there is imbalance in the quality and quantity of information that each employee receives. Formal information flow is undefined between the vaguely defined divisions of the firm in part due to the nature of the accounting industry. Therefore, information flow is very vertical. Information is handed down to each department from the top (Phil, Brian and other partners), and from each professional to the shared administrative staff. Data from each individual professional division flowing back up to Phil and Brian goes through David. There are no general staff meetings at Lewis & Lewis. The only formally coordinated data-sharing medium are the partner meetings. In a busy month (those preceding April 15) the partners may meet two or three times, but throughout the rest of the year there may only be two meetings scheduled. Therefore, even among the partners, information flow is on a need-to-know basis only. There are very few task forces formed where people from different divisions work together on a project. The exception is an auditing team, created when the company embarks on an external auditing job and sends four or five people to the company being audited. The firm believes relationships with clients are of the utmost importance. They stress frequent contact with customers, but it is conducted at the discretion of individual responsible for the client's file, and with little or no coordination among other employees. Control System Lewis & Lewis is controlled almost exclusively by personal authority. Phil is the founder and principal partner, and is responsible for most important decisions within the firm. His control over the company is perceived as firm, and his conduct and demeanor influence all the employees. He is viewed as an authoritative figure, and employees regard his approval as crucial to their job performance. From a Political Perspective Power Structure Lewis & Lewis has five key stakeholders; the partners. Each of the five partners has one area of expertise and they deal with any questions that arise in this area. However, aside from this, the five partners all have very different roles within the organization and we see an unequal distribution of power among them. Management duties are divided between two of the partners, Phil and Brian. These two supervise all of the staff, generate most of the new business, manage the dispersal of accounts and take care of any problems that may arise within the organization. The founding partner, Phil, has the ultimate decision making authority, and can therefore override any decisions made by Brian or the other partners. The other three partners all stay out of the management aspects of the business, and defer all problems concerning it to Phil or Brian. Phil's efforts to involve other partners in management issues have been met half-heartedly; the partners seem content in their current roles. This power structure has never been verbalized, nor has it been written. It is implied through practice, and therefore not known or understood by employees. Most of the employees believe that all five partners participate equally in the management process. This causes confusion for the employees who aren't sure who to address with particular concerns. It also limits the time employees have to speak with a managing principal. Conflict Resolution The area of conflict resolution within the company is rather gray. As noted above, Phil and Brian are the two who directly manage the personnel at Lewis & Lewis, but this is not always the case. According to staff interviews, it is very difficult to actually have either Phil or Brian resolve an issue. Phil is always out of the office and when he is in the office he does not have the time to deal with employee problems. Brian is always willing to take the time to listen to employee problems and he seems to sincerely want to help, but he prefers to wait until the issue blows over before addressing it. There is no set procedure for how a problem is solved once either Phil or Brian gets involved. One partner is apt to give one possible solution to the problem only to have the other turn around and contradict what has been suggested. This sends mixed signals to the employees who are not sure which path of resolution to follow. In addition, conflicts are not resolved in the same manner for all employees. Some experience more favorable outcomes that others, and the people who are lower on the totem pole do not always see their interests being protected. Employee Interests The support staff is basically at the mercy of the partners, and don't have much say in how the company is run or what might work better in certain areas. All of the employees agree that Lewis & Lewis tries to be flexible where work schedules and time off are concerned. Unfortunately, however, there is tension among the employees because of perceived favoritism when it comes to approving flexible work schedules. Some people are allowed to work part time, others are not. Some part-timers receive benefits, some do not. In an office as small as Lewis & Lewis, this can be a source of contention between employees. Employees do not always know where they stand in regard to job performance. The limited feedback they do get from the partners is inconsistent. At times they are criticized for the same performance on which they were previously complimented. This causes worry among the employees, who fear that duties will be taken away and leave their job in jeopardy. From a Cultural Perspective Artifacts Some of the artifacts we identified at Lewis & Lewis include its recruitment practices, its highly rigid job descriptions, and the physical office itself. The recruitment practices at Lewis & Lewis are consistent with the informality of the company. Lewis & Lewis usually does not advertise its job openings; instead, most of its new employees are hired through its clients. For example, one employee had applied for a secretarial position with a client of Lewis & Lewis. The client passed on her resume to Lewis & Lewis. The company uses the same strategy for attracting new clients. It does not market its services conventionally; instead, existing clients tell business associates about the firm and its services. While there are no written job descriptions, the specific tasks that each employee must complete imply a rigid definition of their position at Lewis & Lewis. The building itself is an artifact. First, the building is very identifiable to the Jackson community. On our first visit to Lewis & Lewis, we got lost and asked a gas station attendant if he knew how to get to Lewis & Lewis. He not only know where it was, he gave us an exact description of the building. Lewis & Lewis is a long-standing business in the Jackson community, and almost eighty percent of its clients are based in the greater Jackson area. During our visits to Lewis & Lewis, we conducted our interviews in the Antique Room, a small office filled with antiques accumulated over the years. The Antique Room is a microcosm of the history of the company. Values The company places great value on the individual and the home. Within the company's facility itself, one sees many clearly evident proofs of these values; family photos adorn the desks of most employees, spouses and children are invited to all company functions. The offices within the building are strategically placed to limit the interaction among employees. There is very little open office space and, with the exception of a conference room, there is no area conducive to team interaction. This value placed on individualism can best be summed up by a partner who stated "there are plenty of opportunities for people to succeed at Lewis & Lewis. It is up to each individual to take advantage of them." While team interaction is limited at Lewis & Lewis, subcultures are prevalent. Examples of subcultures are the secretarial staff, the "old guard," and the newly hired CPA's. The secretarial staff subculture seems to have been created as a support mechanism for the secretaries. Our interviews with these employees indicated that they feel unappreciated and thus seek encouragement and support from each other. The company's most recently-formed subculture is the group of new CPA's who were hired at approximately the same time and are expected to take over the leadership of the firm in the next decade. In general, subcultures are formed to provide support and to create a system of reward mechanisms for employees within them. Employees crave support and recognition because they feel they are not receiving it from the partners. Despite the lack of support from management cited above, productivity does not seem to be a problem at Lewis & Lewis. What are the motivational factors for employees? First, employees seem to be largely self-motivated. Self-motivation is consistent with motivational posters displayed throughout the office. For example, one poster states that "success is what you make of it." To a lesser extent, employees seem motivated by the independence given to them by their supervisors. Even given the small size of Lewis & Lewis, some employees claimed that they may not communicate with any of the partners for as long as a week at a time. Finally, employees are somewhat motivated by the lack of communication from management itself. Employees work hard and try to cover all aspects of their assignments because it is not always clear to them what management expects. Underlying Assumptions The most obvious underlying assumption is that employees should be loyal and self-motivated. The company provides a good salary and benefits package but it provides little support in terms of the daily responsibilities of its employees. Instead, management believes that if it provides its employees with good pay and a comfortable working environment, employees will be productive. Another underlying assumption is that if you provide a good service, businesses will come to you, and the clients' concerns are always top priority. As stated above, Lewis & Lewis does very little if any marketing of its services. It believes, instead, in the word-of-mouth philosophy that satisfied clients will recommend its services to others. In the same way, the company opts to develop good relationships with the banks of Jackson, in order to benefits from their referrals. In short, analyzing Lewis & Lewis from the cultural perspective reveals, among other things, the management philosophy of the partners and the impact that philosophy has on Lewis & Lewis employees. Management places great value on individualism and expects its employees to perform their jobs with little support from management. However, there is a major inconsistency. Although the company values individual responsibility, the employees themselves do not feel empowered enough to make all of their own decisions. One employee had a problem with a small project and asked Phil for help. Phil responded, "I don't have time for your problems. I'm trying to run this company." Moving Toward the New Organization Networked A networked company uses cross-functional teams that bring people together from different departments to accomplish tasks. In the new model of organization, customers are served more efficiently because they can speak to specific departments instead of boundary spanning personnel. Horizontal information sharing eliminates redundant tasks and speeds completion of projects. Lewis & Lewis still harbors many of the beliefs inherent to the old model. While an employee working on a company's file may at times feel free to call that company with specific questions regarding their business, the partners prefer to handle most interaction with the clients. Because of the nature of the accounting firm and the relatively small size of the organization, the partners alone are normally able to handle these responsibilities. Although this method of interacting with clients does not utilize team functions, the quality of the product does not seem to have suffered. Although Phil feels that the firm is flat and informal, his subordinates and the other partners claim that Lewis & Lewis is still very hierarchical. Phil commented that he was trying to manage as little as possible and empower lower employees to make decisions on their own. This follows the definition of a leaner firm that is trying to reduce management levels so it can better respond to changes in the environment. Unfortunately, the employees feel that they can make decisions as long as they are the some ones that Phil would have made. Although empowerment of the employees has not yet proven very effective, Lewis & Lewis is making use of technology to remove layers of personnel. During the 1980's, many paraprofessional employees were used for bookkeeping, payroll, and other basic tasks. As computer software increasingly simplifies bookkeeping, the firm's need for paraprofessionals decreases, and Lewis & Lewis is able to shift toward hiring more professionals. Therefore, the average employee at Lewis & Lewis is gradually becoming more knowledgeable and expert. This not only increases the amount of revenue that each employee brings to the firm and but provides better service to the customer. Flexible As Lewis & Lewis attempts to create a more flexible workforce, they are encountering new obstacles. All the employees and partners at Lewis & Lewis feel that the firm is very flexible on most issues that are important to the staff. Employees are able to schedule dentist appointments during the day and make up time on the weekends or after hours. Several members of the staff are currently enrolled in classes that meet during the day. While Lewis & Lewis attempts to be flexible on these matters, they are not willing to allow the clients' work to suffer; employees are expected to maintain specified work loads. This same flexibility has created some problems for the firm; some questions have been raised about who will get benefits and why some employees are granted part time status and others are not. Some of the staff feel that favoritism occurs when deciding these issues and because the firm is so small, it affects employee relationships. In one case, one part-time employee was receiving full time benefits while another part-time employee was not. This caused friction among the employees who felt that management was not being fair and honest. Diverse With very few exceptions, Lewis & Lewis is a white male dominated accounting firm with a white female support staff. The partners seem to hire people who think like them, to minimize conflicts within the firm. Of the six new professionals that were hired last month, none of them were women. This does bring into question the diversity within the firm. Many of the issues that create stress and problems in a diverse work force simply do not exist because men and women are not working together at the same status level as in larger firms. One wonders, though, what benefits are being missed through this same lack of diversity. Although there do not seem to be many efforts being made to increase diversity in the firm's demographics, Lewis & Lewis does predict a different educational background for many of its future employees. The firm would like to provide a wider range of financial services to its clients, and will therefore be looking for employees with educational experiences other than uniquely accounting. Diagnosis and Problem Definition Most of the problems with the organizational aspects of Lewis & Lewis stem from ambiguities in the formal structure of the company and from the inconsistencies they cause. The conscious effort at creating a comfortable work environment through flexibility and informality causes many communication and managerial problems. In addition, there is a noticeable contradiction between the partners' views of the organization and those of the other employees. First, one remarks that even at the partner level, there are few shared norms and values. While the company is technically owned by the five partners collectively, there is an uneven distribution of interest among them. Financially and otherwise, it is obvious that Phil and Brian are far above the others. One partner remarked that while everyone is given the impression that their ideas are being heard and considered, ultimately they have little or no effect on Phil's decisions. Brian runs day-to-day operations and seems to share most, if not all, of Phil's opinions, but there is no policy in place to guide them if there were a dispute or disagreement. The lack of a mission statement is the physical manifestation of the less obvious but equally significant lack of common goals and plans to reach them. A brief survey was given to the partners assessing their views of the company's present situation. When asked to rate Lewis & Lewis as flat or hierarchical (1 to 10), the results revealed that four of the partners viewed the company as a 3 or 4 on the scale, while Phil himself gave the firm an 8. This represents the deliberate effort he is making at giving his colleagues and employees the ability to make decisions themselves and essentially manage themselves, but it also points out the fact that at this point he doesn't seem to have succeeded. The other partners still view Phil to some extent as a dictator, handing down responsibilities where he sees fit. They seemed, after questioning, to accept their inferior roles in decision-making and managing, but their positions are nowhere formally defined in this way. They seemed to have expected to have more say in matters of importance to the firm when they became partners, but now have bowed to Phil's authority and greater stake in the future of Lewis & Lewis. This is not to say that they resent the way that Phil runs things, or that they would change anything if they had the power to do so, it simply points out the inherent vague descriptions of each partner's function and leads to some confusion that prevents optimum participation in goal achievements. The partners do not meet often; during the busy months, they might meet 2-3 times per month, but the rest of the year there are few, if any, scheduled meetings. At the CPA level, we noticed that there are differing views of the company. Most of the new employees, hired within the last year, have a positive outlook on Lewis & Lewis. This may be in part due to the attention they get from the partners. Phil and Brian consider it top priority to "check up" on new employees to ensure that they are not only performing in a satisfactory fashion, but that they are happy and challenged. The new hires, therefore, seem to have more interaction with the partners, and therefore better personal relationships with them. Alternatively, the employees who have been with the firm for greater lengths of time feel slighted by Phil and Brian. They comment that the partners are never available to give help when needed, are always out of the office, and seem too busy to be bothered with their comparatively small problems. Since it is these employees who have shown the most loyalty to the company, and have obviously shown they can perform well, it seems likely that the partners take advantage of the fact that they require less supervision. On the other hand, it is precisely those employees who have been there longest (and therefore gained the most experience and knowledge) that the partners should be most concerned with keeping happy. While Phil thinks of the "freedom" he gives his trusted employees as a sign of his confidence in them, they seem to regard it as a lack of concern or interest in their contributions to the company. Some of the support staff seem distantly removed from the vision of the company that Phil and Brian and the other partners describe. Most of the partners describe the firm as providing superior quality products and excellent customer service. The partners feel that the most valuable time they spend is when they are actually with their clients. In contrast, the employees at lower levels in the company rarely, if ever, mentioned clients or their relationships with them. They never alluded to contact with customers, and were under the impression that Phil and the others spent too much time out of the office "instead of working." Naturally, these employees focus on the small tasks with which they are presented at work, but they showed little understanding of the end product of their work; that is, the customer's satisfaction. They seemed more concerned with the fact that they were receiving no attention from their superiors. Lewis & Lewis seems determined to provide a flexible work environment for their employees. Their experiences with telecommuting and flextime, though, have caused them to set limits on the flexibility they are willing to practice, and this has caused some resentment among employees. Add to that the inconsistencies which almost always accompany workforce flexibility, and you see some very unhappy and jealous employees. Because the office is small, each employee knows almost everything about the others' benefits and hours, etc.... and is likely to consider certain arrangements unfair if they were denied the same request and were not told the reasons. It is obvious that the company needs to introduce some changes. This will present not only the initial problem of identifying the needed changes, but the difficulty of instituting them. Phil is very conservative in his ideas; some of the partners even used the phrase "old-fashioned." He is reluctant to make immediate changes to some aspects of the company, and in addition, he thinks that in most respects it is operating well at present. He is, however, preparing things for his exit, at which point presumably Brian will take over. Brian is much more apt to introduce change. Suggested Plan of Action · Hold a company-wide meeting to collectively compose a mission statement. This process will promote team unity and the statement will allow the employees at all levels to see the "big picture;" to understand how their job contributes to the success of the whole company. · Formally define the company's operating structure. The partners' roles should be better defined; both to improve the way in which they perform their jobs and to provide predictability for the other employees. · Create the position of Office Manager. The employee filling this position should be a non-partner and will serve as an ambassador between the partners and the rest of the staff. The Office Manager should meet regularly with the partners on an informal basis when they can spare the time, and in turn conduct regularly scheduled staff meetings for the rest of the office. The Office Manager should be able to answer most questions that would normally be addressed to the partners. · Provide incentive for employees to bring in new business. This will not only create more business through new clients, but cause the employees to project a certain pride in their company that will affect their performance on the job. · Establish a clear set of standards for benefit eligibility. This document should state in objective terms the hours necessary to qualify an employee to receive benefits and other means of compensation, in order to avoid discrepancy between workers that has resulted in conflict. · Formulate a specific and objective evaluation procedure. Employees are currently being reviewed annually, but Lewis & Lewis should standardize the criteria involved and perhaps perform the evaluations more regularly. This will eliminate suspicions that management has been playing favorites, as well as provide the partners with a better understanding of their employees' progress and concerns. · Create a common lunchroom. Lewis & Lewis is currently constructing an addition to the back of the building to provide needed office and storage space. Some of the new wing will be occupied by other firms currently in the same building. The inclusion of a common cafeteria would foster relations not only between Lewis & Lewis employees but with employees of the other firms, all of which provide financial services to Jackson companies and are to play a crucial role in Lewis & Lewis's expansion plans. · Implement an "Employee of the Month" award. The honored employee may enjoy a special parking spot, announcement in the company newsletter and other privileges, and will appreciate the recognition. This provides management with an opportunity to encourage employees using non-financial incentive. · Formalize procedures for conflict resolution. Among the partners, conflicts seem few and far between, but a procedure to follow in the event of a difference in opinion should be developed. As new partners emerge, consistency of opinion may not be as prevalent, and a standard procedure for conflict resolution will minimize tension between the new partners. · Lastly, we suggest that Lewis & Lewis seek external consulting services. The implementation of many beneficial changes may require a long-term commitment and periodic input from an objective group. If finances are a concern, may we suggest a now highly qualified group of MBA students after their completion of Management 806 at Michigan State University. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Our society Isnt Doing enough To prevent Suicide.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Once every minute someone tries to commit suicide. Sixty or seventy times a day these attempts succeed.( Earl A. Grollman, Suicide: Prevention, Intervention, Postvention, Boston: Beacon Press, 1988, p.4) Unlike what many want to believe, suicide can happen to anyone regardless of race, age or sex. News reports, books and the internet all point in the same direction. We are undergoing a breakdown in our social roles, and suicide is the result. The first ever recorded talk of suicide was in 2000 B.C., when a man says that his life is filled with pain and suffering and he is contemplating taking his own life. Although attitudes toward suicide have changed over the years, it has not ceased to happen. The first suicide prevention Centre didn't come until almost 4000 years later. In 1774, England created the first Centre to try to prevent attempted suicides. Suicide prevention isn't happening until it's too late. One high school, in a small town in Quebec, had four suicides in seven weeks. After these had happened, the school invited parents in to discuss suicide prevention. (CTV News 11:00 p.m. January 6, 1997.) These might have been able to be prevented if communities would assume their roles and discuss it on a regular basis and not have suicide be a word that is whispered but never spoken. The myth that those who talk about suicide will never actually go through with it is completely false. Most people who do kill themselves give some sort of clue before doing so. It may be something very subtle such as "I wonder where my father keeps his gun" or they might just come right out and say "I would rather die then go on living this way." What ever it is everyone should know how to recognize when someone is feeling suicidal and get help to them right away. Suicide can be prevented if noticed at an early enough stage. Suicidal feelings can be brought upon someone by many different situations. Someone with a terminal illness may not see a reason to continue a short life of pain, when they think they'll die soon anyway. Economical stress hurts more then just your wallet, someone may feel that they are a failure and that may bring suicidal feelings. The death of a loved one or the breakdown of a family can also cause these feelings. Because someone may fall in to one of these categories doesn't mean that they are suicidal, but all hints should be taken seriously. A cry for help needs help from a professional helper. Although suicide is a frightening subject, the rate of suicide among adolescence is increasing drastically.( Earl A. Grollman, Suicide: Prevention, Intervention, Postvention, Boston: Beacon Press, 1988, p.4) People believe that discussing suicide with teenagers will put ideas in to their head. The majority of teen suicide could have been prevented if there were proper awareness programs in the community and at school. There are many examples of teens who felt depressed and suicidal over not making a sports team or getting in to the university of their choice. After trying to express their feelings and having no one listen to them, they often take their life. Suicide is illegal but that doesn't stop people from wanteing to go through with it. People do have a right to die but by helping them deal with their problems better and know their options, it does not take them away their rights, just keeps them from doing somethng they might regret. In the vast majority of cases a suicide attemptor would choose differently if they were not in great distress and were able to evaluate their options objectively. (http://www.paranoia.com/%7Ereal/suicide/) Suicide should be taken very seriously and should no longer be a topic shunned by our society. It should be openly discussed, and information on suicide should be as accessible to everyone as water. Those contemplating suicide may not be able to see what they are doing and the other solutions that are out there. If someone is showing many signs of wanting to end their life, then they should be directed towards other options such as counseling, therapy, or perhaps even medication. If the individual knows his/her options and still chooses suicide, since it is their life, then it should be their choice. To many, suicide may seem like the only answer, although they may know what kind of an impact it will leave behind them, if they've had these feelings for a long period of time, there might be no stopping them. Suicide has to be detected early, and treated early. There is hope for the future, scientists are constantly discovering new things about how the brain works, and new medication to treat depression, and other mental illnesses. Slowly but surely people are beginning to talk about the ever-feared word suicide. But there is still so much that can be done by society. People must be educated on the taboo subject. There should be more public awareness programs at schools, seminars and conferences should be held to provide information on prevention. This is becomming more important now then ever, as the suicide rate increases the need for these should be recognized on a provincial and national level. Mental health should be a priority in our society today, not something that is left on the back burner like it used to be. As stress grows with the raise of unemployement and the increase in broken homes, the suicide rate grows as well. Education is our main weapon against it, so we have to make sure we're fully loaded. It's on the news, it's in the books, the statistics are everywhere and they're overwhelming, yet action isn't taken and the problem continues to get worse. The social roles in our society are breaking down where education on this subject is concerned and suicide is the gruesome result. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Paper on the American Association of Retired People AARP.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 Founded in 1958 by Dr. Ethel Percy, the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) has been dedicated to addressing the needs and interests of older Americans. Percy felt that older Americans could attain a sense of satisfaction and fulfillment by remaining physically and intellectually active in society, thus came about his idea to form the AARP. The AARP is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, membership organization open to anyone, working or retired, over the age of 50. Based in Wash- ington, D.C., the AARP pursues its goals through service, advocacy, and education. The AARP's ultimate goal is to help older Americans achieve lives of independence, dignity, and purpose. The AARP is spread nation wide through local chapters and is run mainly by volunteer board members at the local and national levels. The 33 million members of the AARP can expect many benefits as well as support from the AARP. The wide range of services span anywhere from movie tickets to grants for re- search. The AARP also has many publications in the form of audio and publications. The most famous of these publications is the bimonthly Modern Maturity which targets all readers inter- ested in AARP issues. The issues and goals the AARP advocates span a great deal throughout the political, economic, and social arena. While diverse in its areas of interest, the AARP mainly concentrates on social issues. Being a nonpartisan organization, the AARP does not nationally endorse or contribute any money to the 2 campaigns of any candidate running for national positions including presidency. Politics in the AARP is basically left to the individual to decide whom he/she will support. The only participation the AARP takes is through the AARP/VOTE program. The goals of the AARP/VOTE program are to educate AARP members and the general public about important economic, health and consumer issues, and about the positions taken by candidates for public office on these issues. They also inform candidates and elected officials of AARP's positions on key policy issues and help elected officials be more responsive to the needs of their districts or states by promoting effective communication with their constituents. AARP/VOTE is successful because of its effective methods used to bring the candidate and constituent closer together. They use techniques such as candidate forums where the candidates visit local chapters, questionnaires that candidates fill out, and voter registration drives. Besides the AARP/Vote program, the AARP gets through political pressure from the grass roots level by a well structured system of events. This system of events can be summarized in four basic steps. The first being Obtaining Member Input. This step involves the local level members providing input about legislative issues of concern in any area. The input is provided in form of thousands of letters of concern which is reviewed by the National Legislative Council of the AARP. If enough support for an issue is found to be present among the majority of the members then it goes on to the next step which is the Decision 3 Making of the National Legislative Council and Board of Directors. At this level, the National Council and Board of directors decide which issues to support and include these new issues into the AARP's federal and state policy agenda for the year. The Council and Board interact with Congressional and government leaders. Leaders read over and respond to the AARP's policy and debate over issues of concern. Once revisions are made to the policy agenda, a final draft is made and is distributed in many forms to anyone interested. The third step, Disseminating and Implementing Legislative Policy, includes lobbying in Washington D.C. and testifying regularly on Capitol Hill about the AARP's federal and state policy for that year. While action is being taken in Washington, the AARP is also educating members on the new policy. The final step would be Ongoing Policy Analysis. At this level the AARP reviews and analyses federal response policies to see if they are consistent with AARP policy. Recommendations are logged into a working draft of the upcoming year's policy book and the process of interacting with the federal government starts all over again. The AARP is concerned with economic issues such as the financing of Social Security and Medicare, trust funds, the federal deficit, and COLAs or Cost of Living Adjustments to health care services. The AARP believes only modest changes need to made to Social Security in order to keep it going into the 21st century. The rising cost of health services is a threat to Medicare and the AARP feels the solution is to get the 4 nation's entire health care system under control. Another reason why the AARP is so optimistic about Social Security is because of trust funds. The trust funds are estimated to have $460 billion in assets in 1995. Even if nothing is done to strengthen Social Security, there is enough money to pay benefits for 35 years. Modest changes will be needed to extend the trust funds well beyond that time. With regards to the federal deficit, the AARP is for the reduction of the deficit and is willing to pay their share as long as it doesn't single out and overburden older Americans for an unfair share of the cost. Probably the most extreme position the AARP takes is on the financing of health care reform. Their possible list of solutions include payroll taxes, increase in income taxes, VAT or value added taxes, and an excise tax on alcohol and tobacco. Finally, the AARP feels the CPI or Consumer Price Index number should consider the CPI-E or Consumer Price Index for the Elderly when calculating the rate of inflation with the CES or Consumer Expenditure Survey. The premise underlying a CPI-E is that older people's purchasing patterns differ significantly from the rest of the population, particularly those age 65 and older. For example, older persons spend a larger share of their incomes on medical care, and medical care prices are far out-pacing general inflation. Therefore, a CPI-E could reflect a higher rate of inflation; its use in COLA calculations would protect older persons from rising medical costs. 5 Finally, social issues that dominate the AARP include transit for the elderly, fighting age discrimination, pro generic drugs, general health care and home care reform, anti-mandatory retirement, and the elderly and driving issues. To begin with, the AARP advocates that federal, state and local governments should consider the mobility needs of all citizens in comprehensive transportation planning. Options such as vehicles accessible by physically-disabled citizens, transportation vouchers and other innovative transit services should be considered. Also, private sector and community resources should support local government transportation efforts. For example, some AARP chapters and Retired Teachers Association (RTA) units already sponsor special transportation systems at the local level. Other civic organizations and businesses can do the same. Such initiatives are becoming increasingly important in the delivery of local transportation services. Third, innovative transportation alternatives ,such as transit service routes and safe pedestrian walkways with proximity to housing and services, must be included in all community development planning. The AARP is fighting age discrimination through education, legislation, and litigation. Through education, the AARP is making workers more aware of their rights under the law, helping eliminate negative stereotypes about older workers, and helping employers recognize the value and experience of older workers. Through legislation, the AARP is urging Congress to remove any exceptions to the law making it illegal to discriminate 6 in employment on the basis of age. Litigation comes in the form numerous "friend-of-the-court" briefs in significant cases involving the interpretation of the ADEA. The AARP is pro generic drugs mainly because Medicare does not cover outpatient prescription drugs, which are the second largest out-of-pocket health expense for older persons, after long-term care. They don't feel consumers should pay more money for the same product. On the issue of long term health care, the AARP feels there is a need for strong reform. For more than three decades, AARP has taken a leadership role on health and long- term care issues, and considers health care reform a national priority. AARP stands firmly for a system that provides high- quality, affordable health and long-term care for all Americans. Currently America's health care costs are skyrocketing out of control. More than 37 million Americans have no health insurance ,one-fourth of them are children, and another 20 million are underinsured. Two of the greatest health care needs for older Americans, long-term care and prescription drugs, can be a tremendous expense, and, unfortunately, many persons lack any insurance coverage for these costs. With regards to the national health care debate, although many different plans have been proposed by the Democrats; to increase government control and cut government spending on health care, and Republicans; to privatize health care and cut spending on health care, the one issue that the AARP is interested in, is one that will not jeopardize the quality of health care in the U.S. Any such 7 threat provokes action by the AARP. Another one of the major goals of the AARP's nationwide health care campaign is the development of a range of long-term care services that will enable individuals to receive the help they need in the least restrictive setting possible. This is known as home care. Remaining at home helps many older persons maintain social ties and involvement with the community and family and helps preserve their sense of independence and security. It may also help reduce the strain that excessive hospital or nursing home bills can cause during a long-term illness or disability. The AARP also advocates against laws that mandate early retirement. They feel that individuals should be able to work as long as they are willing and able to work. Letting older persons work longer would also benefit Social Security and private pensions by increasing the amount of contributions with more people working and by delaying payments. Finally, the AARP stands firmly against age-related driver testing. They say it is discriminatory and isn't the solution to the elderly's driving problems. The solution the AARP proposes is education. They would like to educate the elderly more about driving as well as having tougher tests when renewing driver's licenses. Another suggestion is to have more conspicuous and highly visible road signs. These ideas all together, says the AARP, would make roadways safer for all drivers. Thus, through this small sample of their large interest for social issues, one can get a better idea how the AARP stands. 8 Being a member of the AARP has it's many personal benefits as well as having the satisfaction that as an older person, one is still involved in society at the political, economic, and social levels. The AARP has been around for 38 years strong, being very effective and providing a solid voice for older Americans, and its success so far will assure its survival into the 21st century becoming one of the most well rounded organizations. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Paralangue and Kinesics.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Use of Paralanguage and Kinesics The use of kinesics and paralanguage in everyday life is the most prominent use of persuasion we use subconsciously. They are used subconsciously because you may not know what they mean. Which can cause cultural tension if you do something that may seem harmless to you but may be a great insult to another culture. Paralanguage has many forms such as whistling which can be used by many people as a means of entertaining by whistling a song or even in American culture used to hound women on the streets because they appear to be attractive. These two uses of persuasion I will discuss about in my paper. I will discuss the history of both and also how they are used today in everyday life. To start of with I will define kinesics. Kinesics is articulation of the body, or movement resulting from muscular and skeletal shift. This includes all actions, physical or physiological, automatic reflexes, posture, facial expressions, gestures, and other body movements. Body language, body idiom, gesture language, organ language and kinesic acts are just some terms used to depict kinesics. In ways that body language works in nonverbal acts, body language parallels paralanguage. Kinesic acts may substitute for language, accompany it, or modify it. Kinesic acts may be lexical or informative and directive in nature, or they may be emotive or empathic movements. Posture is one of the components of kinesics. Posture is broken down into three basic positions: bent knees, lying down, and standing. Artists and mimes have always been aware of the range of communication possible through body stance. But there are some cultural differences in posture positions. Most people use the bent knee position to eat, but while the Romans used to eat lying down. Prince Peter of Greece and Denmark described the sleeping posture of the Tibetans before World War II. He said that the local men slept outside at night huddled around the fire, hunched over on their knees with their faces resting in their palms. In 1932, William James did a study of expression of bodily posture. He recognized the relationship of facial expression, gesture, and posture. He declared that studying each one independently was justified for the purpose of analysis, but they should be recognized as a whole unit that function as an expression. He devised four basic kinds from 347 different postures in his experiment. The four basic kinds are: approach, withdrawal, expansion, and contraction. Approach referred to such things as attention, interest, scrutiny, and curiosity. Withdrawal involved drawing back or turning away, refusal, repulsion, and disgust. Expansion referred to the expanded chest, erect trunk and head, and raised shoulders, which conveyed pride, conceit, arrogance, disdain, mastery, and self-esteem. Contraction was characterized by forward trunk, bowed head, drooping shoulders, and sunken chest. Studies have identified postural behavior with personality types and ways of life, for example relaxation, assertiveness, and restraint; and have noted the correlation of certain kinds of movement in sleeping and waking acts. Posture is a substantial marker of feminine and masculine behavior. The relationship of posture to sex gestures is obvious in the stereotypes in U.S. advertising. Posture is an indicator of status and rank and is also a marker of etiquette. In a study of Roman sculpture and coinage, Brilliant demonstrates that posture identifies the noble and the peasant. In Western culture one was taught to stand when an elderly person enters the room. The face seems to be the most obvious component of body language, but it is certainly the most confusing and difficult to understand. Modern studies of facial expressions dates back to the nineteenth century, starting with Charles Bell, who in 1806, published Essays on the Anatomy and Philosophy of Expression: As Connected with the Fine Arts. Charles Darwin's, The Expressions of Emotions in Man and Animals, in 1872, was apparently influenced by Bell's earlier work. Facial expressions are like sentences in human language, they are infinite in variety. The relationship of facial expression to other components of body language and to language itself, is sparsely examined and such observations as have been made are recent. It does not take very extensive scientific study to observe that a smiling face makes a sentence sound different from a sentence articulated by a sorrowful, droopy physiognomy. There are five basic physical descriptions of facial expressions: neutral, relaxed, tense, uplifted, and droopy. The neutral could result in various expressions such as pleasure, mask, respect, thoughtful, and quiet attention. The relaxed could result in love, pleasure and submission. The tense results in fear, surprise, determination, contempt, and extreme interest. The uplifted could result in happiness, anxiety, rage, religious love, astonishment, attention. Finally the droopy, in distress, suffering, grief, dismay, and shock. Facial expression may portray the actual emotion felt and accurately accompany the speech. On the other hand, facial expression, as with other body language and nonverbal components, may contradict the verbal expression, thus giving the real message. One's facial expression may be practiced and may thus be made convincingly to lie, along with the speech act, about one's real feelings. Artists and clowns have effectively exploited facial expressions and gestures as social weapons and entertainment. The eyes and mouth, it is generally agreed, carry the heaviest load of communicative and expressive manifestations. When the eyes of two persons meet there is a special kind of communication. This special kind of communication is not always desirable. In some cultures the Evil Eye , the direct stare, is one of the worst possible social and/or supernatural offenses. The term eye contact is used to identify this special relationship. Eye contact is one of the closest possible relationships. It can be used as a "regulator" in conversations in an informal kind of way, and it can be used in a more precise signal, for example, between the chairman of a meeting and a member who is asking for the floor. At the end of a social evening, couples may signal "Let's go!" only by eye contact. Deaf persons are insistent on eye contact in teractions; they depend heavily on kinesic movement to supplement the "conversation." The avoidance of eye contact also signals something meaningful. Looking away contributes to maintaining psychological distance. Other eye behaviors are symptoms of abnormalities in human beings, such as excessive blinking, depressed look, dramatic gaze, guarded gaze, and absent gaze. The blink frequency can be a measure of tension, or even of sobriety as some researchers have concluded. The mouth is a remarkable communicator, both on the obvious and subtle levels. In fact, most mouth movement is not associated with sound at all. If the eyes are the "windows of the soul," certainly the mouth is the very door. The grimace, in contrast to the movement made by a tic, is voluntary and within the control of the person who does it. Pouting is a well-known kinesic act of children. Sticking out the tongue among the children of Western cultures is a widely-known expression of insult. Protruding the tongue, however, has other meanings. It is a component of a negative response among the aborigines in Queensland and Gipp's land where a negative is expressed by throwing the head of a little backwards and putting out the tongue. Tongue movements may take place naturally when one is thinking deeply or preoccupied with writing or silent reading - such behavior when one is alone is known as "autistic behavior." Jaw movement also occurs in moments of concentration, and in addition when the person is carrying on some activity with an opening and closing motion. The hands, of course, are of paramount interest here with a seemly endless array of possibilities which different cultures utilize in various ways. In some cultures specific hand gestures number in the hundreds. Movement of the head conveys various meanings depending upon the tilt, uprightness, thrust from the body, and side movement. Paralanguage is some kind of articulation of the vocal apparatus, or significant lack of it, for example, hesitation between segments of vocal articulation. This includes all noises and sounds which are extra-speech sounds, such as hissing, shushing, whistling, and imitation sounds, as well as a large variety of speech modifications, such as quality of voice (sepulchral, whiny, giggling), extra high-pitched utterances, or hesitations and speed in talking. People from all different walks of life recognize that the human voice communicates something beyond language. These effects are referred to by impressionistic descriptions such as "tone of voice," "voice quality," "manner of speaking," or "the way he said it." There are modifying features which can occur independently, such as crying and laughing, groaning, and whining. These are "vocal characterizes" which one "talks through" when they accompany language. The sounds used in language are referred to as segmental sounds or phonemes. They are produced by the articulatory organs of speech and each has a particular articulatory phonetic description. Fricative sounds occur frequently in paralanguage, perhaps because of the air expired air movement is of much importance in paralinguistic. A surprising amount of paralanguage makes use of sounds which might be considered more dramatic and exotic than the language sounds. These sounds are trills and clicks and sounds modified in exotic ways, which without the modification might be considered ordinary. Trills are a kind of iterative articulation; that is, repetitions of a flap articulation by the movable parts of the speech mechanism. Any part of the speech apparatus which can move may be involved in a trill, whether it be the lips, tongue, cheek, uvula, velic, or vocal cords. The click sounds are made by causing a suction of air in the mouth cavity. These percussive-like sounds are well documented as speech sounds in several languages, but, like the kiwi bird in New Zealand, they occur in only one geographical area of the world. The type of modification when the lips are involved, or puckered, is called labialization, and in speech sounds is used in French, German, Scandinavian, and many other languages. In English this type of rounded lip modification is known as "baby talk." Palatalization is a kind of modification made by the blade of the tongue in contact with the palate. It occurs very commonly in Slavic languages. Nasalization is a kind of modification which permits air to escape through the nose while pronouncing an oral sound. Nasalized vowels occur in the language structure of French, but in English occur only in paralanguage. Nasalization also occurs in strong emotions of love and hatred due to the swelling and shrinking of the nasal membranes in these circumstances. Pharyngealization is another modification and is produced in the back of the throat. It results from opening up the area of the pharynx by tongue movement. This occurrence is noted in the Arabic language. Muscle constriction is a tightening of the vocal apparatus which produces sounds known as "fortis" in language systems, in contrast to sounds made in relaxed manner, which are known as "lenis." Constriction of the vocal cords is said to occur in a special kind of speech among the Amahuacas of Peru. There are extra-speech sounds used for communication which are treated here, never occur, as far as has been recorded, in any language system of the world. This group, non-language sounds, includes such "noises" as the whistle, the kiss, the yell, the groan, clapping of the tongue, various percussive sounding noises made with mouth air articulated by the lips and tongue, but not to be confused with mouth clicks, and a variety of imitative noises, such as the bilabial "pop" when the champagne cork is released. Whistling as a communication device is world-wide, from spontaneous, expressive whistling for joy, or "whistling in the dark," to simple signals across distances, such as among mountain climbers in the Alps who call for help by whistling. The kiss is a bilabial voiceless click which is articulated in the manner of the other clicks actually used in languages which were described previously under specific language sounds. Kempelen classified kisses into three types, according to their sounds: the kiss proper, a clear- ringing kiss, coming from the heart; the weaker kiss, from an acoustic point of view; and a loathsome smack. The kiss is used in greetings and in affectionate display, but also has other functions with communicative value. The yell, and variations of it as expressed by the scream, shout, roar, howl, bellow, squeal, holler, shriek, or screech, are effective non-speech communications, difficult to describe technically, and almost impossible to duplicate the effect of in other kinds of communication media. The Confederate Yell, during the Civil War, was a ulant yell that was the signal for the Confederate troops to charge at the enemies. The use of paralanguage in today's society is very prominent. We use paralanguage with children when we tell them to be quiet by saying "shush." If we see something disgusting we can make a gagging sound which shows disapproval. We also use kinesics today a lot too. We use the "O.K." sign to signal that everything is fine. We even have body language for vulgar words that many people today seem to use a lot. The study of these two topics can help a lot in understanding what people are really saying in today's society. Without the understanding of kinesics or paralanguage we would not be able to help bridge the gap between certain cultures or even each other. We need these two non-verbal communication techniques to survive. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Paranoid Personality Disorders.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Paranoid Personality Disorders Paranoid Personality Disorder is a disorder commonly mistaken for schizophrenic personality disorders. Schizophrenia, a psychosis, is when a person is has an image of a world and its transpiring events, and he/she is "living" it. Paranoid Personality Disorder, however, is a neurosis where an individual is living in the real world. This disorder, though not as debilitating as other disorders, can still devastate a someone's life. Individuals with this Paranoid Personality Disorder always assume that other people are "out to get them" even if there is no evidence that this is true. They are constantly doubting others around them and scrutinizing every action. This attitude is taken on towards all people, like friends or associates, not only strangers. For these reasons, people with this personality disorder rarely confide in people and are actually amazed if someone shows loyalty. However, this amazement also gives way to disbelief and falls back towards the idea that this newfound loyalty is part of a plot to cause harm. Those of with the disorder also tend to bear their grudges and unwilling to forgive. They nurture their grudges and anger, which over time, gives them more of a sense that it is the outside world which the problem, not themselves. At times, these individuals may also conjure up flamboyant illusions to confirm their behavior toward others. These feelings are also carried out towards family as well. One example could be as if a person with this personality disorder had a spouse or sexual partner, this individual constantly thinks that their partner or spouse is cheating on them. Often, the spouse or partner is barraged with questions questioning their whereabouts, faithfulness, or intentions. It is believed that these symptoms first appear usually during childhood or adolescence. Those believed to be most prone are "loners," those who are unable to maintain stable relationships with others, social anxiety, sometimes underachieve in school, are hypersensitive, have strange thoughts and language, and (as stated before) fantasies. To "normal" people, individuals with this paranoid personality disorder may seem out of place and commonly attract teasing. Those usually affected by these symptoms are usually those who are of minority groups, immigrants, refugees, or people with different ethnic backgrounds. The reason for this is because these people are unfamiliar with these new and different concepts. These individuals may have a language problem, or unfamiliar with local customs and/or laws. Problems such as these may generate anger and mistrust among the individuals, and are paranoid, but not necessarily someone with the Paranoid Personality Disorder. The reason being this person still places trust in the family and may have friends. However, to legally have this disorder, one must show the symptoms listed above, and be completely suspicious and hostility toward others. Another possibility widely being speculated upon is the brain. In the brain, there are many chemicals, and for the brain to function correctly, there must a balance of each type of chemical. As of now, scientists don't know exactly which chemicals are responsible, but are optimistic. There is also evidence suggesting that there is an increased possibility that someone with a relative that suffers from chronic Schizophrenia (specifically Persecutory and Delusional Type) is more likely to develop Paranoid Personality Disorder. Among people in the United States, there is a relatively small percentage of people with this disorder. In the general population, there is approximately 0.5%-2.5% with Paranoid Personality Disorder. In inpatient settings, the prevalence is much high than in outpatient settings. For inpatients psychiatric settings, the percentage ranges from 10%-30%, as opposed to 2%-10% in the outpatient mental health clinics. Of those diagnosed with this disorder, there are more males reported to have this disorder than females, though the reason is not known why. These statistics are of those reported, therefore there may be a greater percentage in the world. People with personality disorders such as this tend not to seek treatment. When they do go to a therapists' office, it is usually on the initiative of a spouse or a problem arising from their child. Unfortunately, these individuals are resistant to treatment, even when they enter therapy voluntarily. Though not much is known about a cure for the Paranoid Personality Disorder, there treatments performed in an attempt to reduce the extremity of the disorder. One method that can be used is reinforcement of adaptive behaviors. Such as congratulations, or some sort of prize or comment to uplift the person's morale hopefully change their thoughts about others. Another possible treatment is psychotherapy or psychoanaylsis. The significance these two are that the therapists are able to give the patient a chance to realize their self-defeating behavior or break patterns that lead to unhappiness. By talking to the individual with the disorder, the therapist may gain enough trust to help reduce the paranoia. However, if the therapist breaks the trust, hopes of recovery may be extremely slim, for it would only give support to the paranoia the patient already has. Hopefully, in the near future, there will be another form of treatment that can cure, or at least come close to curing the Paranoid Personality Disorder. The best hope of this lies in scientific research upon the brain and the chemicals which control emotions and actions. In doing so, many people who suffer from this disorder may lead a life without paranoia. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Parent Teenager relationships.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Parent - teenager relationships Parents are fragile things. There is a very fine line between approval and disapproval with most parents. No teenager I know ever seems to do anything right by their mum or dad. My mother always nags me to do things like clean my teeth, tidy my room, do my homework blah blah.... It's probably the same with many other teenagers out there. When asked why parents nag they often say "it's for your own good" or something equally insane. These comments rate right up there with "because I said so" and "because I'm your father or because I'm your mother" It is, in fact, very easy to judge if a particular child is or isn't nagged. If I were to take my friend Doug for example, I could very easily say that his mother didn't nag him much at all. This is because he simply does what he likes. I mean, who does the right thing when nobody cares if you don't? Now take myself, I have had more than my fare share of nagging in my time. How do you know? Well, everything I am was shaped by my mother. She is an epitome of understanding, a wealth of knowledge and of course I have inherited the other traits like beauty and genetic perfection. I know I certainly hate being nagged. If my mum gets on my nerves I'd say just about anything to shut her up sometimes. Have a look at Josephine in the novel "Looking for Alibrandi" and compare her to her mother. Jose may absolutely hate her mother sometimes but at others be unable to live without her presence. I don't think that Jose could ever imagine her mother being in the same position as her. What I don't understand is if our parents have been through this themselves, then why do they have such a hard time understanding why their children often hate them for the same reasons? My main point is that if our parents have resented their parents for the way they were brought up, why do they treat our generation in the same way? I think the answer lies in the control and freedom teenagers have and want these days. As we get older we tend to want to be in control of our direction, and not be forced in a particular direction by someone else, even by a parent. This is why I don't like my mother nagging, because it symbolises that feeling of control and power that our parents crave. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\partner abuse.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Domestic violence spans the range of violent encounters and includes physical assaults, sexual assaults, verbal assaults, intimidation, threats, extreme emotional or psychological neglect and even death. The hypothesis of this paper is do students believe that partner abuse is a problem on college campus. To find out this I will include a literary review, which will include theories of why it might occur and prof from other sources. Most important a survey given out to Curry college students and its results will be included. I choose this topic to educate students on the violence in dating relationships. Literary review Partner violence is typically defined as an act carried out with the intention of causing physical or mental pain to another person. Partner abuse is not only important as a phenomenon in itself but also because it precedes marital violence and thus may provide a link in transmission of violence. Here are some theories that may provide some reasons how partner abuse occurs and the prof that it is a problem on college campuses. On theory of dating violence is the social learning theory. This theory examines the effects of either experiencing abuse as child or witnessing abusive between one's parents. Reachers of dating violence have found that there is a history of abuse is related to later involvement in an abusive relationship for both males and females. Also, found that having been abused as a child predicted later involvement in abuse for women but not for men. Abusive men were more likely to have witnessed violence between their parents than were women in an abusive marriage. Similarly, found that although more abused wives, they still were less likely to have witnessed marital violence than had non husbands. Therefore, although a history of either witnessing or experiencing abuse seems of either witnessing or experience abuse seems prevalent between men and women in abusive relationships, the exact nature of that influence on men and women remains unclear. (Alexander, Pamela C Journal of marriage and the family p 657-667) The Feminist theory has also been used to explaining the presence of violence between males and females. Feminist theory views violence as a manifestation of the patriarchal structure in our culture, which is reflected in the patterns of behaviors and attitudes of individuals. Discoveries that abusive man frequently espouses more traditional views about women than do non abusive men. Conversely more recent research has found no difference between men's attitudes toward women and violent behavior toward their partners. Evidence regarding women's attitudes is similarly mixed. There is no found difference between abused wives and those in discordant or satisfied marriages in their attitudes toward women. Also, no found relationship between adherence and feminist ideology. Also, the experience of sexual aggression in a dating relationship. Other researches have concluded that the discrepance between some couple's attitudes toward women sex roles may be a more significant predictor of violence than the actual values of either the man or the women. In summary support for a feminist conceptualization of the integration transmission of violence requires of an association between violence and patriarchal values both within an abusive couple and between generations. Also, Males reported being more verbally abusive to their partners than did females as well as receiving substantially more verbally abuse from their partners than they themselves extended. On the other hand, females did not report as much verbal abuse in their dating relationships. However, both males and females reported that their own level of verbal aggression was similar to that of their parents. Also, males reported themselves for being more physically violent than did females and for being more abused themselves by their parents. Also the length of the dating relationship was found to be significantly related to the amount of verbal abuse extended and received. It was not found to predict physical violence in the relationship. (Alexander, Pamela C Journal of marriage and the family 657-667) The following paragraphs will include the prof from other surveys and studies that were published. An article Maclean's magazine reported a study that was conducted in a Canadian college. 3,142 students were question. The finding where that 22 per cent of the women surveyed said that they have been physically abused. 29 per cent said that they had been sexually abused, by boyfriends or male accountancies in the previous 12 months. 81 per cent of the female respondents said they have been abused in some way or another. (Deacon, James Maclean's p54) In the Journal of Interpersonal Violence a survey was given out to 465 college students. The survey regarded of their frequency of inflicting and sustaining aggression in their dating relation ships. Their findings suggested that males are less likely than females to take responsibility for violence. Also, males were found to be more likely to place the blame on their partner. It was also found that males were found more likely to use alcohol or drugs during violent episodes. (LeJeune, Chad Journal of interpersonal violence p181-94) Also, in another edition of the Journal of Interpersonal Violence had posted an article on the psychological abuse in college students. 1,625 college students' males and females were surveyed. The results showed that males in a relationship reported higher levels of psychological abuse and fewer positive behaviors than did males. (Caulfield, Marie B Journal of interpersonal violence p350-64) Sampling This survey was handed out to twenty random curry college students. Out of the twenty of the students nine were male and eleven were female. Also, it was given out to all class standing in college from freshman to seniors. Two of the twenty where freshman, eight were sophomores, three were juniors, and seven were seniors. Data Collection To collect the data of the survey I gave it out at the Levin library which is located at Curry college. It was given out during day and evening times. Data Analysis All figures and data will be included in the preceding pages after the conclusion. This is the data concluded from the twenty surveyed students. Question one asks is it okay to throw or smash objects during arguments with a partner. As you can see in figure 1 that the majority of the students surveyed felt that it is not okay to throw or smash objects during arguments with a partner. Question two states is it okay to shove or grab a partner when angary. As you can see in figure 2 the majority of the students surveyed disagreed or strongly disagree that it is okay to shove or grab a partner when angary. In question three it was asked is it okay to intimidate your partner with shouting or threats. As shown in figure 3 the majority of the students surveyed disagree to strongly disagree that it okay to intimidate your partner with shouting or threats. Question four ask the students if alcohol contributes to an abusive situation. Figure 4 shows that the majority of the students surveyed strongly either agree or agree that alcohol does contributes to an abusive situation. Question five asks the student if they feel drugs contribute to abusive situations. Show in figure 5 the students stated that the majority of the students surveyed strongly either agree or agree that drugs contribute to abusive situations. Question six states that abusive people probably come from abusive families. Figure six shows that the students had a split decision. Forty percent of the students surveyed agree that abusive people probably come from abusive families. Another 40% were undecided. Question seven asks the students if they have ever seen incidently of physical or verbal abuse on campuses. Figure 7 shows that 75% of the students surveyed had seen incident of physical or verbal abuse on campuses. Question nine asks the students if they think that abusive relationships are a problem at Curry. Figure nine shows that 60% of the students surveyed feel that abusive relationships are a problem at Curry. Question ten asked the students if they have ever attempted to prevent an abusive situation on campus. Figure ten shows 70% of the students surveyed did not attempt to prevent an abusive situation on campus. Conclusion The literature review states two theories that may explain the causes of partner abuse. The first theory discussed was the social learning theory. Which examines the effects of either experiencing abuse as child or witnessing abusive between one's parents. The second was the feminist theory which view's violence as a manifestation of the patriarchal structure in our culture, which is reflected in the patterns of behaviors and attitudes of individuals. From the data of the survey it was found that the majority of the students surveyed felt it was not acceptable to shove, grab, smash or throwing objects, or to intimidate a partner during arguments. The survey students also felt that alcohol and drugs do contribute to abusive situations. The two most important findings that support my hypothesis. The first was that 75% of the surveyed stated that yes they have seen an incident of abuse either physical or verbal on campus. The second was that 60% of the student surveyed felt it was a problem on Curry colleges campuses. It has been shown in this paper that domestic abuse in the form of partner abuse is a problem on college campuses. I feel that this topic should be researched more widely and should be dealt with. Work Cited Alexander, Pamela C. Journal of marriage and the family What is transmitted in the interggenerational transition of violence. 53, August 1991: p657-667 Caulfield, Marie B Journal of interpersonal violence The Assessment of dating aggression: Empirical evaluation of the conflict tactics scale v7 n3 sep. 1992: p350-64 Deacon, James Maclean's Sexes what is 'abuse'? v106 February /22/ 93 p54 LeJeune, Chad Journal of interpersonal violence Taking Responsibility: sex differences in reporting dating violence v.9 n.2 p181-94 1995 Hypothesis: Do students believe that partner abuse is a problem on college campus. Introduction 1 Literary review 1 Sampling 4 Data Collection 4 Data Analysis 4 Conclusion 6 Work Cited 7 Partner Abuse f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\perspectives on society and culture.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Perspectives on Society and Culture It is very difficult as a reader to make any sense of the rituals performed by the Nacirema. The Nacirema are a people who stress the importance of physical wellness and go to great and to the outsider horrific lengths to ensure this. A professor Linton was the first to shed light on the particularly bizarre lifestyle that is lived by the Nacirema. Physical wellness being so heavily stressed is not the bizarre aspect, it is the spiritual sense and seemingly blind faith they put into their beliefs that is bewildering. These people believe the human body is ugly and that it breeds disease. The Nacirema pray daily through a private shrine in there house to , what seems to me cleanse and prevent, what to them lurks and breeds in our body. It is believed by the people that there is magical forces possesed in a chest in the shrine. These forces or magic is supplied through text by a medicine man who holds very high stature among the Nacirema. One part of the body that is seen to be excpecially unholy is the mouth. One major part of the cleansing of the mouth is done once or twice a year by the" holy mouth men". This is where the man uses exotic instruments to open holes larger in decaying teeth or even healthy teeth. The teeth, with nerve exposed, are stuffed with"magical"material to arrest decay. To the outsider this is torturous. There are many other disturbing body cleansing rituals like the baking of women's heads scheduled by the patterns of the moon. This culture is one of many cultures who put there faith in past on beliefs and go to seemingly horrific measures carrying them out. 1. This article was frightening as well as uplifting to me. What was frightening to me is the fact that in the US these disturbing rituals take place. As I already stated as an outsider it is very difficult trying to make sense of these customs in terms of my society.I was being quite ethnocentric. It took me a while to get my stomach back and realize that these people are born into this lifestyle. These rituals are apart of the religion they hold dear to there heart. So yes, to the common white Irish Catholic this may be peculiar, but after some time it occurred to me, the beauty in such strong religious devotion. The Nacirema go to great lengths to, in there minds cleanse the unholy body. Although it may turn your stomach as well as mine, I believe we should be cultural relativist, step back and respect such deep faith and belief. I also believe there is a lesson to be learned here. For if our society as a whole upheld and blindly excepted the teachings of our respected religions, we would live in a safer and better educated society than we do today. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Phoolan Devi Perspectives of Power.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Oni Akuma 02/17/97 Phoolan Devi: Perceptions of Power The purpose of this paper is to analyze and index gender and power as they factor into the life of one Dalit woman, Phoolan Devi. Particularly, I have chosen to examine the idea of whether or not she wielded real power. In an attempt to make it more useful to speak of this slippery thing called power, I would like to make some declarations and pose some questions about its' nature. Cynthia Emerson has suggested that power is ultimately based on dependency relationships (Emerson 1962). It is important to remember that almost all manifestations of power require a power holder and at least one other party that believes that the first holds power. I would like to stress the word "believes" in the previous sentence because I think it is one of the key ingredients in understanding relationships of power. I realize that in many instances the power of the first party may not be undone merely by the second party ceasing to accept it, and that the power of one individual over another may sometimes be physically or otherwise inescapable. Often, the belief follows the direct experience of power, but regardless of the order in which it is conceptualized, I feel the nature of power is inextricably founded in belief and perception. One of the most striking characteristics of Phoolan Devi is her refusal to accept her power-deficient positions in her relationships. From the time that she was a child, she seems to have refused to conform to her society's hierarchical indexing. She resisted attempts to categorize and fix her into typical gender, class, and matrimonial positions. This is not to say that her resistance was always successful, but I am trying to show a lack of willingness to conform and accept her positions in her power relations. Her belief that the status that had been prescribed to her was unjust and her reluctance to accept it are key factors that led to her gaining power and breaking from her power deficient relationships. Her belief in her upward mobility made it possible. This belief in her self and resistance towards accepting the power forced on her helped undermine that same power. This is the one factor that makes Phoolan so different from so many of her Indian sisters that are still living under the thumb of Manu's Code. Does Phoolan Devi possess real power? So far we have considered theoretical power in relationships, but what about physical manifestations of power? The first example that comes to mind is the fact that over two hundred items containing references to Phoolan Devi come up on my screen when I do an Internet search on her name. Photographs, newspaper reviews, magazine articles, newsgroup posts, all proving her power to reach out across the planet and touch people or infuriate them, depending on an individual's personal philosophies. Through her story many have become more conscious of the plight of her caste and gender in modern India. She has the power to inspire and inform. I have read on the Internet that she has been invited to the White House by the Clintons and that veteran British Opposition Labour Party MP, Mildred Gordon, has nominated her for the next Nobel Peace Prize. Activities of this type are usually connected with what we think of as powerful people. In addition, she has clearly shown her political power by getting elected to India's Parliament. Among other things, she is currently attempting to use the momentum of that power to introduce laws preventing child labor in rug-making factories. But does all of this constitute genuine power? One could argue that she herself does not posses the power to inspire, that it is an indication of how the inspired are seeking an icon, a champion of their cause. Does her membership in a low caste reduce her power or is it the backing of her caste that is the source of it? And if the latter is the source, does that means that the power lies in the solidarity of her caste and not within her? It could be argued that if she possessed so much power, why did she remain incarcerated for such a long period? Every major event in her public life, from her surrender to her release ten years later, seems in some way connected to the political aspirations of the Indian officials manipulating these events. And what of her gang? The movie and myth seem to conjure up imagery of an iron fisted woman driving a band of fearless bandits with the crack of her whip. Did they really serve her because of her power over them, or did they work under her employ because the myth of Phoolan worked to their advantage as well? In each of these cases against her possession of power she is argued to be a tool to focus power rather than the real source of the power itself. Does the source of power really matter as long as one retains the ability to wield it? There is no simple answer. The answer to the question "How do you calculate absolute power" is that you can not. It is an objective phenomenon based primarily on the two factors discussed at the beginning of this paper: belief and perception. The amount of power held by Phoolan Devi is largely dependent on the amount of power that she is perceived to possess. As long as Indian officials continue to see her as a figurehead of her caste, she will continue to have political power. As long as she is perceived as an icon of the rights of the oppressed, she will retain the power to inspire. SOURCES Nelson, Cynthia 1974 Public and Private Politics: Women in the Middle Eastern World. American Ethnologist 1:551-563 Internet Newsgroup: Soc.Feminism 1/6/97 Posted by: vhelmle@earthlink.net Bandit Queen Directed by Shekhar Kapoor 1996 f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Police power and authority.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The police. Twenty-four hours a day, three hundred sixty-five days a year, this division of our government has a mandate to enforce the criminal law and preserve public peace. Understood in this mandate is an obligation to police everyday life matters that originate in the daily lives and activities of citizens within their community. Police interact in some form with the average citizen more often than any other government official. In society today the police play a key role in maintaining a civil society. This role assumes a substantial amount of power and authority over the general public. With power comes corruption and/or misuse of power. The question that is presented is, how and why do the police exceed the parameters of their power and authority? This is an issue that is predominant in urban settings, but not exclusive to these settings. This is an important issue because it effects all people. The police is a government service to all people, but all people do not feel they are being serviced. Not everyone is satisfied with the conduct of the police. Why do people feel that police are crossing boundaries that they should not be? This will be observed from four different aspects in which police are capable of exceeding the parameters of their power and authority: police and use of discretionary enforcement, "Police justice", police harassment, and the unwarranted use of police authority. Police are allowed to and must use personal discretion in their determination of law enforcement. Unlike a judge or lawyer a police officer can not gather information and take time to make a prognosis to make a decision affecting the fate of a person. He must make a quick decision based on his discretion to determine the fate of a person.. "...a quick decision is required to protect the interests of the public and to satisfy requirements of operating efficiency" (Reiss, p.130) Now we are telling officer to not enforce the law, but to determine the law. A policeman's discretionary decision may then be evaluated by others both inside and outside of the department. This is the cause for a further complication in the processes because in order to avoid criticism the police officer then might use his own sense of justice. This "police justice" is basically having the officer conduct his own trial. This usually satisfies probable cause but also has the officer concluding a suspect's guilt and a arrest that he determines justifiable. That also leads to the fact that citizens who behave antagonistically towards an officer are more likely to be arrested than those who are civil or very differential. Donald J. Black reported in "Police control of Juveniles", American sociological Review February 1970, that when Complaints are present 72 percent of adults who behave antagonistically toward the police are arrested in the field while only 45 percent who are civil and 40 percent who are differential toward the police are arrested. This is an obvious misuse of discretion. When a police officer treats a citizen antagonistically there is not much the citizen can do, but when it is the citizen acting antagonistically it more than likely will be a determination of guilt. When a police officers judgment is constantly questioned and his sense of justice is not validated he may lose his commitment to the system. Police are often alienated in the criminal justice system, in a sense there status is demeaned by the decisions of lawyers and judges. They are treated as less of a professional. To see a person who in the officer's discretion was guilty be released time after time, it is difficult for the officer to keep his commitment to the system. "Where moral commitment is lost, subcultural practices take over. One such practice that exacerbates the relationship of the police with the public is harassment" (Reiss, p.138) Therefore police create their own subcultural practices which include harassment. Author Albert J. Reiss offers an alternative explanation to why some citizens feel they have been harassed. He states that citizens do not call upon the police for things that they feel the police will not believe or will not consider legitimate concerns. Therefore citizens only call upon the police for what they regard as a crisis or important matter. "What the citizen generally regards as a crisis is necessarily routine to the police; it becomes part of their regular work and follows routines. Likewise, police intervention in the lives of citizens by such means as detaining citizens for questions- regarded by police as routine preventive or investigative work necessary to the role as agents of criminal control- are often regarded by citizens as harassment, infringement upon individual rights, or unauthorized intervention." (Reiss, p.64) The unwarranted use of police authority towards citizens includes an array of components that employ illegal actions including the undue use of force and threats, harassment, uncivil treatment including abusive and demeaning language and actions, and unauthorized methods of investigation. These are actions that are obviously abuses of authority, but they do occur. In a survey done by the national Advisory Commission on civil disorders(done in fifteen cities) showed twenty-two percent of all blacks and six percent of all whites said that they had been frisked or searched without good reason, and twenty percent of all blacks and nine percent of all whites felt that they had been demeaned or had insulting language used on them. One major way in which in which police cross the boundaries of their power and authority is police corruption. Corruption defined is a direct deal involving cash (or assets, or any personal gain for the officer) in exchange for official action or inaction. "The national Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals postulates that: 1. The corruption of public officials at all levels of government- federal, state, and local- is perceived as widespread by the American public; 2. such corruption results in a staggering cost to the American Taxpayer; and 3. the existence of corruption breeds further crime by providing for the citizen a model of official lawlessness that undermines an acceptable rule of law. (More, p.346) The police especially out of all government officials hurt society by this "official lawlessness" because they are the ones who enforce the law. This shows society that some people can be above the law. This does not promote social order. It is almost a message that police feel that there are two sets of laws: one for them , and one for the public. Roger Woddis exhibits this concept in his poem "Ethics for Everyman": Throwing a bomb is bad Dropping a bomb is good; Terror, no need to add, Depends on who's wearing the hood.... Daily the Church declares Betting-shops are a curse; Gambling with stocks and with shares Enlarges the national purse.... Social morality Has a duality- One for each side of the tracks. (Whitaker, p.14) What makes police officers conform to corruption? Possibly because police feel disrespected, not only from their superiors in the criminal justice system as mentioned before, but also from the public. In a study of 437 police officers across eleven cities, fifty-four percent were unhappy with the respect they received from citizens. Thirty percent felt that the average citizen in their patrol held the police in some degree of contempt. Nineteen percent felt that most people in the precinct generally look at the police as enemies. Also one third of the police in the study frequently stop people to question or frisk them, which is seen by most citizens as suspicion of crime. This may have something to do with why so many of the police officers felt the citizens resented them.(More, p.120) The best way to study these issues of whether the police exceed the parameters of their power and authority would be to conduct a survey of citizens, because the general population is who the police have power and authority over. Who else would know better if the police were servicing their communities in the manner in which is expected. When police take too much power of the criminal justice system into their own hands they are damaging society. They are splitting society into the people who are policed for, and the people who are policed against. The police that abuse their power and authority are no longer enforcing justice, but are making it just to obey force. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Political Media.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Political Science: Discussion Group Assignment Sean Stafford 1340392 Are Political Parties in Decline? No: Ronald Landes In Defence of Canadian Political Parties Strong point- Ronald Landed mentions that the several functions of a political party focus on the responsibilities of it. His strongest point too lies within the responsibilities of political governing. Walt Bagehot explains that a political party's chief role is to join the government's executive portion to that of the legislative portion. In short, Bagelot believes that parties force the government to run smoother, and encourage them to solve more problems. Weak point- Landes' weakest point is in regards to the function of party financing. More spefically the electroal functions of the parties financing. He feels that because a party can raise money year in and year out (in fact the money is flowing more than ever), that the organization is successful. A simple explantion exists explaining why more money is coming into the political parties. First of all government legislation has changed regarding the amounts of donations which can be made, i.e. parties can now take more, and larger donations. Secondly, politicians are more bussiness oriented and influenced by large corporations and recieve large donations for corporate involvements. Parties are not more influencial due to more money, nor are they better organized. Yes: John Meisel Decline of Party in Canada Strong point- John Meisel states that the primary factor leading to the dircet declination of political parties in Canada is the rise of the bureaucratic state. Modern Politics have eclipsed the past when political parties did not need to gain specific knowledge as the focused on a few key points rather than large amounts of responsibility. Today too many complex issues are dumped upon our elected representatives, and they have no hope in being able to deal with all the issues or give the proper amount of time and care. The development of appointed civil severents has greatly aided in the solution of this problem, but unfortunatley the elected representitives have lost control over the matters. Meisel stated that politicians now can only sit back and observe the results of the civil servants and accept these results. The officials now can no longer act for the good of the people but rather must obey the control of the civil servants. Weak point- Meisel's weakest point is the decline of the parties due to the media. He states in his article that television, the largest form of media, has transformed poltics into a "show" in which the politians play for the camara's and try to entertain the public. However, it doesn't seem fair to blame the politians for playing up their roles in society without condeming the very actions of society which causes the problems of the media in the first place. Is the problem the politians effect on the media, or the media effects on the politicans? f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Popes.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The Protestant Reformation marked a time of great religious, social and political upheaval. For the first time in history the Christian church was permanently shattered. The Reformation originated from a trend in returning to the biblical days of Christianity and a renewal of morality. Unfortunately the Catholic religious leaders didn't share in the renewal of morality. The Renaissance popes were partially responsible for the decline of the church;however, it was the Church's past history and changing social, political and economic factors that lead to the Reformation's sucess. Commercialization of the Holy See was common for most popes, but ,according to Barbra Tuchman, three of these men took particular advantage of the practice. Innocent VII is the earliest acknowledged pope during the Renaissance to have taken liberties with the church's finances. Although he engaged in the practices of simony and the selling of indulgences, his most noted mistake was raising donations for a Crusade that never took place. In 1486 Innocent announced a crusade, as well as at the same time declaring a tithe on all churches, benefices and ecclesiastical persons of all ranks. Military plans were drawn up but, in the end, no great army ever assembled or departed from Europe's shores. Instead, in a twist of irony, the Vatican wound up hosting an infidel in the form of Prince Djem, the sultan's brother. This arrangement confused the general public and the papal status fell in the eyes of the public. Papal status was further weakened by Innocent's successor Alexander VI. Alexander thrived on simony. He acquired the office of pope by buying out his chief rivals and openly boasted about this feat. Alexander went on to sell a total of 43 cardinalships, including to his own family. After the murder of his eldest son, Alexander was inspired in a proposed Bull to try to reform the church by reducing the incomes of the cardinals as well as mend other wicked ways; however, provisions caused Alexander to return to normal and he never issued the Bull. Perhaps if the Church had reformed during Alexander's reign, Leo X would never have taken office. Leo is most noted for writing to his brother "God has given us the papacy-let us enjoy it". Leo took this credo to heart and was considered the most extravagant pope and one of the great spenders of his time. He is most known for commissioning the rebuilding of St. Peter's, as well as several well known works of art, and for his continuous festivities during his reign. In order to fund his expenditures his chancery created 2000 salable offices, grossing an estimated total of 3 million ducats. Unfortunately this sum still proved insufficient for Leo's largesse. He poured countless amounts of money into idle wars and lavish displays. At his death he left the Papacy over 800,000 ducats worth of debts. His enormous expenditures left the Church in the lowest possible state of repute with the public and gave Martin Luther the right atmosphere to revolt. The church's reputation continued to decline because of the corruption of church institutions. Plural holding of offices lead to absenteeism and the practice of ad commendam. The first Renaissance pope, Sixtus IV, took great advantage of appointing whomever he wanted in the College of Cardinals in the interest of political favor. He often chose the younger sons of great families, giving no thought to whether or not they were qualified to hold the position. He gave the archiepiscopal see of Lisbon to an eight year old child and the see of Milan to an eleven year old boy, both sons of princes. During his 13 years of rule he "so thoroughly secularized the College that his successors followed his example as if it were the rule"(74). The College of Cardinals became a bastion for power hungry individuals. Most cardinals were of high class families who bought the rank. Conditions in the College declined during Innocent VIII's rule. As secularization advanced appointments were given more frequently to laymen, sons and brothers of princes or designated agents of secular kings and monarchs of which none had any sort of ecclesiastical training. Perhaps the greatest example of buying ones way up the ladder is Giovanni de Medici, made abbot at age eight and later to become the fifth Renaissance pope, Leo X. Absenteeism occurred as cardinals collected many different bishoprics, abbeys and other benefices as a way to augment their incomes. In the words of Lorenzo de Medici the College of Cardinals was a "sink of all iniquity" full of men with high incomes and low morals. As corrupt morally as the cardinals were, the popes proved themselves to be their equals in corruption. The highest church officials waved away their vows of chastity and every pope used the office to enrich his family. The pope to set the stage for nepotism was Sixtus IV. During his time in office he bestowed the red hat of a cardinal on five nephews and a grandnephew, made another a Bishop and used his influences to marry of four of his nephews and two of his nieces into the ruling families of Italy. Sixtus' favorite nephew, Pietro Riario, led a movement of uninhibited licentiousness and extravagance in the College of Cardinals. This situation was not new : however, whereas other popes made an effort to retard the moral decline, Sixtus did nothing. Eight years later one of the most morally corrupt cardinals in the College became pope Alexander VI. Alexander "proved as close to the prince of darkness as human beings are likely to come" (Tuchman,88). Alexander literally seemed to thrive on sin. Perhaps his best known and most depraved incident was his participation in the Ballet of Chestnuts. There, guests danced and crawled around on the floor of the Vatican naked, then afterwards were rewarded for coupling most often with courtesans while Alexander, Cesare and Lucretia Borgia looked on. The Ballet is but a small part of Alexander's depravity. He loved committing adultery, and preferred his mistresses marry. He fathered three children as a cardinal and four others while he was pope, the most famous of these being Cesare Borgia and Lucretia Borgia. Alexander used his power in order to ensure the best marriages for his children and a triumphant career as a leader for Cesare. The last Renaissance pope to use his office to advance family fortune was Leo X. Having no children of his own, Leo focused his efforts on his first cousin Giulio, bastard son of Giuliano de Medici. First he legitimized Giulio's birth through an affadavit. The boy went on to become a Cardinal and ,later on, the last Renaissance pope, Clement VII. Overall, Leo distributed five cardinalships among his cousins and nephews. Problems broke out when Leo decided to obtain the duchy of Urbino for his nephew Lorenzo. He poured thousands of ducats into an empty war on Urbino, leaving the Papacy in financial wreck. The Papacy was too entrenched in its own lack of morality to provide any sort of spiritual guide for the commoners. The biggest crime of the Renaissance papacy, according to Tuchman, was politicization of the Holy See. As a major landowner in Europe the Church also functioned as a political power. The popes' greatest mistake was to entangle themselves in numerous political alliances instead of tending towards the spiritual concerns of their followers. The first pope to introduce this "period of unabashed, unconcealed, relentless pursuit of personal gain and power politics"(Tuchman,73)was Sixtus IV. He is most famous for his involvement in the Pazzi conspiracy. In anger towards the violence of the Medici's punishment of the Pazzi, he excommunicated Lorenzo de Medici and all of Florence. This use of spiritual power for secular purposes blackened Sixtus reputation because of the harm done to the Florentines and their economy, and because his reaction raised suspicions about the pope's personal involvement in the conspiracy. Sixtus reign was so "rancorous" that after his death Rome exploded into three weeks of riot and plunder. His successor Innocent VIII did no better in the political arena than Sixtus did. Innocent was plagued by the King of Naples constantly harassing the papacy. When the King's army marched on Rome, Innocent sought help, arousing France's interest. The King of Naples was temporarily frightened into a peace agreement, but later on he scorned the Pope and incited many Papal states into rebellion. Innocent drew up a Bull to excommunicate the King but never issued it. The conflict was finally resolved with a marriage between Innocent's niece and the King's grandson. This conflict diminished the Papacy's status. Pamphlets were drawn up calling for an overthrow of the pope and foreign powers became lax in upholding duties towards the church. When Innocent's successor Alexander VI took over the papacy, Italy, constantly warring among its states, was an attractive place for France and Spain to exert their power. Upon appointment, Alexander took care of the papacy's political fences by judiciously marrying two of his children to politically powerful families and expanding the college of cardinals to include appointees from all the powers; however, France still created trouble for the papacy. The French king, Charle's VII, wanted to act upon the French claim to Naples. He called a committee to draw up a plan to make his march through Italy look like a crusade for reform of the Church with intent to depose Alexander. The French were triumphant in conquering Florence and they paraded into Rome. Negotiations insued and Alexander granted the French passage through papal territory to Naples. No mention of reform was ever made during discussions. Alexander's reign was one of extravagance and immorality, not religion. Alexander's successor, Julius II was no better at maintaining the religious and moral standards of the papacy. Julius was known through out his reign as the "Warrior Pope". His all consuming passion was the restoration of the "political and territorial integrity" of the Papal States and embellishment of his See. Julius began with a campaign to regain the cities of Romagna, in which he was, through much manipulation, successful. He continued in his goals by fighting to recover Bologna and Perugia. Here the pope stunned Europe and scandalized the Christian community by personally leading his army during battle. Julius' years as pope were continuously focused on battle and bloodshed, not the moral safety and guidance of his flock, and the people were becoming increasingly dissatisfied as each pope came and went. Under Leo X the Protestant Break occurred, permanently shattering united Christianity under the Roman See. Leo was the exact opposite of his predecessor, Julius. Leo enjoyed peace and harmony. He hardly noticed Luther's revolt in Germany. His only response was to issue a Bull in 1518 excommunicating all who didn't believe and preach the Pope had the right to sell indulgences. This proclamation was hardly effective, but the Pope was too busy with his opulent lifestyle to care. At Leo's death the papacy and the church were left at the "lowest possible repute because of the Lutheran sect" according to historian Francesco Vettori. The next pope, Clement VII, experienced many hardships during his reign. The German states converted to Lutheranism one by one. Clement alienated England from the Church by refusing to grant Henry VIII a divorce from Charles V's aunt. Final humiliation came on May 6,1527 with the sack of Rome by Spanish-German forces. Christians terrorized fellow Christians in a riot of fire, pillage, plunder, murder and rape. The sack was the visual representation of how far the image of Rome had sunk and been demeaned by its rulers. It was viewed as divine punishment for the worldly sins of those in the church hierarchy. Within approximately 64 years the papacy had disgraced the reputation of the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church was in decline before the Renaissance popes even took power. During the fourteenth century the popes lived in Avignon, France because of pressure from Phillip the Fair. This period of time is referred to as the Babylonian Captivity. The Babylonian Captivity badly damaged the prestige of the papacy. The seven popes who lived at Avignon focused mainly on bureaucratic not spiritual matters. Italy suffered from the lack of stability the papacy had provided and Rome's economy became poor from lack of tourists. Many people pleaded for the papacy to return to Rome. Pope Gregory XI brought the papacy back to Rome but didn't live to reign. The cardinals elected Urban VI. Urban had excellent intentions for reform; however, he went about his goals in a thoroughly distasteful manner. The cardinals declared Urban excommunicated and elected Clement VII, who set up his administration in Avignon. The Great Schism had begun. The powers of Europe aligned themselves either with Urban or with Clement, depending solely on political lines. Those countries who supported France aligned with Clement. The impact of the Northern Renaissance, especially Christian humanism, aided the Protestant reformation.. France's enemies sided with Urban. The Great Schism confused the common people and weakened the religious faith of many. The Schism was the great scandal that "rent the seamless garment of Christ" as the Church was called. This scandal produced cries for reform. The two colleges of cardinals summoned a council at Pisa to depose both popes and elect another. The council ended in disaster because neither pope would resign, causing a three-way split. Another council met and succeeded in deposing the Roman pope and the pope at Pisa, limiting the Avignon pope's influence and electing a new pope, Martin V. Martin dissolved the council, ending the councilor movement. Nothing was done about reform as it ought to have been. Many of the parish priests were uneducated and barely literate. Christian humanists in the north scoffed at how ignorant these men were. Further up the church hierarchy pluralism and, as a result, absenteeism were becoming permanent problems. Many clerics held many benefices but rarely visited them. Instead the clerics would pay a parish priest to fulfill the spiritual duties of a particular church. Many of the clerics held secular offices as well as religious benefices and were paid by the church for working for the state, thus downgrading the importance of tending the Christian flock. The Catholic Church was in so much decline that the Renaissance popes were just part of the downfall. Protestant reformers all used ideas and arguments based on the writings of well known Christian humanists. The humanist whose writings formed the basis for most reformers was Erasmus of Rotterdam. Although quite the Anabaptists were quite radical at times, their views followed some of what Erasmus taught. Erasmus was a confirmed pacifist. In his essay Julius II Excluded from Heaven, Erasmus condemned the warrior pope for his behavior by asking "what kind of monster wears the garment of a priest over the bristle and clink of bloody armor". Both Erasmus and the Anabaptists believed that to be truly holy one must be a pacifist. The The majority of the Anabaptists were non-violent and made no attempt at revising the social or political order of the world around them. Other Protestant reformers favored peace but could not attain it. Ulrich Zwingli, the Swiss reformer, originally adopted a pacifist attitude towards the world. Unfortunately he had to abandon this view in order to combat the efforts of the Swiss Confederation to resist the spread of Zwinglism. Zwingli later died on the battlefield, fighting to defend his views. The life of Zwingli very much resembled Erasmus' and Zwingli's beliefs were based heavily on Erasmus' writings. Like Erasmus, Zwingli was a Christian humanist schooled in Latin, Greek and Hebrew. Zwingli's interests centered particularly around the Bible. Erasmus' Greek edition of the New Testament allowed Zwingli to arrive at the conclusion that much of what the Catholic church preached had no scriptural basis and therefore shouldn't be followed. Zwingli was also to follow Erasmus' example in "The Shipwreck" and preach against superstition and veneration of saints. Most of these sermons were aimed at the abuses, not the institution from which the abuses came. Another great sermonizer was the most well known Protestant reformer, Martin Luther. Luther strongly supported "The Shipwreck"'s argument against the veneration of saints. In Luther's religion all saints days were abolished and not even the Virgin Mary was venerated as a saint. Yet another of Erasmus' ideas Luther adopted was Erasmus' "Philosophy of Christ". Erasmus believed "all can be Christian, all can be devout and..all can be theologians." Luther used this philosophy to found one of the major doctrines of Lutheranism: the church consists of the entire community of Christian believers. Luther believed that every man could act as his own preacher. In order to accomplish this everyone must become literate enough to read the Bible. Luther also abolished the church hierarchy. Later on he would add four types of clergy, but all jobs remained equal in merit. Luther believed that one didn't have to be a member of the clergy to attain salvation. G-d was a merciful G-d and salvation was granted through G-d's action, not good works. Erasmus's beliefs supported and aided many of the Protestant sects beginnings. As far back as the fourteenth century church doctrine was being challenged. One of the earliest reformers was John Wycliff during the early fourteenth century. Wycliff identified the Catholic church as "the anti-Christ". Wycliff and his followers, the Lollards, met an untimely death for their heresy. John Hus, fifteenth century Bohemian reformer, was also killed for his preachings against the church. Both of these men appeared in the wrong place and at the wrong time to be able to be much of an influence on the Church. It wasn't until the sixteenth century, when German reformer Martin Luther appeared, that any motions towards a reformation occurred. Martin Luther, much like Hus, was a man of peasant background and great courage. Luther's conflict with the Catholic church began with his attack on indulgences. He invited discussion about indulgences by posting his famous Ninety five Thesis on the door of Wittenburg Castle. In this document Luther stated "The pope has no power to remit any guilt except by declaring it...remitted by G-d" (Thesis 6) In this statement Luther stated what was to be one of the two pillars of the Protestant movement: People are saved by the decision of G-d alone. The other pillar was the idea of solo fide: by faith alone does G-d send man his grace. Luther rejected the Catholic notion that salvation relied upon good works, such as fasting and pilgrimages. Luther argued that such things "can be done an impious person and only hypocrites are produced by devotion to these things." Faith was the only way man could achieve salvation in Luther's view. Luther also emphasized that, being the word of G-d, Scriptures were the final authority on religion. In Luther's hymn, "A Mighty Fortress is Our G-d", he wrote "God's Word forever shall abide/ No thanks to foes, who fear it". Whereas in Catholicism the Latin Vulgate is the final authority in Scripture, Luther argued that every man could interpret Scripture for himself. To aid in this task Luther had the Bible translated into German. He rejected the church hierarchy, as well, in favor of a "priesthood of believers". To Luther, all work was sacred. One didn't have to become a monk or priest to serve G-d in his occupation. Luther also reduced the number of sacraments from seven to two. The only two sacraments Luther retained were baptism and the Eucharist; however, Luther favored the idea of consubstantiation instead of transubstantation during the Eucharist. Luther's follower, John Calvin, was the second generation of church reformers. Like Luther, Calvin also believed in salvation by faith alone; however, Calvin placed more emphasis on God's omnipotence and man's insignificance. Calvin also became most well known for his idea of predestination. Calvin believed that some people, called the elect, were destined to be saved, where as all others, the reprobate, were to be damned. Calvin did, however, identify three indications that one was to be saved: an open profession of faith, a decent and godly life and participation in the two sacraments of baptism and communion. Calvin differed from Luther in believing the Eucharist to be symbolic of Christ's body and blood. Luther believed that Christ is present after consecration of the bread and wine. The difference seems insignificant to the outsider, but did present a difference between Calvinists and Lutherans. Several different reformers' doctrinal challenges to the Catholic Church caused the Protestant Reformation to succeed and the split between Protestants and Catholics to be permanent. Europe's economic, social and political climate contributed the most to Luther's success. Luther was an eloquent, charismatic man who appealed to the many classes. Secular officials resented the privileges the church claimed. Monks and nuns paid no taxes and were exempt from civil duties. The monasteries where they lived often occupied large amounts of land. Protestantism gave civil officials the right to claim the Church's land and place clergy under civil law. Intelligent and educated people were dissatisfied with the quality and irregularity of church sermons. As a result, many prosperous burghers paid learned men to deliver about a hundred sermons a year, each lasting forty-five minutes. Luther's ideas attracted many of these endowed preachers and in certain cities these preachers became Protestant leaders. Christian humanists were attracted to Luther's simpler service and his emphasis on a return to the early church. Peasants were attracted by Luther's statement " A Christian man is the most free lord of all and subject to none". Luther was of peasant stock and he sympathized with the peasants' plight; however, Luther abandoned his support of the peasantry after they used his statement as an invitation to incite a rebellion. Luther meant that a Christian man only had freedom to obey the Word of God, instead of the Catholic church. Luther supported the secular rulers and later in his theology subordinated the church to the state. Luther's theology appealed especially to women as well as the social classes. Luther exalted the home, which he stressed was the domain of the woman. Luther's argument that all vocations are equal in the eyes of G-d gave dignity to those who performed ordinary, everyday tasks. Protestants abolished the practice of confession and declared sex a natural part of life, freeing women from the embarrassment and guilt of sharing their sex lives with a confessor. Luther also stressed marriage for clergy members, giving priest's concubines and mistresses the status of legal and honorable wives. Luther's idea of educating girls, as well as boys, in the catechism also proved attractive to women. Politically Luther appealed to the German princes. Luther's translation of the New Testament into German evoked national pride, German nationalism and strong anti-Roman sentiment. This inspired Frederick of Saxony to welcome Luther into Saxony and inspired other princes, such as Phillip of Hesse, to tolerate Protestant reformers. Luther urged princes to seize the Church's property and bring about moral reform in the church. The Church owned large tracts of land in Germany and German princes realized the opportunity to gain wealth by breaking from the church. A steady stream of duchies, margravites, free cities and bishoprics became followers of Luther. The Protestant princes allied with one another to form the Schmalkaldic League in order to fight the efforts of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, to return the princes to Catholicism. The French king, Francis I, supported the Schmalkaldic League in their resistance against Charles. Although Charles won every battle he couldn't get rid of Protestantism in Germany. The Church's past history and Europe's changing political, social and economic climate contributed more to the Reformation's success than the Renaissance popes did. Had Luther lived in a different time and a different area his Reformation would have been cut down like its predecessors. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Presiou Life.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ PRECIOUS LIFE My impression is that the idea of euthanasia, if not the practice, is gradually gaining acceptance within our society. People like Jack Kevorkian attribute this to an increasing inclination to devalue human life, but I do not believe that this is the major factor. The acceptance of euthanasia is much more likely to be the result of unthinking sympathy and benevolence. It is an easy step from this very human response to the view that if someone would be better off dead, then it must be right to kill that person. Although I respect the compassion that leads to this conclusion, I believe that this conclusion is wrong. I want to show that euthanasia is wrong. It is inherently wrong, but it is also wrongly judged from the standpoints of self-interest and of practical effects. Before presenting my arguments, it would be well to define "euthanasia". An essential aspect of euthanasia is that it involve taking a human life. Also, the person whose life is taken must be someone who is believed to be suffering from an incurable disease or injury from which recovery cannot reasonably be expected. Finally the action must be deliberate and intentional. Therefore euthanasia is intentionally taking the life of a presumably hopeless person. It is important to be clear about the deliberate and intentional aspect of the killing. If a hopeless person is given an injection of the wrong drug by mistake and this causes his/her death, this is wrongful killing but not euthanasia. The killing cannot be the result of an accident. In addition, if the person is given an injection of a drug that is believed to be necessary to treat their disease or better their condition and the person dies as a result, then this is neither wrongful killing nor euthanasia. The intention was to make the patient well, not kill them. Every human being has a natural inclination to continue living. Our reflexes and responses fit us to fight attackers, flee wild animals, and dodge out of the way of trucks. In our daily lives we exercise caution and care necessary to protect ourselves. Our bodies are similarly structured for survival right down to the molecular level. When we are cut, our capillaries seal shut, our blood clots, and fibrogen is produced to start the process of healing the wound. When we are invaded by bacteria, antibodies are produced to fight against the alien organism, and their remains are swept out of the body by special cells designed for clean-up work. It is enough I believe to recognize that the organization of the human body and our patterns of behavioral response make the continuation of life a natural goal. By reason alone, then, we can recognize that euthanasia sets us against our own nature. In addition euthanasia does damage to our dignity. Our dignity comes from seeking our ends. When one of our goals is survival, and actions are taken that eliminate that goal, then our natural dignity suffers. Therefore, euthanasia denies our basic human character and requires that we regard ourselves or others as something less than fully human. The above arguments are, I believe, sufficient to show that euthanasia is inherently wrong. But there are reasons for considering it wrong when judged by standards other than reason. Because death is final and irreversible, euthanasia contains within it the possibility that we will work against our own interest if we practice it or allow it to be practiced on us. Contemporary medicine has high standards of excellence and has a proven record of accomplishment, but it does not possess perfect and complete knowledge. A mistaken diagnosis is possible, and so is a mistaken prognosis. Consequently, we may believe that we are dying of a disease when as a matter of fact, we may not be. We may think that we have no hope of recovery when, as a matter of fact, our chances are quite good. In such circumstances, if euthanasia were permitted, we would die for no reason. Death is final and the chance of error is too great to approve the practice of euthanasia. There have been many cases where spontaneous remissions have occurred. For no apparent reason, a patient simply recovers when those around him/her, including physicians, expected the patient to die. Euthanasia would just guarantee their expectations and leave no room for the miraculous recoveries that frequently occur. Finally, knowing that we can take our own life's at any time (or ask another to take it) we tend to give up, and rely on euthanasia. The will to live is strong in all of us, but it can be weakened by pain and suffering and the feeling of hopelessness. If during a bad time we allow ourselves to be killed, we would never have a chance to reconsider. Recovery from a serious illness requires that we fight for it, and anything that weakens out determination by suggesting that there is an easy way out is ultimately against our own interest. Also, we may be inclined towards euthanasia because of our concern for others. If we see our sickness and suffering as an emotional and financial burden on our family, we may feel that to leave our life is to make their lives easier. Doctors and nurses, for the most part, are totally committed to saving lives. A life lost for them is almost a personal failure, an insult to their skills and knowledge. Euthanasia as a practice might alter this. It could have a corrupting influence so that in any case that is severe doctors and nurses might not try hard enough to save the patient. They might decide that the patient would simply be "better off dead" and that the steps necessary to help that person would not be carried out. This attitude could then carry over to their dealing with patients less seriously ill. The result would be an overall decline in the quality of medical care. I hope that I have succeeded in showing why the good will that inclines us to give approval of euthanasia is mislaid. Euthanasia is inherently wrong because it violated the nature and dignity of human beings. But even those who are not convinced by this must be persuaded that the potential personal and social dangers inherent in euthanasia are sufficient to forbid our approving it as a personal practice. Suffering is surely a terrible thing, and we have a clear duty to comfort those in need and to ease their suffering when we can. But suffering is also a natural part of life with values for the individual and for others that we should not overlook. We may legitimately seek for others and for ourselves and pain-less death. Euthanasia, however, is not just an easeful death. It is a wrongful death. Euthanasia is not just dying. It is killing. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Pressures of Society.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Pressures of Society Our behavior usually is controlled and decided by us, but that is not always the case. As we saw in the play Marty's behavior was not always his own decision. The behavior of any person can be greatly manipulated by society. There are a few points in the play and in normal life that can prove this statement is true. Marty's actions were greatly influenced by the views of his family and friends. Marty was forced into many actions by the people around him. A person will consider what other tells them as much as what they believe in themselves. Marty was always a quiet man that didn't like going out, it was his family and friends that told him to do so. It was his decision, but it wasn't his choice. Marty did not want to go anywhere yet he did just because his friends and family told him so. It is not always easy to refuse such thing, Marty had to make a decision and decided he should go out. By analyzing the pros and cons he made a decision, basing it on knowledge and commonsense, after all going out is not a bad thing. But what if there is no decision? What if the person is forced to do something that he does not agree with? This can be blamed on the pressure of society as well, sometimes you do something that you know you don't want just because someone is forcing you. Marty showed such behavior many times throughout the play. It was not always a conscious decision every time that Marty did what he did, he based many of his decisions just on what his friends and family told him. It is this play that made me think, that our decisions and choices are based on what we think just as much as what others think. It is not always your choice and it is not always what you want that you do. For example I am writing this essay because someone told me so, and it is not my choice either to do it or not, I can decide if to do so but that doesn't leave with other options. Some actions people do are subconsciously inputted by society, that means that there was no specific someone that told you what to do, yet you still do it because society has set this standard. This type of action can be seen in anyone at every given day. It can range from the simpler things like dressing up, and looking good all the way to doing well in school and working hard. All those decisions are just influenced by society it is up to the person to decide if they benefit or not from the action given. I believe that society pressures everybody all the time, this is unavoidable and even necessary. Like any other rules, people can not base all their actions on simply what they themselves believe in. Still I believe that society must only provide advices instead of provoking and causing actions. Because of the diversity of all the rules set by society the person must ask themselves if they should act upon them. Marty did as society said, sometimes with and sometimes with out clear decisions. This is how society affected him but it is not like this for everybody. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Prevention of Chaos.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ In today's society it is of the ultimate importance to keep self-discipline as a major priority. Right now we may not realize it, but we are not living in a perfect society on this planet. But perfect is not the answer for our world, as it seems implausible. Rather, we are trying to work out into the opposite direction and not suffer chaos. Think of what would happen, if we all took the responsibility to keep our self disciplined and utterly focused in trying to do the best we could. Our world would not suffer the many consequences we suffer now. For example, if we decided to peaceful with other nations, and kept respect and peace with everyone. The prevention of mayhem, chaos and anarchy will not just come one day like an invisible shield trying to prevent this situation from happening. What needs to happen is, every person on this earth out of the many billions that there are, needs to take responsibility of his/her actions. Chaos, mayhem, disturbance, turmoil, pandemonium, uproar. Is this what we want in our world today? Although people are afraid to say it, it is obvious that if we all do not think before we do things, these events that I described could occur in the near future. Many people are in belief that chaos, mayhem, and even anarchy will not occur in their lifetimes. And most possibly what they think is true, but they don't show helpfulness towards they younger generations. By making a large pothole, it may be very difficult to fill it. By ruining the world today, it seems as if we are striving to mayhem. In our society we are not working to help other people and just help ourselves. If we all worked together, and not thought so much about ourselves we would therefore show that we can work as a large family or community, thus helping us realize what drastic situation we are in. Michael Jackson states in one of his songs " Heel the world, make it a better place, for you and for me and the entire human race." The only way we could actually fulfill this statement is to be self-disciplined in what we do. Prevention of all three aspects, mayhem, chaos and anarchy, is a must and a necessity in our developing world. Also self responsibility ties into this matter. By being aware of your actions and not doing anything that could effect yourself or anyone else, we are one step closer to a better world, not only for us but the for other generations to follow. If we want to prevent chaos, mayhem and anarchy, the only plausible way to do it, in order to create a better society for us, and everyone else, is to be aware of our actions, and be aware of the things we do that could effect other individuals. Apparently we are on our way to mayhem, and if we want to turn this situation around, we must take steps to improve it. So, if you do not want to live in a world full of mayhem, chaos and anarchy, take the first step and strive to the future. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Problems of Modernization in Developing Nations.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Problems of Modernization in Developing Nations The economic situation which exists in the developing world today, is the result of the relationship between the modern, and developing nations of the world. Modernized nations benefited from this relationship because it gave them access to natural resources. However, because of this relationship, many developing nations now suffer from severe problems. These nations are attempting to change the situation in which they struggle. A political cartoon I have recently seen illustrated the economic relationship between the industrialized world and the developing world. It shows that the industrial nations, The United States and Europe, are located in the northern hemisphere. On the other hand most of the developing world, Central and South America and Africa, are found in the southern hemisphere. The "well fed", well dressed individual holding the industrialized world indicates that the modernized nations of the world are prosperous, and have a high standard of living. The skinny, poorly dressed individual holding the developing world indicates that the developing nations of the world are not prosperous, and have a lower standard of living than do industrialized nations. Both individuals are supporting each other in such a way that if one is removed, the other will fall. Without resources to use, industry would not be able to maintain its existence. Likewise, without a market for their resources, or the products of industry, the developing world would not be able to maintain its existence. Two current problems which exist in the developing world today are political instability, and rapid urbanization. Political instability causes economic problems in places such as Africa, and South America, where many governments are being overthrown. When a government is inconsistent, a tax system cannot be established and revenue can't be collected. If a government doesn't receive revenue, it cannot provide sanitation, or health care, and cannot build or repair roads or buildings. Also, political instability can result in the control of a nation "switching hands". For example, frequently in Latin America, Coup d'etat occur and military dictators take control. The second problem which exists in the developing world today is rapid urbanization. Rapid urbanization can be defined as the sudden growth in city population. It results in problems such as congested streets and poverty. For example, when people flock to city to find jobs, not all of them are able to find work, these people remain unemployed. Those who manage to find work, face long hours and low pay. With so many people there is a shortage of food, housing, and health care. Also, sanitation is poor if there is any at all, and the water is contaminated because of the sewage running through it. This is why political instability and rapid urbanization cause problems in the developing world today. Nations within the developing sections of the world have attempted to improve their situation in many ways. For example, these developing nations want to promote economic diversity and education. Economic diversity can be defined as producing various kinds of crops and goods so that the nation is not dependent on a single export. By promoting education, governments set up schools to train students in the skills needed in a modern industrial economy, therefore creating more skilled workers for jobs in the management field as opposed to labor. The examples of economic diversity and education are ways in which nations within the developing world have attempted to change their situations. In conclusion, the economic situation which exists in the developing world today, is dependence on the industrialized world. They are dependent because they need a market for their resources, and the products of industry. This situation contributed to problems such as political instability, and rapid urbanization. Developing nations are attempting to change these situations through the promotion of economic diversity, and education. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Progressive Era.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The Progressive Era Progressivism in the United States took place in the period between the Spanish-American War and the entry of the United States into the great World War. It was a time for change in America in all walks of life, as well as a time for reform. It was marked by Theodore Roosevelt's 7 and a half years in office, the Rough Rider put it upon himself to make the first strides towards reform. These reforms included the cracking down on illegal monopolies and so forth. During this era large cities transformed into large metropolises, small towns into large cities and new towns sprang up nearly everywhere. Reforms also included the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth amendments. The progressive era really had significant impact in America's history. The progressive movement had many origins. One of these was the battle against governmental corruption and inability, in other words a struggle for civil services reform. The progressive movement was initiated by liberals in both political parties, the fight for government reform can be traced back to Liberal Republicans(An Oxymoron, Mr. Jetel?) during the Grant administration and Mugwumps. Citizens were enraged, with big businesses' growing influence in all branches of government and sought ways to purify it. Big Business was also a target of progressivism. During this time presidents like Roosevelt and William Howard Taft tried to regulate and control big business. Many well educated people of the time, as well as moderately prosperous businessmen and members of other professions(middle class) felt threatened by the increasing power of big business and the tycoons. These people were also disturbed by the Big business' influence in politics, making a mockery of the democratic system. Then with the failure of the interstate commerce act and the Sherman act, made big business look unstoppable. As the middle class in America began to develop and grow, they gained power. They were the people who wanted change and ultimately they won with the start of progressivism. Ida Tarbell, Upton Sinclair, and Henry Lloyd all made significant contributions to the start of the Progressive movement with their writings. These people and others similar to them were labeled as muckrakers. These Muckrakers attacked big business in an attempt to turn the common people against them. For example Tarbell wrote of how tycoons, such as the Rockerfeller, amassed their monstrous fortunes. She illustrated all of the corruptness and cruelty directed towards the unskilled worker brought upon by big business. Upton Sinclair became famous for his book The Jungle which even grabbed the attention of Teddy Roosevelt. It was about the horrible conditions at the meat-packing warehouses in Chicago that eventually prompted a federal investigation. Those in the progressive movement ranged from the common to the esteemed intellectual. Whether the Progressive was actually progressive or not has been a topic of debate. In ways the era was progressive but at times it was also unsuccessful. The people would gain rights and then on the other side of the spectrum, big business could get away with anything. One such example is the coal strike of 1902, where miners returned to work after receiving 9 hour days and an increase in pay. Despite this advancement, companies ignored the unions and raised the coal prices to compensate for lost net income. The companies suffered nearly nothing while the worker gained little. The women gained rights as well during the progressive time, including the right to vote and the formation of unions. However, because of male prejudices, most of these unions were quietly dissolved. The progressive era had significant impact, but really isn't worthy of its name. Sure there were changes, but the progressive era left lots of room for improvement. Some formal reforms came into play during the Progressive era. These reforms included the 17th and 19th amendments, the 17th provided the direct election of senators(POWER TO THE PEOPLE!), while the 19th gave women the right to vote(HooYah!). The 17th is looked upon as a progressive achievement which gave power to the people. Political democracy was a theme of the progressives and the amendment greatly helped their cause. Finally the hard work of Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Stanton and the Women's Suffrage association finally paid off with the passing of the 19th amendment. Also during this time members of congress managed to limit the power of the speaker so more voices could be heard on the floor. Before this the speaker had to grant permission and this made it difficult for some to be heard on the floor. Unfortunately during the Progressive era many minorities failed to take important steps to reform, but African Americans became the exception. Asian immigrants were heavily disregarded while American Indians became seen as inferior. Many whites believed it would take several generations before the American Indian could function normally in American society. Because of the stereotype they were regulated to minimal paying unskilled jobs. Blacks on the other hand made great strides during the Progressive era. Blacks wanted to be equal and lift them selves up in their own way instead of conforming to white society as Washington suggested. They marched on Washington and demanded the unrestricted right to vote as well as an end to all forms of segregation, equality of economic opportunity, higher education, equal justice in courts and an end to trade union discrimination. These demands stirred many whites abroad and set the groundwork for the civil rights movement. Blacks also became proud of themselves forming organizations to create pride for black heritage. The Progressive era came about as the result of several motives. The forces behind it ranged from the common man to the politicians as well as intellectuals. The era's true progress is sometimes contended, while in some instances reform measures did come about. Big business finally became somewhat regulated and the governmental power somewhat shifted back to the people. The progressive era evidently shaped up to be quite a significant part of our history. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\proposal for sociology.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ For my research I will be conducting an experiment that has to do with discrimination and how sales people treat customers of certain appearance, sex, age or race. Although you actually used that as an example, that's one thing that really interested me from before, and sometimes it would happen to me. I just want to maybe prove to myself that it's not true that people discriminate. If I prove myself wrong then I guess this world is just full of discrimination and judgmental people. I will try to go to most high-class places such as Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue, and stores that sell expensive clothes. And I will try to go to cheaper stores as well, like Wal Mart or K Mart. I feel that cheaper stores don't discriminate, but I think ill just have to find out through my observations. What I will be doing for about two weeks maybe more if I have time, is go to all these stores and observe every customer that comes in and then see how the sales associates treat them. I will keep track of every sex, race, and age range and most importantly the way the customers dress. After that I will write down what I see and then after I'm done I will try to compare all of my results to see what conclusions I have reached. I hope to gain good information from this research, and hopefully not too many negative results because that would be pretty sad to see that customers don't get treated equally. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\race.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ We live in the 90's the age where scandalous and controversial topics cover the news headlines. Such subject matters as homosexuality, A.I.D.S, and abortion are fiercely debated upon. Sides are always taken, with the conservatives battling the liberals. One such argument that has always been debated upon since the founding of this nation has been immigration. The fact that it has been argued over for so long makes it seem ironic. A country founded by immigrants perpetually arguing over immigration. The basis of this dispute runs deep and that is what will be discussed in this following paper. Anti-immigrant sentiments have been circulating since the Alien Act of June 25, 1798 . The Act was the first federal legislation that dealt with the expulsion of aliens in the United States. Another landmark case was the notorious Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. That clause revoked all Chinese immigrants to emigrate to the States for a period of ten years. It is so infamous due to the fact that it was the first bill that discriminated against any one particular race. Restrictions on immigration may seem to have been eradicated from current history but that is an oversight. Even in the "politically correct" society we live in today allows for these discrepancies, for in the Immigration Act of 1990 which brought up controls for immigration. Behind all these legal documents there are reasons that spurred these causes. Certain prejudices against certain races or religion. The prejudices were not always a color issue as the current immigration problems are. In the beginning it was primarily Europeans. In particular the Irish and German were thought of negatively. The percentage of the Irish in the Mid-Atlantic went from 45.9% in 1870 to 48.5 in 1930. Germans in 1870 went from 31.4% to 35.6% in 1930 . The common belief was that the two races were against assimilation. They lived in their own communities and refused to learn the English language. But that belief like all others were false based. After the Germans and Irish started to finally assimilate we needed a new scapegoat. The next were the Italians and Jews, following them were the Catholics. Throughout history there were always someone who got the blame put on them. Lately the blame has been put upon Middle-Eastern, Asians and Hispanics. Now that the basics has been laid out it is time to argue the two sides of immigration. The Anti-immigrant argument is that immigrants were taking away jobs. With the incoming immigrants they do take away jobs that could have been taken by Americans. But most of the jobs that some of the immigrants take are the unwanted ones. The incoming immigrants also overcrowd the cities and start to overpopulate in the States in Taking Sides they state that approximately fifteen to eighteen million are expected to arrive in the states within the next ten years . Another valid point is that with the arrival of so many different types of people that we lose a sense of nationality. Every race starts to clique together and tries to shut out the rest of the neighboring societies. But that was similar of past races, its just a matter of time. The biggest immigration problem is illegal or undocumented immigrants. They arrive on great numbers (though less than half of all of the immigrants arriving in America). The only problem with curbing the numbers of illegal immigrants is it is often difficult to put a control on them. The pro-immigration stance on the arrival of settlers from abroad mostly take what the anti-immigrant stand says and rationale it out. With the arrival of immigrants the truth is that they don't take jobs away they create more. With an entrepreneur mentality the newcomers open their own small businesses therefore creating much more dire needed jobs. Another advantage to having a diversity of people is there is no stagnation. There always is a new influx of people creating new technology and new ideas. In the past most of the greatest accomplishments from Americans has been from foreign born researchers. A prime example is Albert Einstein one of the foremost mathematician of all time. He contributed the equation E=mc^2 and various other formulas. The list though doesn't end here it goes onencompassing the likes of Ted Koppel, Henry Kissinger, and the likes of many other prominent "citizens". Immigrants are also not a burden on our tax dollars but a blessing. They provide us with much needed tax dollars. The other fear that the undocumented immigrants using benefits that are only given out to citizens are mistaken, for they are all ineligible. But on the flipside the illegal immigrants by paying taxes and payroll end up paying for those programs that they are unqualified for. The estimated amount that they paid in 1990 for those services was about 2.7 billion, and which they can not touch even a cent of. The stereotype that immigrants are dumb uncooperative people are allayed by those who fear cultures different from theirs. As a result, it has become more difficult for foreigners to commence the life that they had intended to live in the so-called "New World". Their purpose for migrating to America is not to invade the original culture that was first brought over by the English. Instead, these outsiders leave their old country behind to travel to a new country they believe will provide them the opportunity to lead a better life. Immigrants also by arriving to America they pass on knowledge of their own culture to help unify all the humans. Also by sharing their culture we are able to expand business further into other foreign countries. With the motivation and talent that they possess immigrants are the backbone for the continued growth of our country. My stand on immigration is probably lucid. I am pro-immigration. Being an immigrant myself I have personally felt the hardships and prejudices held against me, simply based on skin color. Immigrants that arrive here usually come with a goal in life - to succeed on it. With that kind of mentality I share the same view as Stephen Moore. Even the undocumented immigrants that seem to be numerous is false, they only constitute roughly 1-1.5% a very small margin to say the least. This country was founded by immigrants, built by immigrants and flourishes because of immigrants. It seems only in dire times that America tries to find a scapegoat to use as a justification of why they are failing, when the truth of the matter is that the fact that we have to blame someone else we have a much more serious problem than we think. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Racism 2.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Racism The sizzling streams of sunlight were just beautifully glimmering down on the crisp green school yard. Such a wonderful day that was. Nothing could have ruined it. Little Jimmy, since it was such a wonderful day decided to go to the corner store and buy himself a little treat. As little Jimmy started walking over to the store, clouds flocked over the dazzling sun and the sudden pitch dark meant no trouble. On the other side of the road were three white boys from Jimmy's same school. Upon recognizing Jimmy, the boys ran over the street to where he was. "Hey Negro, what's up?", one of the white Boy said. "Did your mamma pack you enough to eat to-day?", another hooted. "Just leave me alone.", Little Jimmy said "Oh no, Jimmy's really getting pist off!?", the first boy retaliated. "Just shove off and let me be," Jimmy answered. It is like this everyday, everywhere, and everytime, people suffer discrimination. All because they have differences amongst each other. Different beliefs, different cultures, different skin colour, all of these act like building blocks to help construct what we know as Racism. Racism has become one of the many burdens amongst multi-cultural worlds like Canada and the States. Racism is a part of each and every one of us. No doubt, we are all racist, but this the term racism has been used too loosely. Racism has been mutated to such an extent that it could be a reason for war, a symbol of terrorism, and even an excuse for neglecting. Is that all there is to it? No, actually it is just the beginning. Racism is just like warfare in which there is no shelter and nobody is neutral. Nobody is exempt from this demon. He has haunted us with a bitter curse. On one occasion I remember, nobody would play with me at school. I would walk around by myself and ask people if we could play together. Everywhere that I went, like the process of induction, everyone would avoid me. Like two inducted poles with the same polarity, they would just shimmer off into the distance and continue to do whatever they're doing. Because of racial differences, they neglect me. People are afraid of the unknown, and it is this difference amongst people that spread rumors and distrust amongst people. Corrupting our thoughts and reasons, we get accustomed to thinking differences are omens. Amongst smaller kids, there is no difficulty in getting them to all play together. There thoughts are not totally corrupted as others. Probably the demon has no time to bother with smaller children. As children start to grow up, their knowledge of the world increases in astronomical figures. They start to mature and realize the barbarous aspects of life. When this knowledge reaches to a certain point, the demon like racism comes after them. The child begins to understand the term racism and is encouraged to use it in part of there everyday speech. Then when one walks around the school ground, you wouldn't see children from different ethnic groups playing together. They have become insoluble to each other and will never then mix again. Interaction between each other thus terminates. Nobody benefits from this kind of behavior except for the demon that haunts us. Racism, like the demonic figure it has imposed on us is the reason for distrust, disloyal, and discrimination amongst each and every one of us. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Racism.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Racism Issue In Institutional Racism The history of the United States is one of duality. In the words of the Declaration of Independence, our nation was founded on the principles of equality in life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Yet, long before the founders of the newly declared state met in Philadelphia to espouse the virtues of self-determination and freedom that would dubiously provide a basis for a secessionary war, those same virtues were trampled upon and swept away with little regard. Beneath the shining beacon of freedom that signaled the formation of the United States of America was a shadow of deception and duplicity that was essential in creating the state. The HSS 280 class lexicon defines duality as "a social system that results from a worldview which accepts inherent contradictions as reasonable because this is to the believer's benefit." The early years of what would become the United States was characterized by a system of duality that subjugated and exterminated peoples for the benefit of the oppressors. This pattern of duality, interwoven into our culture, has created an dangerously racialized society. From the first moment a colonist landed on these shores, truths that were "self-evident" were contingent on subjective "interpretation." This discretionary application of rights and freedoms is the foundation upon which our racially stratified system operates on. English colonists, Africans, and Native Americans comprised the early clash of three peoples. Essentially economic interests, and namely capitalism, provided the impetus for the relationships that developed between the English colonists, the Africans, and the Native Americans. The colonialization of North American by the British was essentially an economic crusade. The emergence of capitalism and the rise of trade throughout the 16th century provided the British with a blueprint to expand its economic and political sphere. The Americas provided the British with extensive natural resources, resources that the agrarian-unfriendly British isles could not supply for its growing empire. When Britons arrived in North America, the indigenous population posed an economic dilemma to the colonists. The Native Americans were settled on the land that the British colonists needed to expand their economic capacity. To provide a justificatory framework for the expulsion of Native Americans off their land, the English colonists created a ideology that suited their current needs. The attitude of Anglos toward the Native Americans began as one of ambivalence and reliance. When the English first arrived in North America, they needed the Indians to survive the unfamiliar land and harsh weather. Once the English became acclimated to their surroundings and realized that the Indians were living on valuable land, it was only a matter of time before guns and shackles replaced treaties and handshakes. In the name of Christianity and capitalism, the English colonists quickly turned their backs on the short lived missionary zeal that characterized the early colonial period. Now, the "savage Indians" were viewed as unable to save themselves and extermination would be a worthy enterprise in the sight of the Lord. The idea that one possesses a God-given right to mistreat others runs through much of Western culture and became especially acute in North America after the emergence of capitalism. For example, in New England many settlers rejoiced at the extraordinary death brought upon the Native American population by the introduction of epidemic diseases. It was viewed as a way of "thinning out" the population. In the world of the New Jerusalem, where a city was to be build upon a hill, such trite concerns were of little consequence for those with divine providence. Duality, and its means of placing the truth and its allied freedoms in the hands of the powerful, furnishes the "chosen ones" with wide latitude to create theoretical arguments that justify and perpetuate systemic arrangements of inequality. John Winthrop outlined his reasoning for the British right to North American land in terms of natural rights versus civil rights. Natural rights were those that men enjoyed in a state of nature (i.e. Native Americans). When some men began to parcel land and use tilled farming, they acquired civil rights (English colonists). Inevitably, civil rights took precedence over natural rights. This method of thinking enabled privilege to the English and provided a justification for the institutional and systemic extermination of the indigenous people (Growth 83). Before addressing the subjugation of African-Americans by the English, I think it is important that I make an important theoretical point in my argument. All political systems are rational, in the sense that there is a logic and a thinking that guides those making the rules. White supremacy and its associated beliefs (Christianity, patriarchalism, etc) provided the rationale for the creation of a system of duality that institutionalized racism. Robert Smith writes about the inherent contradiction of espousing the self-evident equality of men and their God-given right to liberty while at the same time sanctioning genocide and slavery (Smith 8). The only way this incongruity could be remedied was to deny the fundamental humanity of those being oppressed. That negation of one group humanity by another is the crux of duality and a principle tenet of all forms of oppression and subjugation. To objectify a group of people provides an oppressor with a recourse for the actions one takes. In the case of the United States, subjugated groups are often reduced to a stereotype that is not based in fact: Native Americans were wild savages; Africans were lascivious, lewd beings that engaged in bestiality with apes; Asians were sneaky, mysterious and not to be trusted. What is important is the stereotype fit an institutional definition that allows the group to be oppressed without self-reflection about one's perverse actions. Professor Turner mentioned in class the Sarte quote, "To be a stone, you must make all around you stone." And to act as a savage, one must make those around oneself savages. To address the enslavement of Africans, it becomes necessary to once again look at the economics that fueled the decision to bring slavery to the United States. In capitalism, a driving force is to minimize costs and, as a result, maximize profits. The labor intensive tobacco and cotton fields presented the need for a low cost labor supply. Impelled by white supremacy, the English began to move away from the system of indentured servitude that characterized the early years of colonialization and towards slavery. By definition slavery must be sanctioned by the society in which it exists and such approval is most easily expressed in written norms and laws. From the moment Africans set foot in North America, they faced a system that perpetuated and encouraged their enslavement. Throughout the 17th century, laws and regulations regarding slaves were becoming more explicit in their dehumanization. All questions of whether these men and women would be seen as such were erased with a number of legislations that sough to erase any ambiguities. By 1705 the only real question remaining was what type of property the slave was to his captor.. Ringer writes "by 1705, Virginia had rationalized, codified, and judicially affirmed it exclusion of blacks from any basic concept of human rights under the law" (Ringer 67). Intrinsic to the subjugation of Africans was an ideology that reduced Africans to lesser beings. Reasoning behind this idea has gone from Christian beliefs to "scientific" evidence to current day beliefs in African-American laziness (an idea whose roots are as old as white supremacy) and the use of IQ tests as measures of innate intelligence. What has stayed constant is a manipulation of the "truth" and a myopic self-interest by those parties with an interest in keeping privilege. White supremacy and it dualistic vision of society became institutionalized in colonial North America, emanating from the base and structure of society. The Civil War Amendments to the Constitution were no more than words on paper, with short lived legislative muscle. From the vision of Forty Acres and a Mule, the newly freed African-Americans moved on to sharecropping, lynchings, and segregation. The mid to late 19th century witnessed the beginning of Chinese migration to the United States. Immediately, they were met by various laws and ordinances designed to restrict their economic, political, and social advancement. This was combined with racial commentaries that echoed those levied against Native Americans and Africans. The Chinese were heathen, morally inferior, savage, and childlike. The Chinese were also viewed as lustful and sensual. Often Chinese immigrants were depicted in cartoons with devil-like features and devious expressions. Economics also played an important role in the discrimination Chinese faced in the United States. Chinese exclusion, a policy initiated in 1882, banned U.S. entry to Chinese laborers. After the U.S. acquisition of California in 1848, there arose a need for cheap labor, and Chinese flocked there to work on the railroads. By 1867 they numbered 50,000; their number increased after the Burlingame Treaty of 1868, which permitted Chinese immigration but not naturalization. Anti-Asian prejudice and the competition with American workers led to anti-Chinese riots in San Francisco in 1877, then to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which banned Chinese immigration for 10 years. Once again inherent contradictions were seen as reasonable because it was to the believer's benefit. A scarcity of employment opportunities combines with prejudices to create a atmosphere of hatred and political blame directed toward the Chinese immigrants (The Heathen Chinese 230-240). Another case of dualistic application of justice towards the Asian-American community is the case of Japanese-American internment during the Second World War. In 1942, Lt. Gen. John L. De Witt rationalized the deportation of Japanese nationals and Japanese-Americans with "A Jap is a Jap". When second-generation Japanese-Americans in the nation's ten concentration camps were drafted for the war effort for cannon fodder, outraged Japanese-Americans formed the Fair Play Committee to protest the conscription of those who were not guaranteed the least bit of civil rights. In reply, the US government jailed those who refused to serve, questioning their loyalty and admonishing them for not embracing the opportunity to discharge the duties of citi f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Reconstruction in Early America.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ This essay will describe the events that occurred following the Civil War in a period known as Reconstruction. In the South, during this period of time many people suffered from the great amount of property damage done to such things as farms, factories, railroads and several other things that citizens depended on to keep their economy strong. Some of these economic hardships included destruction of the credit system and worthless Confederate money. Though statistics in the South were vague the historian E.B. Long, a careful student of war strengths suggests "perhaps 750,000 individuals would be reasonably a close" as an estimate of Southern enrollments in the armies and navy. In the South Reconstruction meant rebuilding the economy, establishing new state and local governments and establishing a new social structure between whites and blacks. During the war Lincoln had expanded his presidency. With his power he hoped to set up loyal governments in the Southern states that were under Union control. Lincoln appointed new temporary governors and instructed each to call a convention to create a new state government as soon as a group of the state's citizen totaling 10 percent of the voters in the 1860 presidential election had signed oaths of loyalty to the Union. Under this plan new governments were formed in Louisiana, Tennessee and Arkansas but the Congress refused to recognize them. Republicans in Congress did not want a quick restoration, for the reason that it would bring Democratic representatives and senators to Washington, and in 1864 Congress passed the Wade-Davis Reconstruction Bill. This bill would have delayed the process of rejoining the Union until 50 percent of the people took an oath of loyalty but Lincoln pocket vetoed the bill. Abraham Lincoln was assassinated just as the South surrendered in April 1865, and then Andrew Johnson inherited the problem of Reconstruction. Johnson supported Lincoln's plan after taking office. Enough Confederates signed these oaths to enable the immediate creation of new governments. Johnson required that the new states ratify the 13th Amendment freeing the slaves, abolish slavery in their own constitutions, discard debts incurred while in rebellion, and declare secession null and void. By the end of 1865 all of the secessionist states but Texas had rejoined the Union. Radical Republicans in Congress thought they should control Reconstruction and wished to punish the South for causing the Civil War. Some of these Republicans wished to create a Southern society where blacks and whites were equal. These Republicans opposed the Southern "Black Codes." Black Codes were harsh local and state laws passed to control blacks in the South after the Civil War. The Radical Republicans reconstruction plan included the passage of the 13th Amendment and established the Freedman's Bureau(Jackson made the 13th Amendment part of his plan). The Freedman's Bureau is an agency of the Federal government set up in 1865 to help former slaves and other persons suffering from the effects of the Civil War. This reconstruction plan also included passage of a Civil Rights bill and the 14th Amendment(all of these were opposed by Johnson). The 13th Amendment said: "Neither slavery nor forced labor shall exist within the United States or its possessions except as a punishment for one convicted of a crime. Congress may make laws to enforce this article." The 14th Amendment said in section four: "The Federal Government shall pay all its debts, including debts contracted in putting down rebellion. But neither federal nor state governments may pay debts contracted by aiding a rebellion against the United States, nor pay anyone for the loss of slaves." Only Tennessee ratified the 14th amendment and was allowed to rejoin the Union by Radicals. The remaining ten Confederate states were occupied by United States troops. Southern states had to write a new constitution guaranteeing political rights to blacks. The 15th Amendment said: "Neither federal nor state governments can deny any citizen the right to vote because of his race or color, or because he was once in bondage. Congress can pass laws for carrying out this article." Passage of this amendment was mandatory for the last four states to re-enter. Andrew Johnson had opposed Radical Reconstruction and had many vetoes overridden. Congress tried to reduce his power through the Command of Army and Tenure of Office Acts. The Command of Army act took away some of the president's power as Commander and Chief of the Army and the Tenure of Office Acts said the president could not remove a federal official without the Senate's agreement. In 1868 Johnson was accused of violating the Tenure of Office Act and was impeached by the House. At the Senate trial he was acquitted by one vote. In the South during the Reconstruction period the new state government were dominated by scalawags, who were Southern whites who supported Reconstruction and who used political power chiefly for political gain, and carpetbaggers who were Northerners who went to the South after the Civil War and entered politics there often for personal gain. Blacks took part in the new governments(generally voting Republican- a goal of some radicals). Though some reforms were carried out, Reconstruction governments were plagued by corruption(this was a national problem of the Great Administration). At the end of the Reconstruction period Southern Democrats(including many ex-Confederates) were gradually winning home rule. Whites regained total control by 1877 when troops were removed. Restrictions were put on blacks political rights and eventually laws were passed that discriminated against blacks, these were called "Jim Crow Laws". The Ku Klux Klan founded in 1866 to keep blacks from voting, had been controlled by the army, but now was free of that control(though it actually reached it's peak of power in the 1920's). f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Red guards mao zedong.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ RED GUARDS In the summer of 1966 there was a new effort on the part of the head leaders in China to further control the actions and thoughts of the people in China. The Red Guards were the force to do it all. A group of kids who mostly in their teens and some in college were put into this gang. This so-called military force was called the Red Guards. Groups of these Red Guards traveled from the large cities all the way to empty country sides. They held huge demonstrations at every stop. Their main goal was to eliminate as many as possible of the customs and traditional thoughts of the old China. They participated in Long Marches and other activities. The man they looked up to most was a person by the name of Mao. They carried huge portraits of him and also carried banners and flags. Many people in the group beat on gongs and drums. Some observers said it looked more like a circus then a political demonstration. They did a lot of things that many thought were outrageous. At one point they raced widely through Peking denouncing anyone who was in a business. They even made a demand to change the meaning of the colors in a stop light. According to the Red Guards, that because the color of communism is red, that you should go on red and stop on green. When the Red Guards added students from another school or workers from another factory they decorated the entrance with purple paper, lanterns and a red cloth covered with flowers. People who did not agree with Mao Tse-tung and his teachings were often dragged through the streets and forced to wear dunce caps. The main reason of course was to humiliate. This group in time became more destructive. Even some of China's highest leaders were taken. The Red Guards demonstrations lasted through fall, and winter of 1966 and well into 1967. The Red Guards highly looked up to Mao they thought of him as a father who shared the same views. Chairman Mao greatly influenced many of their decisions. They stormed on to railroad trains to spread their ideas coast to coast. Many people thought of them as a disorderly young army. Most of their efforts were devoted to wholesale destruction of reputation and careers. One of their best weapons were political posters which were about many high political figures. Political people were not the only ones to be embarrassed, professors and engineers were also humiliated by the young group. Many young people agreed with the Red Guards and their point of views. They felt that schools and universities were being run to produce a small group of highly educated people. Then those people would go ahead to become leaders. They would soon consider they were better than the workers and peasents and it would be like they were under the emperors once again. The Red Guards did not care about anything that they destructed. In Peking, Red Guards attacked and burnt down the Brittish Embassy. In 1967 a mob of the guards stormed the Foreign Ministry. They destroyed some achives, carried away others, and even attempted to kidnap the Foreign Minister but they were unsuccessful. No one in China could accuratly tell you an explanation on of why they organizied. Some people think they were inspired because the wanted to become communist leaders after Mao's death and take over government. Some say their main reason was to make certain politicians get a bad name and have them removed from their postions. Which would make it easier for them to rule in China in Mao's name. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Report on Ancient Egypt.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Ancient Egypt by Joe Smoe Starting about 8,000BC, all of Northern Africa became a drier, more desert-like place. Back then, man lived in nomadic groups of hunters and gatherer. The climate forced man to migrate to more hospitable lands, some migrated to Nile River Valley which is a vast land surrounding the Nile River. There in this land abundant with life, there were plenty of food and water for these people. During the Neolithic Revolution (10,000BC to 3,500BC) man discovered the art of agriculture, this skill arrived in Egypt approximately 7,000BC. Humans were finally able to use the rich silt brought by the yearly flooding of the Nile River which annually flooded since 60,000 years ago. The Nile River is the world's longest river , it is approximately 4,160 miles long and flows from the highlands in Central Africa to the Mediterranean Sea. It is the main reason why the Ancient Egyptians were such a successful people, the moisture from the river was the only thing keeping Egypt from change to a desert. Even back then, everybody knew that without the river they had no chance of survival. First of all the main food the Egyptians ate were bread made from the grain grown with the precious silt and water from the Nile River. Barges and boats made with papyrus reeds or wooden planks(used after 3,000BC) were filled with different thing such as grains were floated downstream and carried by the current, or if they needed to be floated upstream, you would simply just raise the sails up and the ship would sail upstream, the Egyptians invented sails at approximately 3,200BC. Although the Nile is such an abundant source of life, it fertilize just a narrow strip of land, eventually the Egyptians built large irrigation systems which would carry water into the desert. Ancient cultures were often plagued with warfare and attacks from other cultures, Egypt's geography protected it from most of its neighbors. The Mediterranean Sea, the Red Sea, the Nubian Desert, and the Libyan Desert surrounded Egypt, it was very hard for an outside to even enter Egypt. In the Nile River there are six cataracts, waterfalls or rapids, these prevented people from a region called Kush which would be modern day Ethiopia from using the river to travel to Egypt and attack it. Still there were invaders who would attack Egypt, from the Sinai Peninsula invaders attacked Egypt, but Egypt also used this land as a path to conquer other people. The small villages that lined the river eventually became two kingdoms, Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt. The name of the king that eventually united the two kingdoms is Menes, he originally ruled just Upper Egypt, but by conquering Lower Egypt, he not only increase his own power, he created one of the greatest civilizations ever. His successors, the king after him, wore a double crown to symbolize that they ruled both kingdoms. Sometime between 1,554BC and 1,304BC, people began calling their kings "pharaohs" which means "great house". Egyptians believed that the pharaohs were descendants of the sun god, Amon-Ra. A "dynasty" is a government where the right to rule passes father to son. Occasionally these dynasties were overthrown or died out and a new dynasty is formed. The first dynasty was said to have been establish by King Menes who united Upper Egypt with Lower Egypt. There are about 30 dynasties that ruled Egypt, historians and archeologists have divided the history of Egypt into three parts based on these dynasties. The Old Kingdom(2,700BC to 2,200BC), the Middle Kingdom(2,050BC to 1,800BC), and the New Kingdom or Empire Age(1,570BC to 1,090BC). With every ancient society we have seen a unique religion, the Egyptians are no exception. Egyptian mythology or religion did not influence their culture as religion did to other cultures much, a unified sense of faith never existed among them. What I mean by this is that since each city worshipped a different god or goddess, there wasn't really a togetherness in their religion. So if I use the word "worship" in this report, I am referring to the fact that they thought that god or goddess was important. In fact the Egyptian religion contains a remarkable amount of conflicting beliefs, this is probably base on the fact that their religion is just a collection of stories and mythology The earliest of the Egyptian gods to be invented were in the form of animals such as the sacred cat of Babastis, these gods were worshipped before Egypt united. Later however, gods were half human-half animal creatures, usually a human with the head of some animals. According to the Egyptian account of creation, only the ocean existed at first. Then Ra, the sun(later confused by the Egyptians with Amon, this created a new god Amon-Ra), came out of an egg (a flower, in some versions) that appeared on the surface of the water. Ra brought forth four children, the gods Shu and Geb and the goddesses Tefnut and Nut. Shu and Tefnut became the atmosphere. They stood on Geb, who became the earth, and raised up Nut, who became the sky. Ra ruled over all. Geb and Nut later had two sons, Set and Osiris, and two daughters, Isis and Nephthys. Osiris succeeded Ra as king of the earth, helped by Isis, his sister-wife. Set, however, hated his brother and killed him. Isis then embalmed her husband's body with the help of the god Anubis, who thus became the god of embalming. The powerful charms of Isis resurrected Osiris, who became king of the netherworld, the land of the dead. Horus, who was the son of Osiris and Isis, later defeated Set in a great battle and became king of the earth. The Ancient Egyptians also believed in life after death, in fact they have the world's most elaborate rituals. After a person dies the Egyptians believes that the soul or ka live in the kingdom of the dead, but the believed that the ka could not survive without the body. The Egyptians mummify the body in order to keep it preserved, but in the event that the corpse is destroy there are wood or stone replicas of the body which will serve as a body, the more replicas in a tomb the better chances of the ka surviving. After leaving the tomb, the souls of the dead supposedly were beset by innumerable dangers, and the tombs were therefore furnished with a copy of the Book of the Dead. Part of this book, a guide to the world of the dead, consists of charms designed to overcome these dangers. After arriving in the kingdom of the dead, the ka was judged by Osiris, the king of the dead. The Book of the Dead also contains instructions for proper conduct before these judges. If the judges decided the deceased had been a sinner, the ka was condemned to hunger and thirst or to be torn to pieces by horrible executioners. If the decision was favorable, the ka went to the heavenly realm of the fields of Yaru, where grain grew 3.7 m (12 ft) high and existence was a glorified version of life on earth. All the necessities for this perfect existence, from furniture to reading matter, were, therefore, put into the tombs. As a payment for the afterlife and his benevolent protection, Osiris required the dead to perform tasks for him, such as working in the grain fields. Even this duty could, however, be obviated by placing small statuettes, called ushabtis, into the tomb to serve as substitutes for the deceased. Egypt had a very simple social structure consisting of only three classes. The ruling class were on the top of the list followed by the middle class, and on the bottom of the list were the peasants and slaves. The ruling class were the most respected and well treated people in the society, besides the pharaoh the preist were the most important people in the society because people thought that they cuold talk to the gods who controled everything from life to death. The priest often positions as governors of provinces, court officials, or tax collectors. The chief minister, who administered the business of the country in choosen from this class. The middle class were a small group of people who consists of merchants, traders, and artisans. Traders brought dyes, gold, and ivory which the merchants sold to the nobles, artisans were paid by nobles to make things such as pottery, stone carvings, glass objects, wooden carvings, and linen so fine that it looked like silk. Most Egyptians were farmers who does the same thing each day over and over again, they waited for the Nile to flood and then they plant their crops when the water recedes. The peasant live a simple life with brick houses and few furniture, they paid half their harvest to government tax. They were also require to work on palaces, temples, clear irrigation ducts, and serve in the army. Slave were mostly descendants of war prisoners some lived like free peasant and others llived in the houses of nobles serving them. The ancient Egyptian society really respected women, women had the right to buy or sell land. There weren't many divorces, but women had the right to divorce as well as men. The most important thing that makes it more equal for woman are that property is inherited through the female line. In the Egyptian society, there were few people who were not farmers besides the nobles. Since the Egyptians didn't have any money, worker were often paid in wheat and barley or other goods, extra amounts could be traded for needed goods or services. Farmer worked mostly on the land of the royal family, temples, and other rich people, they got a small amount of the crop because a large amount was taxed. Others rented lands of their own from rich landowners. Craftsmen worked in small shops which they manufacture things such as pottery, bricks, tools, glasses, weapons, furniture, jewelry, perfume, rope, basket, mats, and writing materials. Miners mined for limestone, sandstone, copper, gold, tin, gems, and granite for the construction of pyramid and monuments. Traders sailed to different lands trading for stuff like silver, iron, horses, ivory, leopard skins, copper, cattle, cedar logs, and spices. The royal family and temples also employed other kinds of skilled workers such as architects, engineers, carpenters, artists, sculptors, bakers, butchers, teachers, scribes, accountants, musicians, butlers, and shoemakers. The Egyptians had many different invention and contribution to future society. First of all, all the Egyptian had many advances in the math and sciences. Each year after the floods by the Nile River, farmers had to measure the boundary lines all over again. This led them to develop advance ways to measure the land. Geometry was the most advance field of mathematics they developed, they knew how to figure out the volume of a circle or the area of a square. Needs to predict the yearly flooding of the Nile forced them to look carefully at the stars. Their priest-astronomers developed the first 365-day calendar; there were 12 months, three seasons(the Nile flooding season, the planting season, and the harvest season), each month had 30 days and the last month had 5 extra days. The problem with their calendar is that they did not account for leap years, later on, the Romans and Greeks modified this calendar to the one that we use today. The stone cutting and medical techniques developed by the Egyptians were also very impressive. They used hot fire and cold water make rock crack. They had ways to treat bone and spinal injuries too, the Greeks and Romans learned most of their medical knowledge form the Egyptian. These contribution as well as the monument and marks left behind made Ancient Egypt such a renown place. Nowadays, Ancient Egypt is gone and what is left behind is just a fraction of what was. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Reviewing History.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1. Proclamation Act, 1763 a. The Proclamation Act of 1763 was a major change for both the English and the French. For the English, they wanted to assimilate the French. This was necessary for two reasons. One, the British had, after all, conquered them, and wished to create a full British Empire. They thought that the only way to do this was to assimilate all other cultures (except the Natives) into their culture. Two, the French were still a threat, and Quebec was the foothold in the New World for France. The mother country, France, could send armies to New France and attack the British. b. The main purpose of the Proclamation Act was simple, assimilate the French. The British needed to ensure that their culture was enforced in Quebec, The Act also tried to encourage British settlers to come to New France, but, unfortunately, the settlers did not want to come. This was because the settlers would rather move to a mostly British society, instead of a mostly French. Some other aims of this Act were: Limit the size of Quebec, cutting Montreal from the Fur Trade, and also to reassure the Natives that their hunting grounds, and fur trade would be protected and remain intact. c. Some of the terms of the Proclamation Act were as follows: settlement in the Ohio and Mississippi was forbidden, and trappers, traders and settlers were allowed in only with a license given from the crown, stating there reasons for being in those two areas. The French language was also allowed to continue. This may seem very strange, but I will explain it in a minute. Also the French religion (Roman Catholicism) was allowed to continue. Britain also made it very discouraging to have this culture, disallowing anyone who had anything to do with these political and official status. The Protestant religion was also promoted. d. s 2. a. The main reason that the Quebec act was created was because the Proclamation Act was not working. Quebec was rebelling and people were very unhappy about it. So Britain decided to create the Quebec act. Other reasons were that the 13 colonies, who had rebelled themselves and become the Americans, were going to attack. The British people needed an ally, and quickly. They also wished to increase trade, relations, and unite the French and English under one Nation. b. Some aims that the creation of the Quebec Act was suppose to achieve were, combining French and English into one Nation, not culture, by keeping biculturalism. c. The French were allowed to continue all aspects of their culture, with no penalty to status whatsoever. The government for Quebec, however, was to stay the same, still ruled by a governor and an executive council. The civil law was French, but the criminal law was changed to British. d. Yes, I definetely think so. This worked right after the Act was passed, as evidenced by the responses, very few people were unhappy. The most obvious and substantial piece of evidence is today, which proves that the Act worked, by showing that today we have a bicultural nation. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Rifkins The End of Work.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Individuals tend to develop a false sense of security concerning the certainty of their jobs. After working for an organization for fifteen or more years, it is difficult for them to understand that their employers may no longer need their service. Jeremy Rifkin wrote The End of Work in order to warn people about what he foresees may be happening to the global labour force because of a rapid increase in the use of automation in the workplace. He identifies what he believes are causes of the problems which we are currently facing within the organizational structure along with some potential solutions. Rifkin's ideas may be relevant to most peoples lives including ours. The reactions of six currently employed persons to Rifkin's message will be included in this text. These professionals include a technical manager, a convenience store owner, a cashier for Marriot food services, a Residence-Life Staff Coordinator, a Part-Time Credit Card Service Assistant and an Assembler for an Electrical Switch-Gear Manufacturing Company. Rifkin observes that the main problem of mass global employment in both the private and public sectors is caused by the continuing advances in technology and it's impacts on organizations, it's structure and design and it's direct effect on the global labour force. In particular, organizations are using the concept of re-engineering and replacing human labour with labour saving technologies. Rifkin gives us a better understanding of the development of the cause of this problem by examining the three industrial revolutions. In the first industrial revolution, Rifkin identifies steam power as the major tool used by industrial and manufacturing sectors. In the second industrial revolutions the electrical innovation effected the manufacturing, agricultural and transport industries by further reducing the global labour force. Unlike the past, two industrial revolutions where industrial technologies replace the physical power of human labour, the third revolution (The Information Age), at present, is contributing new computer based technology which are involving into thinking machines. These thinking machines will evolve to the extent that eventual the human mind will be replaced in all economic activities. In particular, advancements in computer technology including parallel processing and artificial intelligence (robots) are going to cause a large number of white collar workers to be redundant in the near future. Furthermore as a result of advancement in the information and telecommunications technologies, organizations are using the concept of re-engineering to restructure their organizations to make them more computer friendly. As a direct result of this, training employees in multi-level skills, shortening and simplifying production and distribution processes and streamlining administration. One example of this is the global auto industry which is reengineering it's operation and investing in new labour displacing information technology, related industries are doing the same, eliminating more and more jobs in the process. It is Rifkin's belief that it is technology that is taking jobs away from people. He includes many statistics concerning job loss, unemployment and how much organizations are benefitting from all this, he states that "more than 75 percent of the labour force in most industrial nations engage in work that is little more than simple repetitive tasks. Automated machinery, robots and increasingly sophisticated computers can perform many if not most of these jobs... in the years ahead more than 90 million jobs in a labour force of 124 million are potentially vulnerable to replacement by machines." (Rifkin p.5). He shows us that this global unemployment effects those who are in agriculture industry, "nearly half the human beings on the planet still farm and land. Now, however, new breakthroughs in the information and life sciences threaten to end much of outdoor farming by the middle decades of the coming century." (Rifkin p.109). Just to show us how widespread this problem is, he includes information concerning the downfall of those who work in the service industry "computers that can understand speech, read script, and perform tasks previously carried out by human beings foreshadow a new era in which service industries come increasingly under the domain of automation." (Rifkin p. 143). Rifkin does, however have a few solutions to this dilemma. The first of which demonstrates a 30-hour work week because "the information and communication technology revolutions virtually guarantee more production with less human labour... Free time will come, William Green said, the only choice is unemployment or leisure." (Rifkin p.222). There are already organizations which have implemented this 30-hour week, with great success. Employees must take a small pay cut, but they remain employed and only have to work 75 percent of their previous time. This solution allows for more people to be employed, while giving those employed a larger amount of free time. Part of what Rifkin says is that this free time should be spent volunteering for different causes such as child care institutions, hospitals, churches and neighbourhood group activities. Rifkin suggests that the government should encourage this advancement of the third sector (eg. volunteers, non-profit organizations) by offering a "shadow wage, in the form of a deduction on personal income taxes for volunteer hours given." (Rifkin p.257). It has also been suggested that the government issue a minimum social annual income so that non-profit organizations' employees get an actual salary, this would eliminate welfare and because people are devoting so much of their free time, it would allow the government to cut spending on public works projects such as building low-income housing and city-wide clean up projects (New York). The saved money would allow for the minimum income earners to collect. Meanwhile, it has been suggested that a tax be put on all non-essential goods and services as a source of government revenue. This shows us that the government would play a smaller role in society as communities would begin to become self-contained, also, huge cutbacks on national defence would add to the governments budgets as employers. All these solutions would eventually be put forth worldwide as automation takes over many positions in most organizations. One of the most important questions we ask our selves while reading this book is "how does this effect our lives?" Well, there are a few parameters to be taken in to consideration. First of all, is all of what Rifkin is suggesting true? We have come to the conclusion that he may be partially right. We see what he is suggesting (automation) happening all around us. For example, car washes, direct payment by the use of our bank card and different machinery upgrades at work. We feel that our future professions (lawyer, engineer and financial analyst) will not be compromised by technological advancements because we are going to be a part of what Rifkin refers to as the "knowledge sector." Knowledge sector refers to those occupations which require further post secondary education in the technology sector rather than manual type labour. On the other hand, technology will aid us in our job performance, which includes the efficiency and quality of our services. Information is now literally at our fingertips, in the past, huge libraries containing volumes of books were required for many different professions, these libraries have not disappeared, but computers the size of a regular binder can hold just as much information. This would facilitate research for many of those who will work, like us, in the "Knowledge Sector." Current technological advancements may or may not effect the daily lives of many individuals, six such individuals were interviewed for their responses to Rifkin's message. Monique van den Wildenberg, the residence life coordinator with the Residence Life staff (which is part of Carleton University Housing and Food services), states that her work does involved technology ,but, not a sophisticated level compared to other jobs such as the automotive industry. She feels she is adequately knowledgeable about technology to make her job easier ( ie. Making posters and communicating with colleagues) but is not afraid that technology will make her obsolete since her job is person to person job and no computer or robot is able to replace the uniqueness of human communication and contact. On the other hand, Wildenberg believes that technology has a potential to create large percentage of unemployed individuals in the future, but, it is up to the individual not the government too continuously learn and retrain so they do not become outdated by technology. Mike Marriot working for Marriot food services does feel frustrated with new technology introduced even though it has made his job easier and richer. He knows that his organization could have spent half million dollars too implemented a technology that would have eliminated his current duties. Furthermore, Marriot believes that Rifkin has some substance in this ideolology that technology will create a higher unemployment rate, but, it is up to the individual and the organization to re-train, understand and cope with technology advancement. "Technology is only as good as the people who are using it" says Mike Marriot. The relevance of Rifkin's main message and the expressed opinions of the following two currently employed workers was found to be inconclusive. The third person interviewed, currently, works as an assembler for a electrical switchgear manufacturing company, a blue collar job. About a year and a half ago his previous employer laid him off due to company downsizing. The position that he held in that company was a management position. Specifically, he was a manager for the assembly section of the high voltage switchgear division. He had held the position for about seven years and he had been with the company for about nineteen years in total. The result of his lay off from the company was not really the direct result of technology but other factors. These factors included the low demand for the product ( high voltage switchgears and transformers), the relatively high cost of producing the product (in comparison to there competitors in the US) due to the relatively large size of the organization. The particular manufacturing plant that he had been working in was one of many branch plants. In fact, the company had manufacturing plants in the US and Europe and was planning to shut down the operations of this particular plant in Toronto due to the shrinking market in that region. The plan also included for the US branch plant to pick up the "slack" of the Toronto or Ontario market. In general, this interviewee agrees with some of the relevant points with respect to the unemployment issues that Rifkin points out but has not experienced any negative aspects of technology. That is, he relates to the increased competition and company re-engineering that Rifkin mentions about in his book . The fourth person interviewed is a part-time credit card service assistant. He has been working for the organization for about 5 years and he attends university as a full-time student. In the company that he has been working for he has not experienced any negative impacts of technology or re-engineering in the organization. As a result he does not relate to Rifkin's pessimistic view on technology. He does on the other hand agree on Rifkin's message on obtaining more knowledge in the high tech areas. This is one of the reasons why he attends university so that he can gain more knowledge in computers and keep up to date with the latest in technology. When a telecommunications technician was informed about Rifkin's message concerning global automation and a huge increase in unemployment, the response given was one of no fear. Tony Deluca of Mitec Telecom., who is manager of the test department said that he had no worries because his work simply can't be done by a machine. It is clear to all those who have seen first hand what exactly is involved in testing telecommunications equipment that Tony doesn't have to worry. He assembles a component to many different computers and makes the finest adjustments so that all runs at the proper frequency and can withstand all power put through it. The changes that are required can only be performed by skilled professionals and therefore Mr. Deluca feels that his employment for Mitec is not at risk. The last person interviewed is a man by the name of Robyn Decoste, he is a small business owner in a suburb of Montreal. It is because he owns the store that he has no fear of losing all to automation. Although what he takes into consideration is that the mechanization of his store will make work for his children (he plans to give the store to them) far more simple. Paperwork, and trips to the bank will soon be non-existent. Also, he foresees automation aiding him in a sense that he may need to employ less people in the future. Currently, he employs people to do various tasks, from stocking shelves to banking and those who work the register. It is known that soon enough he will no longer need a person at the cash register, since automated billing and paying procedures are currently being perfected, yet to acquire the best baking results and to keep the shelves full, he must employ a small number of people. Rifkin attempts to throw the world into a state of shock with his book. The End of Work is to us informative, however, it should not be read as a bible. Using many examples taken from the past and present, Rifkin demonstrated what he believes are the main factors which are hurling us towards an unemployed global population. We all hold a more optimistic view of what automation will accomplish in our society. From those interviewed, we have come to the conclusion that the world as a whole also has a quite optimistic view of what technology can do for us. Bibliography Rifkin J. The End of Work, (New York, G.P. Putnam's Son's, 1996). Assignment #2 by Sugumar Sivagnanam 233722 Sec. C Dominic Lozada 228223 Sec. B Mike McDonald Sec. C Presented for M.N. Kiggundu Business 42.210 f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Robert Edward Lee.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Robert Edward Lee Robert Edward Lee was born of two distinguished Virginia families. He was a devoted son, an outstanding Westpoint cadet, and an United States army officer for thirty two years. He graduated second in his class. Lee started his impressive Military career as a Lieutenant in the Corps of Engineers. His first assignment was to work on the construction of Fort Pulaski in 1830 near Savannah, Georgia. Then in 1831 he was transferred to Fort Monroe, Virginia where he worked on harbor defenses. In 1834 he moved to Washington, D.C. as an assistant to the chief of engineers. In 1835 he was assigned to resolve the Ohio-Michigan boarder conflict. In 1837 he went to Saint Louis to work on stabalizing the Mississippi river channel. He was promoted to captain in 1838. Being sucessful in Saint Louis he was assigned to Fort Hamilton in 1841 to work on the New York Harbor fortifications. When war broke out with Mexico in 1840 Lee was sent to Mexico for two years as an engieneering officer. There he was praised for his galantry and good conduct. In the war with Mexico he was wounded in the Storming of Chapultepec in 1847. The Mexican war was suposed to be the help that Lee needed in the experance of commanding troops. After the Mexican war Lee was assigned to Baltimore in 1848, he was to supervise the construction of Fort Carrol for nearly four years. In 1852 the United States military academy at West Point became Lees home when he was appointed superintendent. During his three year stint he raised acidemic standards, lengthened the program from four to five years, and improved facilities. In 1859 in Arlington, Texas Lee was given command of Federal forces which were there to make sure Mexicans did not invade Texas. Then Lee was sent to capture the abolitionist, John Brown at Harpers Ferry. Then when war seemed impossible to avoid, President Abraham Lincion summond Lee and asked him to lead the Union army, but Lee declined. On April 23 he became commander and chief of the military forces in Virgnia, just three days after he resigned from the U.S. Army. In February 1865 Lee was made commander and chief of all confederate forces. His great battles of the Civil wars include Antietam, Chancellorsville, Fredericksburg, and Gettysburg. He won many, many battles in the Civil war. Finally on April 9, 1865 General Robert E. Lee surrendered to General Uylesses S. Grant at the Appomattox courthouse. He had a knack for anticipating the actions of his opponents and for comprehending their weaknesses. Many of Lees tactics were not fully understood until the twentyth century. After the war Lee accepted the Presidency of Washington College, now Washington and Lee University in the fall of 1865. He died there on October 12, 1870. Lee is arguably the greatest General in American Warfare history. He has been called a hero by many Americans. He was a great soldier and commander on the battlefield. The Robert Lee memorial is now a national memorial. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Roman Society.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ROMAN SOCIETY The changes in the Roman government affected the social classes and rights gradually became more equal among the people of Rome. New laws and new leaders tried to make society become closer in equality through reforms. It was a long and difficult process to be freed or to become a citizen of Rome and not many accomplished it. Plebeians and woman were thought of as worthless citizens in society, but through time they gained more rights. To show that this is true, I will be addressing four topics: plebeians versus. patricians, women, merchants and artisans, and slaves and non-citizens. When Rome established a republic in 509 B.C., two major classes developed. The patricians controlled the government with a Senate, made up of 300 elected officials. The senate chose two consuls to administer the laws of Rome. The only power that plebeians had in the government was with a popular assembly, which approved the choice of consuls. Plebeians could not hold public office or marry into a patrician family. During the time of the Republic to the time of the empire, plebeians, who fought in many wars to help Rome gain power, demanded more rights. The government slowly began to change to appeal to plebeians who out-numbered everyone else in population. Around 494 B.C., an Assembly of Centuries and an Assembly of Tribes rly of Centuries and an Assembly of Tribes replaced the popular assembly. The Assembly of Centuries represented the Roman Army and all the classes that were included in it and they elected the consuls. The Assembly of Tribes was made up of ten elected plebeians and spoke for the plebeians interests, but had little influence on the government. In 445 B.C, plebeians won the right to marry patricians. The Assembly of Tribes gained the right to pass laws and veto any government action that threatened the rights of the plebeians. By about 300 B.C., plebeians had earned the right to hold all major political and religious posts. In 366 B.C., they won the right to consulship. When Rome took over the control of an empire, the discrimination between the classes became indistinct. Julius Caesar was one of the many emperors that tried to bring the rich and poor closer tothe poor by limiting the wealthy peoples' land ownership. During the early republic, the woman of Rome had few legal rights. A male was always responsible for the care and support of the family's women. The question of women as heirs was irrelevant. Like all plebeians, even women patricians could not vote or hold public office. They were usually married off around the age of 14 to be housewives. Even though women didn't have many rights, thethe poor by limiting the wealthy peoples' land ownership. During the early republic, the woman of Rome had few legal rights. A male was always responsible for the care and support of the family's women. The question of women as heirs was irrelevant. Like all plebeians, even women patricians could not vote or hold public office. They were usually married off around the age of 14 to be housewives. Even though women didn't have man Rome, especially if their husbands or fathers held public office. Examples of these women would be Messalina (wife of emperor Claudius), Livia (second wife of Augustus), and Julia and Julia (daughter of Augustus and granddaughter of Augustus). During early Rome, the Merchants and artisans were included among the common people. But, as the republic changed to an empire, it helped them out a lot. With the empire expanding and the need to spread the Roman culture, merchants and artisans became more important than ever. The artisans spread the Roman culture by sending their many crafts and "masterpieces" to the newly conquered lands. The merchants, with all of this new land under Roman power, were free to trade along any route as Rome controlled most of them. Most of this rising of the merchants and artisans status happened during the Pax Romana. Grn Ron Rome, especially if their hu0Aclass and some rich merchants and artisans joined the upper class. At the bottom of all of the classes were the slaves and non-citizens. Neither of them had very many rights. Slaves were usually prisoners of war from countries that the Roman empire had taken over. They were used as gladiators along with criminals (some freedmen did volunteer, though, for these "murderous Games" also). In addition, slaves were used as actors in early Roman plays and were owned by the managers who produced the plays. Some laws even specified that only slaves might be tortured. But later, freemen could also be tortured in cases of treason. It was the right of the master to offer his slaves for torture in order to prove his own innocence or to discipline them. It was also his right to free any slaves that he owned if they showed their honor to him in a time of crisis, which he would have to prove. The right to torture slaves was not removed in Roman law until in 240 A.D. Many non-citizens were also treated as if they were slaves. They usually were from some land conquered by the Romans, and were trying to make a better life in one of the cities. Intermarriages among the citizens and non-citizens of Rome were not allowed. The only way people were granted citizenship was if someone of high power gaveure ure slaves was not removed in Roman law until in 240 A.D. Many non-citizens were also treated as if they were slaves. They usually were from some land conquered by the Romans, and were trying to make a better life in one of the cities. Intermarriages among the citizens and non-citizens of Rome were not allowed. The only way people were granted citizenship was if someone of high power gave it to them. Soon the lands surrounding Rome under Roman Power were considered provinces of Rome, therefor the people that lived in them werhe rights among the people of Rome through long and difficult processes, became closer to equality. All of the social classes went through individual changes. Some, like the patricians, lost more in the end than what they started out with. Others, like non-citizens gained more rights with laws that affected them. Overall, they each were effected by the government of the Roman empire. BIBLIOGRAPHY 1) World History, Patterns of Civilization. New Jersey: Burton F. Beers, 1993 2) Grolier Electronic Publishing, Inc., 1993 3) The World Book Encyclopedia Chicago, London, Sydney, Toronto, 1985 f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Saint Sernin of Toulouse and Notre Dame of Paris.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Saint Sernin of Toulouse and Notre Dame of Paris When one thinks of St. Sernin and Notre Dame, one tends to think of two beautiful cathedrals, not to churches that portray two totally different styles of architecture. Those two styles are, of course, Romanesque in St. Sernin and the Gothic style of Notre Dame. Some characteristics that these two buildings share include quest for height, basic floor plan, and artistic flair. The period of Romanesque architecture, which lasted roughly from 1050 A.D. to 1150 A.D., concentrated mainly on achieving massive proportions, rounded vaulted bays, the round arch, the wall buttress, cylindrical apse and chapels, and towers. Early Gothic architecture, which began in 1144 with the dedication of Saint Denis, concentrated more on mastering the idea of an obscenely high ceiling, as well as ribbed and pointed vaults, the relationship between the structure and its appearance, and perhaps, most importantly the use of light. One of the most enjoyable things about comparing the two structures of St. Sernin and Notre Dame is that there are so many differences as far as the particulars go, but in general the two cathedrals are very, very much alike. Through the years, enough architectural and engineering advances had been made to raise the ceiling to staggering new heights of over one hundred feet. The materials remained the same as they had for years before, stone and mortar. The basic floor plan remained the same, a cross. The nave had become longer and more spectacular and the ceiling had been heightened due to recent discovery of vaulted ceilings, but other than that, it was the same floor plan as ever. The cathedrals were designed to draw vast numbers of people them, therefore they were built so that one might not only come to worship, but to see the beauty of the structure. Even to this day people are in awe of these building, and come more to stare at their beauty than to worship God. Regardless of how many likeness' we are able to find between the Romanesque style of St. Sernin and the Gothic style of Notre Dame, it is the difference that make them so amazing. In my opinion there are three major differences in Early Gothic and Romanesque styles of architecture. These are the differences in buttresses, the use of towers, and the use of windows. From the exterior, one of the first differences one would notice is the use of flying buttresses in Gothic architecture. Where in Romanesque buildings, standard buttresses would have been used, the buttresses on Gothic buildings were detached from the building. This created a more open essence to the church and in my opinion a more "spiritual" look. As far as the towers go, in Romanesque structure the towers were used as a more central figure, while in Gothic construction, the towers were used more as an entrance structure. Most importantly though, is the different use of light. In Romanesque structures, as is obvious in St. Sernin, it was realized that in a structure as big as a cathedral, much light was needed. Therefore many, small windows were put in to light up the deep bowels of the cathedral. In Gothic architecture, however, and especially Notre Dame windows became a major part of the construction process. They found that by transferring more of the force down the flying buttresses that the vertical walls did not carry as much stress, therefore more windows could be added without reducing structural integrity. Therefore windows were put in on several levels, not only as a source of light, but as a form of art. Most of the stained glass windows depicted either scenes from the bible or people of royalty. The windows pierced through the walls and added to the beauty of the cathedral. Between the addition of the flying buttresses and the use of stained glass windows, Gothic cathedrals produced some of the most beautiful and enormous works of art known to man. The use of sculptures, stained glass, and gargoyles added to the Romanesque ideas of size, vaulted ceilings, and towers made Gothic Architecture some of the most artistic and fascinating buildings ever built. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Schindlers List.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ " I know that the great tragedies of history often fascinate men with approaching horror. Paralyzed, they cannot make up their minds to do anything but wait. So they wait, and one day the Gorgon devours them, But I should like to convince you that the spell can be broken, that there is an illusion of impotence, that strength of heart, intelligence and courage are enough to stop fate and sometimes reverse it." Albert Camus. Albert Camus believes that the greatest tragedies of history are so horrific that people stand in awe, and consequently, nobody even attempts to do anything in response of the tragedies. Many are under "an illusion of impotence", and eventually, Camus states, "The Gorgon devours them". Also, in order for this "spell to be broken", people must have "strength of heart, intelligence and courage." I believe that Albert Camus is correct, people are under a vale of impotence when it comes to the tragedies of the world, and that people can easily overcome this inability and reverse their fate, or let the "Gorgon" devour them. Camus's beliefs can be proved through the use of examples from the movie Schindler's List. Oscar Schindler, the movie's main character, is, in the beginning of the movie, not actually aware of the full extent of the killing of Jews and the powerful anti-Semitic outlook of his comrades. His ties relating to the affairs of the Nazi party and his loyalty to his country shield him from this knowledge. Thus, it can be concluded that in the beginning of the movie Schindler does not fully grasp the tragedy at hand, and consequently does nothing attempt to aid the Jews. Shindler's realizations of the horrors of the holocaust begin in one scene near the middle of the film. During this infamous turning point of the movie, Schindler, on top of a barren hill, traces the path of a young and helpless Jewish girl who wanders haphazardly through the streets of a devastated camp. In a red trench-coat-coat, nowhere to go, desperately searching for her two parents, the little girl finally wanders into an abandoned building where she is safe from the chaotic world outside. Her safety is only temporary, for later she will be hunted down and cold heartily murdered, forgotten to the world, destroyed by her own people, asking in wonderment, why do I deserve such punishment? This scene is the point at which Schindler becomes infuriated, and he asks himself why, and most importantly, what he could do to stop the massacre. Thus, Schindler's change in character is an example of Camus's idea that people can do much more than "wait" for each tragedy to stop. People can help, and as Camus states, that merely "strength of heart, intelligence and courage are enough to stop fate and sometimes reverse it." Schindler portrays intelligence, courage and the will go forth and conquer. Albert Camus has another idea. Camus believes that if one does wait and do nothing about the horrors of history, "one day the Gorgon devours" you. Schindler's List is a perfect example of how eventually people can be devoured. In Schindler's List, one aspect of the film relates to the Gorgon idea. The Jews of Schindler's List. As Camus interprets, when people wait they become devoured. This is the same with the Jews. The Jews basically wait and are eventually devoured, or murdered, by the nazis and German people. Of course, the Jews do act to try and free themselves, such as hiding from the nazis and eating their valuables, but ultimately these actions failed. Through this example, I believe that Camus is right in his beliefs. I think that it is sad that Camus is correct in saying that people actually pay no attention to tragedies such as the holocaust. Anyone that reads this quote and thinks of the holocaust would most likely ask themselves whether or not they would recognize the holocaust if they were alive during that time. I believe that it is hard to think in these terms and that, generally, people deny the fact that they reject the horrific tradegies of today. Even though, altogether, they do. Of course, ironically, lets just "wait" and see what happens. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Sectionalism.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Stephen Glynn Civitas Midterm 2-28-96 Fallon Throughout the early 1800's the country was split in many areas over many issues. Some of the more severe clashes between differing groups resulting from such issues as slavery, expansion, and internal improvement. With all of these controversial topics to worry about along with the vast diversity in the nation, caused separation and tensions throughout the country. The most prominent of the previous topics was slavery. This was an issue in the days of the bible and continues to be an issue in the middle 1800's. The divisions in the country brought about by slavery seem to be categorized into two main groups, abolitionists, and slave holders. These two groups also were divided geographically for the most part due to the South's need of slaves for cheap, and reliable man power, and the North, as it was not an agriculturally based economy and needed little in the way of unskilled laborers. It was very easy for the North to bash the South's slavery because their economy did not depend upon slavery. They had no slaves, no need for slaves, and saw slavery as inhumane and unlawful. The south, however, depended upon slavery as a basis of production, and the only way to operate large farms at the time, primarily being the large cotton plantations of the south. Several people tried to resolve the issue of slavery with compromises and bills that set clear rules and laws to appeal to both sides. The most prominent being the Missouri compromise. This document set the standard for slavery at the time. It also managed to further divide the country into two opposing groups geographically separated by the 36 degree 30 minute line. The bill clearly stated that no states above the proposed line shall have slavery, with exception to those already in existence. This meant that all new states being brought into the country from the west had a choice to have slavery if and only if they laid below the line. Obviously, the south did not really like the idea, as it allowed the northern non-slave states to outnumber the southern slave-states in the south as far as representation in the government was concerned. Another part of the slavery controversy was the moral issue and weather or not it was inhumane, and an injustice to the Negro. I don't see how the North cared about the southern salve, because they failed to recognize slaves as people, and much less as citizens. So, that raises the question of how you could treat another human as if they were non-human, but still complain about their enslavement by other people for the benefit of your own country. Two pieces where this argument is seen are "Appeal to the women of the south" and "Slavery as it is." These two articles discuss slavery in the light that it is wrong, and should be abolished. They completely see it from the standpoint of Christianity, and do not see it as accepted by the Bible. In "Appeal to the women of the South," many quotes are used directly from the Bible citing specific examples of slavery as being wrong and not accepted. The next area of national division was expansion and the issues pertaining there to. The nation was a young one, with a rapidly growing population, and great ideas of world supremacy. Peoples views were basically divided into two groups, the expansionists, and the non-expansionists. These two groups were not as geographically separated as the North and the South of the slavery issue, but none the less were partially divided by the Mason-Dixon line. When people tried to rally for interaction in the war of 1812, they campaigned with the idea of new found land, and how our country could expand. As people thought about the prospects of war, and acquisition of new land, they found the struggles of war, along with the fact that our country was young and relatively weak, not very promising. There was not a great need for land, and people were not very enthused about the war with England. Sure many people would have liked to stomp England in an easy war which netted us complete disaffiliation with them, but we weren't sure that we could really win at the time. The people with these ideas tended to be in the North, where cities were the norm, rather than small farming communities. The South, on the other hand, had a great deal to gain if we acquired more land. Since they were a predominantly a rural farming community, they saw a need for land, and felt strong about the nations abilities in the war. In the end, no land was won or lost, but the war was won. As for the final topic, internal improvement separated the country by political parties. These parties were the federalists and the republicans. They had very few geographical divisions, and views were mixed on both sides. We see the best example of this in the Maysville Road article. There was a dispute over the proposed road, and weather or not it should be built with federal money. The government claimed that the road was for the benefit of the mail, and allowed easy passage through the mountains of Kentucky. Many people did not like the idea still because it represented federal money being distributed in unequal amounts to different states, along with non uniform benefits. This quickly set defined boudaries between the political parties of the time, and started a vast amount of tension between the two parties. By the end of the dispute, the opposed(Federalists) came out on top, and the road was never built, but it shows the first, strong, divergence in the populous of our nation since its conception. All of the above examples are all representative of issues of the time which played a large roll in sectionalism, and the breakup of the United States. Over the long run, it is a miracle that, with the vast spectrum of people in the country, we have managed to stay together, through thick and thin, driven by one common force, "Freedom." f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Serial Killers.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Serial Killers "God, I've never done anything. Help me, help me! God, why is this happening? Help me!" Robert Violante screamed as the Son of Sam's .44 caliber bullet tore through his temple (Eyes of a Killer, http.//www.serialkiller.com). Serial killers are the most famous of all murderers because of their mass numbers of victims and their odd rituals of killing. What is a serial killer? A serial killer falls into two categories: psychotics and psychopaths. Psychotics are clearly insane, they fail to perceive reality correctly. A minority of serial killers are psychotics. Psychopaths, also known as a sociopaths, do not suffer from a mental illness, but from a character flaw. They are in touch with reality, and know right from wrong. They know killing is wrong, they just don't care (1994, Serial Killers, Time Life Books). You cannot pick a sociopath out in a crowd because they look just like everybody else. Actually, they act just like everybody else. You could have a neighbor that's a serial killer and not even know it. Psychopaths are everyday people with everyday lives, but they just have one problem, they have a need to kill. What does a serial killer do? Serial killers usually have reasons for killing, they just don't go out and kill anyone (the majority). A serial killer will plan out where, when, why, and how before they actually kill. Ted Bundy used to lure his victims with a phony cast on his leg. Others lured with the promise of sex or porno movies. When they kill they usually have their own style. The Son of Sam used a .44 Cal, Dahmer killed various ways and then hacked his victims into several pieces, dumping the bodies into vats of acid, and Gacy molested little boys before strangling them and dumping them into the crawl space under his home. What makes a serial killer? A serial killer tends to be white, male, and middle aged. There are other races, sexes, and ages, but the majority fit the description I've just given. Their character flaw seems to come from their childhood. Ted Bundy grew up in a male dominated family, so Ted grew up to kill women. John Wayne Gacy was sexually molested by a man and accused of being a "queer" by his father, so John grew up to kill little boys. Ed Gein was over protected by his mother so he grew up with a warped sexual sense and started, gravedigging, and making furniture out of corpses, and killing To be labeled a serial killer, a person must kill at least three people with intervals between each killing. That is what differentiates a serial killer from a mass murderer. Mass murderers will kill large numbers of people at one time, (1994 Mass Murderers, Time Life Books) while a serial killer will kill and kill again over a period of time. Everybody knows that serial killers murder people in abhorrent ways, they often do not know the whole story behind these deranged people. Serial killers backgrounds are often too hideous for the common person to endure. Others view what these people do as taboo and refuse to believe that it happens in our society. Well it does happen, and to understand the full concept of a serial killer you have to know the whole story. Because every serial killer has their own uniqueness, you'll have to hear several case profiles too understand the idiosyncrasies between them. Psychotics are the easiest of all serial killers to pick out. That is because they are insane. They often tend to have interesting stories behind their killings because they often see and hear things that the normal person doesn't. Schizophrenia is a common source are associated with psychotics. Schizophrenics will hear voices in their head and will ultimately make them go insane. Often the voices will make these people kill to appease them or to kill for a cause. Psychotics will most likely have a normal childhood unlike the psychopath. Although there are cases were psychotics have had a rough childhood as in the case of Ed Gein. The number of psychotics compared to the psychopath are minimal. Psychotics have a mental disease unlike the psychopaths which have a character flaw. To show what a psychotic actually is, the following are two profiles on psychotics with interpreted case histories. Herbert Mullin Herbert Mullin had a normal childhood. Growing up in a middle class family Herbert had no major difficulties. But by the time he was twenty, Herbert started to become violent, had began learning Eastern religions, and became a drug user. In 1969, he started to imitate his brother-in-law and his parents were worried that he suffered from echopraxia. Echopraxia is one of the first symptoms of schizophrenia. Herbert admitted himself into a mental health institution and was diagnosed with having schizophrenia. Six weeks later he was released. Upon released he shaved his head and began slipping away from reality, during this time he was quoted as saying "murder is an act of love". In 1972 Herbert went to visit his parents in Santa Cruz; it was at this point when Herbert began to hear voices. He believed that his father was communicating with him telepathically. The voice would instruct him to go kill people. So in time he had done just that. His first victim was a man that he clubbed to death. A few months later he picked up a hitchhiker, stabbed her to death and dumped the body. His third victim was a Catholic priest he stabbed to death in a confessional. By this time a new voice had entered his head. Albert Einstein told Herbert telepathically that Herb was the "designated leader" of his generation. Einstein then told Herb that he had to sacrifice people to stop the great California earthquakes. Then the voices changed in Herbert's head from Einstein to random people offering themselves to be killed. Herb killed five of these people. In early February he came across some teenagers illegally camping, Herb first told them to leave but then shot and killed them all. Then on February 13 Mullin was delivering firewood when the voices told him that he could not deliver the wood until he killed someone. As he was on his way to deliver the wood, he observed a seventy two year old man, he shot him and continued on his way never leaving his vehicle. Herb was quickly arrested but he didn't even know why. Herb was not found insane by the courts, but this is highly arguementive. Herb Mullin was sentenced to life in prison. Ed Gein The people of Plainfield, considered Ed Gein a gentle man who everybody trusted. Ed had a very strict childhood. His father died when he was very young. His mother then decided that she would raise her children and not marry or be involved in any relationship. Mrs. Gein told Ed and his brother Henry that all women were bad and that sex would lead to heart breaks and diseases. Later in life, Ed confessed he felt his mother was good in every manner (deranged,wierd,sick, http.//www.deranged.com). Authorities suspected he had a sexual relationship with his mother. Within a matter of time Ed's mother and brother had died, leaving Ed desolate on a farm which didn't even have electricity. Ed worked odd jobs like a handyman and baby-sitting. In his free time, Ed conducted psychotic experiments. Fascinated with the female body, Ed often indulged himself in anatomical textbooks. To actually see and feel for himself, he went to the graveyard and exhumed several bodies, including his mothers'. He found pleasure in handling dead women's sex organs. Even worse, he skinned the corpses and dissected the bodies. The inventory inside his home consisted of heads, hearts, livers, intestines, and skin scattered about. At night he would take off all of his clothes, put on his mothers skin, and dance around the house. Seeking yet more sexual gratification Ed made furniture and musical instruments from body parts. Some of these items included lampshades, tom toms, and bracelets. Gein then moved on to killing other people. Even though he only killed two women (Mary Hogan and Bernice Wordan), Ed was still considered a serial killer. After killing Bernice Wordan, the evidence left behind lead to Ed Gein. When the authorities arrived they were welcomed by an assortment of human artifacts. Shrunken heads, drinking glass skulls, and skin furniture. Ed didn't realize that what he had done was wrong so he invited the police in for coffee. In the kitchen there was a human heart simmering in a saucepan. The police then found Bernice hanging in the barn, she was gutted and strung up like a deer. Most of the officers became sick after viewing the carnage. Ed was arrested and found by the court to be insane. He was institutionalized for the rest of his life. The movies Psycho and Silence of the Lambs were based on his life (1994 Serial Killers, Time Life Books). Psychopaths or also known as sociopaths are people with a severe character flaw in which they feel like they have to kill. Sociopaths know that killing is wrong, they just don't care. Sociopaths act just like everybody else, some are shy, and some are extremely outgoing. These people are usually led to killing by influences that have warped their personalities. Common examples are child abuse, a fetish with a certain items, or a hatred of some sort. A serial killer loves to kill, it gives the killer a sense of power and gratification. Since sociopaths far out number the psychotic, seven profiles on select serial killers are givin to understand the many different aspects serial killers have. Gilles De Rais This serial killer is the third most notorious serial killer known. His name is Gilles De Rais. During the Hundred Years War, De Rais was Joan of Arc's personal bodyguard. Immensely rich, and popular throughout France, De Rais was named a baron to the people. Being a faithful Christian, it was hard to accept what De Rais had done. Other lords and the common people became suspicious of all the missing children in the area. The Bishop of Nantees demanded that De Rais's castle be searched. In a pit within the castle, they dug up the remains of one hundred and forty boys. De Rais had murdered them all by means of satanic ritual or sexual gratification. At times when he didn't feel like killing, he had his servants molest, torture, and murder the young men. While this was happening, De Rais watched and masturbated over the children's entrails. De Rais and his servants were found guilty of murder and torture. De Rais was simultaneously hanged and burned alive, while his servants were just burned alive. Though, they only found the remains of 140 people, it was estimated that he killed over 300 (Compulsion to Kill, Time Life Books). Albert Fish The next serial killer to be discussed is Albert Fish. The father of sadism, Fish was sexually aroused by pain and misery. After Fish's wife and six children left him, he would become aroused by inflicting pain upon himself. He would eat his own defications, stick flaming alcohol balls into his anus, flagellate himself with a nail studded paddle, burn himself with red hot pokers, and insert sewing needles into his groin. At night he would dance naked in his yard screaming "I am Christ!" (1994,Serial Killers, Time Life Books). As a pass time Fish would answer lonely widow ads in the newspaper by giving promises of paddling, punishment, and much worse. He bigamously married three of the women he had met through the ads in the paper. None of these rituals could fully sexually appease him so Fish turned to molesting children and cannibalism. After molesting seven little girls and then strangling them, he decided to try cannibalism. The 8th and final victim was ten year old Grace Budd. He told her parents that Fish was taking her to Fish's niece birthday party. There was actually no party, he took her to an abandoned house in the country. After molesting and strangling the girl, he chopped her into pieces and made a stew out of her. When Fish ate the stew he had experienced an orgasm that lasted seven days straight. He then quickly moved out of state but his conscience told him to inform the parents what had happened to their daughter considering the Budds were his friends. Albert wrote the Budds a letter telling them what a delight it had been eating their daughter. The police then traced the return address and apprehended Fish. He was found guilty of murder and a multitude of other charges and then sentenced to death. At age 65, Fish was the oldest person electrocuted at Sing Sing prison. An untrue legend has it that Fish short circuited the electric chair due to all the sewing needles in his groin (1994, Beyond Murder, John Philpin, Penguin Books USA Inc.) Richard Ramirez The third sociopath I will write about is Richard Ramirez. Ever since Richard was a boy he was a loner. By the time he was in 8th grade he was sniffing glue and smoking marijuana but shunned group activities such as youth gangs. The one thing about Richard that is the most frightening is that he killed randomly. There were no racial, sexual, or age preferences. Richard would just break into houses and kill the occupants. Ramirez's first victim was seventy-nine year old Jennie Vincow, whom he raped and nearly decapitated. Ramirez was homeless, sleeping anywhere he could. As a pass time Richard would flirt with Satanism and practice in the occult. After killing thirteen people and assaulting about thirty more, Richard was finally captured with the first time used invention of the computer used to match finger prints (VICAP) (1994, Most Wanted, Time Life Books). Ramirez was found guilty and was given the death penalty. Richard tried pleading insanity but the court found that he wasn't. "The Night Stalker" would kill just because he liked to. Jerry Brudos Jerry Brudos was known as the Shoe Fetish Slayer. At age five Jerry found a pair of high heel shoes in the dump and became fascinated by them. Jerry took them home and wore them around until his mother found out, Jerry was severely punished. When Jerry was 16, he dug a tunnel hoping to capture a girl in it so he could make her do anything that he wanted. Still enchanted by the high heeled shoes, Jerry started to burglarize houses, stealing their high heeled shoes and sometimes lingerie. After stealing the items, Jerry would go home and try them on. In 1956 Jerry was arrested for assaulting a little girl and trying to rip her clothes off. At age 23, he married a 17 year old girl and became the father of two children. This is when he started to kill. In January 1968, he killed a 19 year old who was selling encyclopedias door to door (1994, Lethal Shadow, Stephan Michaud, Penguin Books USA Inc.). Knocking her unconcience, he took her to the basement, and then strangled her. He then undressed her, and put on her undergarments and high heeled shoes. Fascinated by the shoe, Jerry cut off her left foot, put a high heeled shoe on it, and then stored it in the freezer. But now what was he going to do with the body? He tied her to an old, discarded engine block and tossed her into the Willamette River. His next victim was killed ten months later. This time he dressed up the cadaver and took photographs. He severed one of her breasts before dumping her into the Willamette River. In March 1969, Brudos had raped another victim and then strangled her. Once finished with the body, Jerry severed both breasts before dumping her body. His last victim followed about a month later; after the rape and murder, he applied electric shocks to the rib cage to see if the body would jump. A anonymous tip led the authorities to Brudos. At his home they found special electrician knots which were used to hold down the body in the river. They had also found his souvenir collection of body parts. The last thing the authorities found was a photograph of a dead woman hanging from a hook in his garage. Jerry was charged with three out of the four murders and was sentenced to life in prison. Jerry is eligible for parole in 1999 (1994,Compulsion to Kill, Time Life Books). Ted Bundy Ted Bundy was probably the most brilliant serial killer of all time. A law school drop out, this murderer of thirty six women was on a killing spree that lasted a decade. As a child, he grew up in a male dominated household. His father would scream, yell, and beat his mother. Ted grew up with domestic violence ingrained into his personality. He tried many times, but relationships never lasted. He was a charming and well educated man. To some he was considered a hero. When he was a teenager, he saved a child from drowning. So it was considered odd that he ended up a killer. When he was in his twenties he married Beth Archer. This seemed peculiar because by this time he had already killed two dozen women. Eventually she divorced him and he remarried Carol Bartholomew. Even though he was married, he still continued to stalk and murder. Ted's common hunting grounds were universities and beaches. He lured his victims by using a fake cast. Women would feel sympathetic and help him with his books or assist him in some other way. This would be their fatal mistake. He would take them out of site and then murder them. Ted's methods of killing were strangling and/or beating to death with blunt objects (1994, Serial Killers, Time Life Books. He knew how to cover his tracks and not let anyone notice him. When he'd go "hunting" he would leave the area which he live traveling as much as three hundred miles to find his victims. Police became suspicious of Ted but they had no evidence against him. Nationwide, college campuses were advised to be on the lookout for anyone unfamiliar roaming the campuses with a cast on. One day Ted's wife was scavenging the attic for something when she stumbled upon a box filled with cast material. She called the police and Ted was apprehended. With Ted's friendly personality he was givin a lot of freedom in the courts. Since he was a law student he decided to represent himself. One day in court Ted asked to go to the bathroom and was allowed to do so. The court room was on the third floor so they didn't anticipate an escape attempt. Unattended in the bathroom, Ted jumped from the third floor window and escaped with a broken leg. There was a state wide man hunt for Bundy and he was apprehended a few days later. Ted was then shackled in the courtroom and his liberties were stripped. The courts have convicted Ted with thirty six counts of murder. Ted, after conviction, admitted to the crimes he had committed. He had a hard time remembering the names because there were so many victims. Ted had a inner hatred towards women and this was the only way he knew how to deal with this hatred. Ted was executed January 24, 1989. His last word were "Thirty six is the wrong number, you have to add one more digit" (1992, To Kill and Kill Again, John Coston, Penguin Books USA Inc.). This means he could of killed one more, ten more, or a hundred more, we will never know. Henry Lucas If anything that can go wrong in a childhood, it has happened to Henry Lee Lucas. The youngest of nine, Henry came from a severely dysfunctional family. He never knew his father, just a drunken stepfather that lost both his legs while working for a railroad, who eventually died of pneumonia. Henry's mother was a cruel prostitute. She made him grow his hair long, and put him in dresses just to make fun of him. If he'd disobey, she'd beat him until he was unconcience. Sometimes she'd make him watch while she was with a client. It took Henry three years to pass the first grade and he dropped out after the fifth. At a young age he was subjected to necrophilia. One of his mother's lovers killed a cow and had sex with it. His older brother damaged Henry's eye in a fight and when a teacher accidentally hit him, he went blind in that eye. In 1960 Henry killed his mother in a argument about marriage. He claimed that she died of a heart attack after he punched her and slightly slit her throat. The autopsy showed that she had actually died from bleeding to death. Henry was sentenced to twenty to forty years in prison; but only served ten. After Henry was released from prison he teamed up with Ottis Toole, a bisexual cannibal, and they went on a nation wide killing spree. They killed and raped their victims as it was a necessity to them. If they ever had a urge to kill, they said that they would just pick up a hitchhiker every now and then. Joining up with them later was Toole's niece, Becky Powell. With time she developed a relationship with Henry and he ultimately ended up killing her too. Henry had Becky's dismembered body in the back seat of a car when he was stopped by a deputy sheriff in Texas. After arrest Henry admitted killing over 360 people nationwide. Officers from twenty eight states came to interrogate him (which had included my father, Richard Wellner). In one interview he was quoted as saying "We killed them every way there is accept one, I haven't poisoned anybody. We cut 'em up. We hanged 'em. We ran 'em down with cars. We stabbed 'em. We beat 'em. We drowned 'em. There's crucifixion-there's people we fillet like fish. There's people we burnt.(1994,Serial Killers, Time Life Books) There's people we shot in cars. We strangled them by hand. We strangled them by rope. We strangled them by telephone cord. We stabbed them then we strangled them. We even tied them so they would strangle themselves. Henry Lee Lucas is known as the Bloody Liar because of his false confessions and that strive for attention. He was only linked to eleven murders, one being Becky Powell. He may have killed more but this is all that police have proven so far. Henry is currently sitting on death row. John Wayne Gacy John Wayne Gacy's part time occupation as a clown hid his true self pretty well. Pogo the Clown molested and murdered thirty three boys. When John was a child, he was what you would call a momma's boy. His father had always accused him of being a "queer". Later on in childhood his father's friend sexually molested him while taking him for a ride in a truck. John grew up and worked as an electrician and a part time clown. Gacy suffered from two broken marriages and then he started to kill. John would lure young boys to his house with promises of sex or porno movies. He would have sex with those who wanted sex and would manipulate the others to masturbate during the porno's. After having his way with the boys he would then strangle and bury them in his crawl space. Before all the killings started, Gacy had a police record and spent time in jail for sexual assaults. Gacy became a suspect in a number of missing boy cases because of his police record. With a anonymous tip, they searched his house and found there were three boys buried in the crawl space. After being arrested and convicted, John Wayne Gacy was sentenced to death. While sitting on death row, he imitated his father when he used to lock himself in the basement and started to paint. Gacy's paintings sold up as high as five hundred thousand dollars each (1993, Garden of Graves, Maria Eftmiades, St. Martins Press). In conclusion, psychotics and psychopaths have only one thing in common, they are labeled serial killers. Many people see both of them just as serial killers when they are extremely different. Psychotics would not kill if they were not mentally ill. A psychopath is not mentally ill. They know what they are doing and will kill in cold blood with no remorse for the shear pleasure of it. Contrary to that, a psychotic will kill because they have no idea what they are doing is wrong. A psychopath will usually have their own personal reasons for killing which may include hatred, sexual gratification, devil worship, or a lust for blood. Psychotics are in their own world where murder is a perfectly normal way of life. Psychotics will also kill to appease a voice driving them crazy or a sexual interest which seems fine to them. The label "serial killer" is a group of abstract murderers all mixed up together. A "serial killer" is not just one kind of murderer. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Sex Laws and Cyberspace.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ A Michigan college student posts sadistic fantasy about a classmate to an Internet newsgroup and is charged with the threat to injure. A postal inspector in Memphis, Tennessee downloads a pornographic image off the Internet and the California couple who posted it is arrested for violating Tennessee's obscenity laws. A programmer's encryption software is duplicated by someone else and sent overseas via the Internet; the programmer is charged with illegal export of munitions. The three defendants in these cases felt that the First Amendment protected them, but it was not the case. Sex, Laws, and Cyberspace is precise in its opinion on the First Amendment and defends every case presented within the book. Sex, Laws, and Cyberspace addresses the legal issues and ethical debates surrounding the worldwide growth of the Internet. The same qualities that make these networks invaluable--low cost worldwide reach, lack of censorship, interactivity, virtual anonymity, and the ability to carry huge amounts of data, text, images, and sounds--also makes them dangerous. The pressure on the government to regulate the Internet is tremendous, and the implications of their judicial and legislative decisions will be far-reaching. Sex, Laws, and Cyberspace examines these battles and includes interviews with key players in both pro- and anti-regulation camps. The authors offer a spirited defense of the freedoms now under fire, and suggest ways to monitor the "net" without stifling it. As an example the reader must look at is Jake Baker who liked to write savage, pornographic snuff stories and post them to the Internet. Always written in the first person and tinged with an eerie realism, his tales were simple, explicit, and gruesome. "She's shaking with terror as Jerry and I circle her. She says in a little, terrified voice, 'Why are you doing this...I've never hurt you...p-please stop!' I pause in front of her. Jerry smiles at her terror. He laughs at her pitful pleas. I say, 'Shut the _uckup, stupid whore!' and hit the side of her head, hard. She collapses on the ground, crying, curling up into a little ball. Alright. Let's have some fun" (64)! They proceed to tie the girl's hair to a ceiling fan and tear into her as she dangles and spins. Baker's hero, Jerry, then rapes and mutilates her. For the denouement, they pour gasoline on her and say good-bye with a lit match. Baker, a twenty year old sophomore at Michigan college posted this piece to Usenet under his own name. The "real world" Baker was a quiet kid who played with computers and drew little notice; but on the net he excited, offended, and garnered attention. The last contribution Baker made was January 9, 1995, and again included a simple plot, sadistic torture, and murder. The difference, however, was that he used a real girl's name who sat in his Japanese class the previous fall semester and on whom he had a secret crush. Ten days after the posting, the story came to the attention of the University of Michigan. Baker was contacted by officers from the University of Michigan Department of Public Safety. Although he was surprised by the contact, he readily admitted to writing the stories. Baker waived his Miranda rights, and let them search his room and E-mail account. There they found an unpublished story and a number of E-mail conversations with a fellow rape fantasizer, Arthur Gonda. When interviewed by the officers, Baker stated that he wrote to exorcise his "demons," to relieve the tensions caused by a student loan he feared he would lose, and to impress certain others on the "net." Without going into the details of this case, Baker was charged with threat to injure. This was later dismissed because of his lawyer's appeal that cited Whitney v. California. It stated, "Fear of serious injury cannot alone justify suppression of free speech...To justify suppression of free speech there must be reasonable ground to fear that serious evil will result if free speech is practices. There must be reasonable ground to believe that the danger apprehended is imminent" (81). The other reason Baker's case was dismissed was that Judge Cohn looked at the Communications Decency Act (CDA). Under Senator Exon's CDA, Baker would likely be guilty of indecency and subject to both heavy fines and imprisonment. Some point out that "The freedom of press belongs to those who have one" (80). Half baked ideologies, dangerous ideas, and sordid fantasies can be posted, published, and circulated with virtually no restrictions on the Internet. The First Amendment allows this. The government's case against Baker collapsed when real world standards were applied. Without the CDA or equivalent legislation creating different rules for cyberspace, Baker's posting to Usenet was no different than if he had distributed his stories as leaflets on street corners. Judge Cohn took a swipe at the CDA, which had just cleared the Senate by saying "The Senate's recent passage of a telecommunications bill including Senator Exon's measure criminalizing the distribution of 'filthy' material over computer networks suggests that the First Amendment's applicability to on-line communications has not been well considered" (80). Judge Cohn decided that the CDA was not explicit or detailed enough for him to abide by it in his courtroom. The First Amendment is the main issue presented within this piece of work. Wallace and Mangan present their philosophy it through the entirety of the book. They believe that the First Amendment has been interpreted to say that people will not make content based distinctions of speech; there should be no censorship; the cure for bad speech is to overwhelm it with good speech, but not to silence it. They argue that the material being ruled or legislated on would be First Amendment protected if disseminated in a book or magazine, then there is no rationale for treating it differently on the Internet. Using a computer does not, and should not, make anything illegal that is legal if done without a computer. Wallace and Mangan are strong believers in the First Amendment, and believe that limiting what is on the Internet is a clear violation of the First Amendment. Wallace and Mangan did not just stop with the writing of this book. They were clear players in the ACLU v. Reno. The CDA was struck down on June 11, 1996, by a panel of three judges in Philadelphia. The judges determined that the CDA was unconstitutional, thereby keeping free speech alive on the Internet. Wallace was a major role player in the outcome of this case. He is well educated in computer law and assisted the American Civil Liberties Union as needed. This was not just a book written by Wallace and Mangan, but something that means a great deal to them. Johnathn Wallace is Vice President and General Counsel at a high-tech computer services company based in New York City. He is a graduate of Harvard Law School, he practiced computer law for ten years and has authored two books: Syslaw, the Sysops Legal Manual and Understanding Software Law. Mark Mangan works at the same high-tech company where he is a corporate writer. Both of these men are well versed in the area of computers and computer law, and it is evident in this book. Wallace and Mangan do not just ponder the question of censorship, they offer a number of interesting solutions that avoid trampling all over guarantees of freedom of speech, press, and religion. The book has numerous stories, as well as fascinating details of earlier legislation struggles over technologies such as radio, television, and the telephone, which it applies to the controversies over the Internet. They have produced one of the more important books about cyberspace. It is well researched and can be easily understood by the common reader. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\should children be allowed to testify in court .TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ SHOULD CHILDREN BE ALLOWED TO TESTIFY IN COURT? Over the past ten years, more research has been done involving children's testimony than that of all the prior decades combined. Ceci & Bruck (93) have cited four reasons for this : • The opinion of psychology experts is increasingly being accepted by courts as testimony, • Social research is more commonly being applied to the issues of children's rights, • More research into adult suggestibility in accordance with reason naturally leads to more research into child suggestibility, • Children are more commonly being used as witnesses in cases where they are directly involved (i.e. sexual abuses cases), requiring the development of better ways for dealing with them as special cases. Some psychologists deem children to be "Highly resistant to suggestion, as unlikely to lie, and as reliable as adult witnesses about acts perpetrated on their bodies" (Ceci & Bruck 1993). However, children are also described as "Having difficulty distinguishing reality from fantasy, as being susceptible to coaching by powerful authority figures, and therefore as being potentially less reliable than adults" (Ceci & Bruck 1993). The suggestibility of child witnesses, the effects of participation on children's reports, and the effects of postevent information on a prior memory representation must be taken into account when it comes to seeking answers to the reliability of their testimony, especially because sexual abuse and sexual assault cases are a big part of children's testimony and they are often the only witness. Those psychologists who feel that children can be rated as "Highly resistant to suggestion...." etc. seem to have a good argument, whereas those who take the opposite view also seem to have just as valid an argument. Which psychologists are right? Maybe both. It seems that without outside influences, social encounters, or other interference's, children's testimony has the potential to be quite valid. This is under ideal situations, however, which unfortunately rarely occur. One of the major problems when assessing the validity of child witnesses is the suggestibility of the child. Ceci & Bruck (1993) define suggestibility as "The degree to which children's encoding, storage, retrieval, and reporting of events can be influenced by a range of social and psychological factors." A child's perception of events may be manipulated by many factors with misleading questions being the most common way to assess a subjects suggestibility (Smith & Ellsworth, 87). A misleading question according to Smith et al, is one that "provides information that is inconsistent with the event witnessed, suggesting, for example, the existence of an object that was in fact not present." After being asked leading questions, a subject is much more likely than a person not asked leading questions to report the presented false information as correct. This statement was validated by Kaufman and Richter's 1990 study. In this study a number of young children (4 - 7 year olds) saw a short film featuring a circus performance. A few weeks after watching the film, the children were split into two groups. They were then asked (individually) a number of questions relating to the film. The first group were asked leading questions i.e. "What colour was the clowns hat" (where in fact the clown had not been wearing a hat), while the other group was simply asked "Was the clown wearing a hat". Kaufman and Richter found that regardless of age, children often answered the leading questions and accepted the fabricated information as being the truth. This study clearly shows that children can be manipulated by clever questioning about a witnessed event. However, this study did not involve the child interacting with the event i.e. the child did nit participate on any emotional level by simply watching a video. Rudy & Goodman (1991) conducted an experiment involving the effects of participation on children's testimony. The main purpose of Rudy & Goodman's work being to see whether the factors of age or participation influenced the recall of a child. Their experiment involved thirty-six children (eighteen 7-year olds and eighteen 4-year olds) going in pairs into a parked trailer with a male stranger (a confederate). One child played games with the confederate while the other child watched closely. Positive verbal and physical interaction took place between the confederate and the participant, and positive verbal interaction took place between the confederate and the bystander. The events were videotaped and lasted about ten minutes. The children then returned individually ten to twelve days later for a memory test and were asked to recall everything he or she could remember about the day in the trailer. Various questions were asked, which included specific and misleading questions. Rudy and Goodman concluded that although the children's participation level in an event did not have a pervasive effect on their memory, it did serve to increase the child's resistance to suggestion. Thus, children are more likely to resist suggestion if they are somehow involved with the event. Robins et al (92) criticised this investigation on a number of levels and concluded that it could not be applied to support the use of child witnesses in a courtroom situation with any validity. Firstly, Robins noted that the majority of cases in which children were used as witnesses (i.e. sexual abuse and sexual assault cases), the events that the witnesses are asked to recall are often far from positive and indeed, where a child has been allegedly assaulted/abused, the witness may experience a number of emotional factors that alter the perception of the event i.e. guilt, fear, hatred, confusion etc, none of which were present in the Rudy and Goodman study. Although, of course, the introduction of these factors would have been a serious breach of ethics. Another criticism is that the time frame involved may not have been sufficiently long enough to emulate the period from event to testimony in a child witness case. Finally, the situation under which they were asked to recall the event was not nearly the same as being asked to recall details in a courtroom (Vickers & Fuller, 92). There are many other types of suggestibility that can affect the reliability of a child's recall of events. Experiments that involve the effects of postevent information on a prior memory representation were performed by Rovee-Collier et al (1993) involving three-month-old babies. Rovee-Collier et al stated that ".....in eyewitness testimony research, postevent information impairs retention of the original event and increases the probability that interpolated [new] information will be identified as part of the original event." The infants used in the experiments were taught to kick to cause a crib mobile to move. They were then exposed to information on a novel mobile for a short amount of time. The information received by the babies after the novel event impaired their recognition of the original mobile when it immediately followed their training. Infants treated postevent data as part of the original training procedure. However, the postevent information did not impair their recognition of the event if it was delayed by one day. Rovee- Collier et al (93) proposed that "......postevent information displays conflicting information coactive with it in primary memory and creates a new, updated memory token of the event" This seems to suggest that children are more susceptible to alter their perceptions of an event only if postevent information is supplied directly after the event. However, Summ & Girston (94) suggested that "........with the brains inability to perceive every single piece of information of an event, new information will be immediately supplied through the act of 'assumption'" Summ & Girston defined 'assumption' as being the process by which information which has not been directly perceived (i.e. attenuated information (Triesmann, 64)), is reconstructed using prior knowledge. This theory, therefore, leads us to believe that there is a source of unconscious postevent information after every even, even though assumption may only cause a very small amount of new information. The fact that Rovee-Collier et al received no indication of postevent information clouding the recall of the infants they used (if the information was presented a little time after the event) can be explained by their own justification of using infants in the first place. They suggested that "..... infants are choice subjects for investigation and study on memory involvement because the babies are not exposed to problems linked with social or task demands and other circumstances. It has often been observed that these problems interrupt customary research on eyewitness testimony. Also, an infants' memory is not crowded with numerous other prior associations". This infers that the infants could not unconsciously supply their own postevent information as they do not have enough knowledge of their situation to make assumptions about new event. Furthermore, children who give testimony in court are most likely to be older that the ones that Rovee-Collier et al used in their study, and also it is likely that they would have to recall far more detailed information than the colour or arrangement of a mobile. Supporters of using children to give testimony in court have claimed that the use of anatomically correct dolls when interviewing children involved in sexual abuse cases allow the child to express themselves easier for a number of reasons. These are: • The dolls simulate a critical event which could spark recall and help to overcome the language barrier, • They help to overcome any shyness or embarrassment that the child might feel, • They can be used in a projective manner, where a preoccupation with the genitalia may indicate sexual abuse. Ceci & Bruck (93) refute these arguments with the following reasons: Firstly, the dolls themselves are suggestive. They might actually encourage a child to play in a manner appearing to indicate abuse because they provide a freedom from inhibition that might not be normally present or could indicate an exposure to sexuality, rather than actual abuse. Second, there is almost no normative data to support the use of dolls. Until fairly recently, no significant research had been done which compared patterns of play with the dolls between abused and non-abused children. A further issue when deciding whether children should be allowed to testify in a courtroom is that of factors not directly related to the child. For example how do jurors react when a child is asked to testify. i.e. Do jurors believe children? This question has been investigated by researchers in complex detail. Luus, Wells & Turtle (1995) conducted studies on jurors who were misinformed of the interviewee's age, then asked to judge the information garnered under cross examination. Surprisingly, it was discovered that transcripts of interviews with 8-year olds were judged to be as credible as those of adults. Similarly, when the juror was told the incorrect age, it did not affect the judgment. The jurors assessed the credibility of the testimony based on its content and not on the age of the interviewee. Interestingly, Luus, Wells and Turtle point out that this is actually a problem for jurors. Although they judged the children to be more accurate, they, in fact, were not. yet, the researchers are quick to point out that the research conditions and a real courtroom setting are very different and this should be accounted for. Overall, Luus, Wells and Turtle found that jurors may enter the courtroom with a negative bias against the child witness, but the actual testimony is judged more on the quality than on the child's age. Some psychologist's, however, have refused to believe that children can give an accurate testimony. By understanding what cognitive issues can affect memory, researchers have been able to develop an interviewing technique which specifically seeks to maximise the completeness and accuracy of information reported by and interviewee. This type of interview is known as a 'cognitive interview' (Saywitz, Geiselman & Bornstein, 1992) showed that cognitive interviewing with children significantly increased the number if correct facts recalled. Additionally, they discovered that practice cognitive interviews using an improvised event could improve recall. These findings have recently been supported by McCauly & Fisher (1995). In their research, the cognitive interview increased the amount of information accurately recalled by children. They also confirmed that new, accurate information was recalled ion subsequent interviews. Uniquely, they found that using the cognitive interviewing technique as a follow-up to a standard interview increased the amount of accurate information gained over using the standard interview a second time. This is especially applicable to field work where the first interview is often conducted hurriedly, without using cognitive procedures (McCauly & Fisher, 1995). In conclusion I have found that the underlying aspect of child testimony is suggestibility. Researchers today are concentrating most of their efforts in this area. It is easy to suggest that no children should be allowed to testify on account of the malleability of their recollection. However, children can play a vital role in the legal system, and indeed there are many cases in which a child is the only witness to a crime, but until the time that sufficient research has been done to achieve a system of questioning that will eliminate the suggestibility and social aspects of a child's testimony, all such testimonies should be treated with caution. REFERENCES Bernstein, D. A., Roy, E. J., Srull, T. K., Wickens, C. D. (1994) Psychology, 3rd edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, MA. Ceci, S & Bruck, M. (1993). Suggestibility of the Child Witness: A Historical Review and Synthesis, Psychological Bulletin. 113, 403 - 439 Lefrancois, G. R. (1992). Psychology, 2nd edition. Wadsworth Publishing Company. California. Luus, C. A. E., Wells, G. L., & Turtle, J. W. (1995). Child eyewitnesses: Seeing is believing. Journal of Applied Psychology, 80, 317 - 326 Rovee-Collier, C. et al. (1993). Infants Eyewitness Testimony: Effects of Postevent Information on a Prior Memory Representaion, Memory and Cognition, 21, 267 - 279 f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Should Quebec or other provinces separate from Canada in or.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Question: Should Quebec (or other provinces) separate from Canada in order to best protect its constitutional rights? In my opinion, all provinces in Canada, including Quebec should not separate. Quebec has been one of the provinces of Canada for a long period of time. Most people in the world view that it is one of the component in Canada. French-Canadian and English-Canadian seem to live together peacefully without conflict, even many people with different cultures and languages come to Canada in recent years. I thick Quebec has no reason to become independence from a multicultural nation. Some people who agree Quebec to separate state that separation can protect their French culture and language. I think it is an unacceptable reason in a multicultural nation. Multicultualism is a special identity of Canada. It allows people to maintain their own culture. If Canada does not have multiculturalism, there will be no Chinatown in most big cities in Canada. So it is not necessary to separate in order to protect French culture and language. Furthermore if French-Canadian wants to avoid any influence from other culture, France is the greatest place for them. Moreover, the Canada government will lose money if Quebec separates by dealing with the separation affairs, like to help people in Quebec back to Canada who do not want to separate. Separation also leads to the decreasing of trade in Canada, and even the whole world. Quebec is a big trade market in Canada. People will lose this big market if Quebec is no longer a province of Canada. This will not only harmful to Canada, but also the separated Quebec. Quebec separation is also a morality problem. In fact, it is part of Canada. People in a nation are like brothers and sisters, they should help and protect each other. If Quebec separates, it will act like one of the family members leave the family and no longer maintains his last name. Nobody wishes to have this happens in his family. Beside, identity of a nation is very important. It makes difference between country and country. People in the world know that Canada is mainly formed by French-Canadian and English-Canadian, and it has bilingual and muiltcultural culture. Most French-Canadian lives in Quebec. If Canada loses Quebec, the French-Canadian culture will surly be lost. If there is no French-Canadian culture, then the identity of bilingual will no longer need. Multiculturalism will no longer support by the French culture. Canada will hurt a lot because it loses one of the most special identities. Canada, including Quebec belong to every Canadian, not only the Quebecers. Every Canadian should have the right to determine Quebec should leave or stay. It is normal in a democratic country and government should respect to what the citizens say. In Canada, only 22% of people agree that Quebec should separate, as well as 27% in Alberta. By these percentages, we can see that most people disagree Quebec to separate. Moreover, 80% people in Alberta oppose letting a separate Quebec use the Canadian money dollar, and 69% against letting Quebecers commute from their homes to a job in a Canadian province. Overall, Canadian should help to create and improve its society. If we treat people with different cultures kindly and friendly, Quebec may won't have the idea to separate. Beside, separation will hurt the national unity. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Sir John Alexander Macdonald.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ John Alexander Macdonald: A Good Role Model? A role model can be looked up upon and imitated. Many would argue that Sir John A. Macdonald is not someone of this stature, but I have different opinions about him. By studying some books about him I concluded that this humble man is someone who deserves to be known as a good role model. Here are some reasons to why. It is John A. Macdonald's outstanding qualities that made him a upright leader. He won the hearts of people because he could relate to them and their problems. Showing humility, Mr. Macdonald considered himself as one of them*. And his devotion to helping these people is shown by his life course, to which even his opponents admitted "there does not exist in Canada a man who has given more of his time--more of his heart--more of his wealth or more of his intellect and power, such as they may be, for the good of the Dominion of Canada." Yes, we can say that the first Prime Minister was very devoted to Canada and her people, and helped direct Canada to become what it is now. John A. Macdonald became well known for the way he treated people. He was kind and courteous. And because of his humor and consideration of others, people enjoyed being around the Prime Minister. He left a good impression on the people of Canada because he cared for not only the English, but also the French and Natives. One example is when he visited the Council House of the Six Nation Indians near Brantford. Mr. Macdonald met more than thirty farmers and after only thirty minutes of chatting with them he knew them all by name# . In another instance, a guest of John A. Macdonald was so impressed with the hospitality he received that he described him as "courteous in his social relations--a very prince". In both cases he made those involved feel noticed and cared for. The most prominent attribute that makes John A. Macdonald a good role model is his honesty. In comparison to all of the politicians, he is by far one of the most honest Prime Ministers. Although he was not perfectly honest as shown in the Pacific Scandal, he rarely made promises that weren't fulfilled. The people recognized this and showed their appreciation by continuing to support him till his death. John Alexander Macdonald proved himself to be a great leader and therefor a good example for us to follow. Courageously, he dared to do things that people only dreamed about and accomplished them. Yet he was loyal to the country and its subjects. Mr. Macdonald cared greatly for the people by showing them genuine love and for the most part honestly conducted his duties. With all these facts about him, it is not hard to see that John A. Macdonald is worthy to be imitated. After all, he wasn't known as 'honorable John Alexander Macdonald' for nothing. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Skateboarders nationwide restless a problem that needs atten.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ English 101 Skateboarders Nationwide Restless; A problem that needs attention? Skateboarding. A sport that only requires a board and four wheels. One needs only seventy to one hundred dollars to get one. It seems pretty simple, doesn't it? Well it's not, and for one important reason. On a typical day, a skateboarder usually gets up at about 10a.m., throws their board in the trunk of their car, puts a Bad Religion tape in the tape player, picks up several other skaters and sets off to find a good spot to aggressively push their bodies to doing the unthinkable. Defying gravity, stretching the laws of physics and subjecting themselves to much physical pain and discipline all in a day's work. Everyone takes turns trying new moves and cheering each other on, a sport with no pressure to do better than anyone else, there are no winners or losers. You skate until you are exhausted, and go to bed early only to wake up and repeat the process the next morning. Skateboarders are mostly straight-edge, which means that they do not use drugs, or alcohol. This is because skateboarding, and improving requires almost constant practice. This determination in only clouded by the effects of drugs. Anyway when one performs an intricate maneuver flawlessly, the rush is greater than any pot or coke. Unfortunately, this cannot happen when a skater is denied access to their sanctuaries, there favorite spot. A good example is given by Johnston foster- "Last summer, me and some friends were skating at Phi Beta Kappa Hall, the theater at the College of William and Mary. I pulled a phat 360 kickflip down the three steps out front. The session was hot, we were all on (landing most attempted tricks) and it wasn't too hot out side. We all sat down to rest and then heard sirens in the distance. We saw a blue and white William and Mary Police officers' car pull into the parking lot. We got ready to run, but then realized it was too late. The officer made generalizations and decided that we are the skateboarders that previous complaints had been made about. Not listening to our sides of the story, the officer proceeded to write me and five others, ages ranging from 11-17 trespass warnings, stating that we are not allowed to be on the William and Mary campus for a year. The thing that sucks is that we had never been asked to leave by anyone before, no one at Phi Beta warned us and no signs were posted. How could she do that? How are we supposed to practice with such unnecessary consequences? It=s really frustrating.@ (interview Foster) Good areas to skate are few and far between in most cities. A good spot (place to skate) has curbs and ledges (preferably made out of marble), stairs with hand-rails and lots of flat, smooth concrete. Also, skaters prefer drop-offs from sidewalks, or "banks", which are inclinations which are used to separate uneven levels in parking garages, tennis courts or parking lots. These things that make up the composition of a good spot. Good spots are usually schools, hotels, college campuses or business plazas, which are all illegal to skate. They are illegal to skate for a few reasons. When a skateboarder practices with his friends, called a "session", they usually fly down stairs, and grind on curbs or handrails. Grinding requires jumping up onto a ledge, curb or handrail and scraping the metal wheel connectors, called "trucks" on the edge of the object, and then jumping down with a smooth landing. Well, this "grinding" scrapes the paint off of the curbs or handrails and chips expensive marble ledges. This is destruction of private property as well as trespassing and can result in lawsuits, fines, or being arrested. Many local skateboarders sympathize with Johnston Foster=s opinions on a lack of area to practice. Billy Sheeran commented on the subject, AThe nearest functional skateboard park is located in Hampton(Virginia), and many skateboarders are too young to drive.@ (interview Sheeran) Many reasons tie into the need for a local public skateboard areas. A local skatepark can help keep local skaters out of trouble, and keep local businesses and Police officers happy. Skateboarders have this problem of a lack of area to practice because of the many rules and regulations making it illegal to skateboard. Many different factors tie into the limited area to skate. One factor is the Virginia state law number 46.2-932. The law states ANo person shall play on a highway, other than on the sidewalks thereof, within a city or town or on any part of a highway outside the limits of a city or town designated by the Commonwealth Transportation Commissioner exclusively for vehicular travel@ (interview Davis). Many people are aware of the lack of areas for skateboarding, A Williamsburg police officer, Lt. Doug Davis, said that he is sympathetic to the skateboarders= problem and knows they have nowhere to go. (interview Davis) This problem is not just evident in Williamsburg. Michael Price, a principal of a middle school in California, often has to ask skateboarders to leave and says he would prefer to offer them an alternative site, but doesn=t know of any place public or private where they can go. (Rodgers 95) Quinn Taylor, a sixteen year old Williamsburg skateboarder said, AKids get discouraged when they get kicked out of a good spot. When kids get bored, they usually start to find other things to do, such as go tagging(vandalizing with spraypaint) or start using drugs.@ (interview Taylor). A skater in Leesburg, Va named Phillip Beam provided a similar response, AIf you keep getting kicked out, it becomes pointless to continue trying.@ AAnd most people just get idle. That=s when people get turned on to drugs and alcohol.@ "They do this to take up the hours they used to spend skating, and try to get the rush they used to feel." (Chandrasekaran 95). The City of Williamsburg Police Department reported that most of the calls they receive involving skateboarders are when skateboarders skate on privately owned property such as schools and businesses. These areas are the most desired by skateboarders because of their handrails, planters, steps and curbs. (Matsuda 95) A San Diego newspaper commented on the same subject, AMore often than not, skateboarders practice their sport illegally by sneaking onto school campuses, parking garages or other places with an abundance of hardscape@. (Rodgers 95) Enough complaints lead to city ordinances outlawing skateboarding. The cities dub these laws as Alaws to protect quality of life@. North Arlington recently adopted an ordinance banning skateboarding on public property. (Tedeschi 95) Another example is how Tampa, Florida recently banned skateboarding in it=s downtown area. (Lammers 95) Lt. Doug Davis offered some insight as to why business owners became be so upset with skateboarders invading their parking lots and sidewalks. Lt. Davis commented that the merchants are worried about business being driven away and liability problems that might occur if a pedestrian was injured by a careless speeding skateboarder. (interview Davis) He said AOlder people aren=t used to kids whizzing by on skateboards, they can=t move very fast and are afraid they might get hit. People will sue you for anything.@ (interview Davis) These problems support the local need for a public area for skateboarders to practice. Billy Sheeran, 16, said he would even be happy with a smooth parking lot where they could bring obstacles to skate. (interview Sheeran) In Indianapolis, the city council recently proposed a local skateboard park. The idea is greatly accepted by the inhabitants of the town, including Bryan Howard, 18, who said AThe Broad Ripple park idea is prime. It=s beautiful.@ AAs long as we can go into the park, we can lose Broad Ripple (a local business area where people skate).@ (O=Neal 95). Another local skateboarder in the same area said AWe=re just having fun with no real place to go.@ AIf they made a skate park, it would help. We hang out in Broad Ripple because it=s the only place to go.@ (O=Neal 95). David Kersey, a skater in Leesburg, Virginia said AWe don=t want to cause trouble, we=re just looking for a place to skate.@ (Chandrasekaran 95). The town officials in Leesburg are studying the feasibility of a skateboarding and rollerblading area as we speak. The idea of constructing a Williamsburg skateboarding area is very possible. Lt. Davis commented on the topic, AIt=s worth a try in my opinion. I don=t think anyone has ever approached the city council before.@ (interview Davis). A Williamsburg skater, Quinn Taylor, 16, said a local skateboard park would be great because it could provide teenagers with jobs and give kids a place to go, keeping them out of trouble. (interview Taylor) If the suggestion of a skateboarding area was brought up at a city council meeting and was approved, Taylor said that the local skaters should be able to provide input and would be glad to help raise money or help with construction. (interview Taylor) This would be useful to the success of the idea because when the city of Davis, California opened a skateboard park in 1992, the design was out of date, and because of this, the skateboard park is not used as often as was expected. (Matsuda 94). Even with current parks built in coordination with local skaters, one must contemplate whether or the kids will want to be limited to a small area. Skateboarding requires grace, dedication and inspiration. This may not be easily achieved with having to travel to a skatepark, or abiding by annoying rules that skate parks require (such as wearing protective gear). With proper supervision and help from the local skateboarders, at least the skaters all across the country will at least have one guaranteed option. Skateboarders Nationwide Restless; A problem that needs attention? English 101 Works Cited Chandrasekaran, Rajiv. ASkateboarders seek pavement.@ Washington Post 20 April 1995, sec. Weekly-Virginia: V1 Davis, Doug. Interview, October 24th, 1996 Foster, Johnston. Interview, October 23, 1996 Lammers, Dirk. ASkateboarders learn freestyle had price, Police say this week they=ll step up enforcement of the downtown skateboard ban.@ The Tampa Tribune 3 April 1995, sec. Peninsula: 1 Matsuda, Jeff. ASkateboard Sanctuary@ Sacramento Bee 28 April, 1994, sec. Neighbors: N1 O=Neal, Kevin. ACouncil bans skateboards, Broad Ripple business owners had complained.@ The Indianapolis News 18 July 1995, sec. News: A1. Rodgers, Terry. ASkateboarders practice craft under cloud.@ The San Diego Union-Tribune 28 December 1995, sec. Local: B-1. Sheeran, William. Interview. October 23, 1996 Taylor, Quinn. Interview, October 23, 1996 f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Skateboarders restless a problem that needs attention .TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ English 101 Skateboarders Nationwide Restless; A problem that needs attention? Skateboarding. A sport that only requires a board and four wheels. One needs only seventy to one hundred dollars to get one. It seems pretty simple, doesn't it? Well it's not, and for one important reason. On a typical day, a skateboarder usually gets up at about 10a.m., throws their board in the trunk of their car, puts a Bad Religion tape in the tape player, picks up several other skaters and sets off to find a good spot to aggressively push their bodies to doing the unthinkable. Defying gravity, stretching the laws of physics and subjecting themselves to much physical pain and discipline all in a day's work. Everyone takes turns trying new moves and cheering each other on, a sport with no pressure to do better than anyone else, there are no winners or losers. You skate until you are exhausted, and go to bed early only to wake up and repeat the process the next morning. Skateboarders are mostly straight-edge, which means that they do not use drugs, or alcohol. This is because skateboarding, and improving requires almost constant practice. This determination in only clouded by the effects of drugs. Anyway when one performs an intricate maneuver flawlessly, the rush is greater than any pot or coke. Unfortunately, this cannot happen when a skater is denied access to their sanctuaries, there favorite spot. A good example is given by Johnston foster- "Last summer, me and some friends were skating at Phi Beta Kappa Hall, the theater at the College of William and Mary. I pulled a phat 360 kickflip down the three steps out front. The session was hot, we were all on (landing most attempted tricks) and it wasn't too hot out side. We all sat down to rest and then heard sirens in the distance. We saw a blue and white William and Mary Police officers' car pull into the parking lot. We got ready to run, but then realized it was too late. The officer made generalizations and decided that we are the skateboarders that previous complaints had been made about. Not listening to our sides of the story, the officer proceeded to write me and five others, ages ranging from 11-17 trespass warnings, stating that we are not allowed to be on the William and Mary campus for a year. The thing that sucks is that we had never been asked to leave by anyone before, no one at Phi Beta warned us and no signs were posted. How could she do that? How are we supposed to practice with such unnecessary consequences? It=s really frustrating.@ (interview Foster) Good areas to skate are few and far between in most cities. A good spot (place to skate) has curbs and ledges (preferably made out of marble), stairs with hand-rails and lots of flat, smooth concrete. Also, skaters prefer drop-offs from sidewalks, or "banks", which are inclinations which are used to separate uneven levels in parking garages, tennis courts or parking lots. These things that make up the composition of a good spot. Good spots are usually schools, hotels, college campuses or business plazas, which are all illegal to skate. They are illegal to skate for a few reasons. When a skateboarder practices with his friends, called a "session", they usually fly down stairs, and grind on curbs or handrails. Grinding requires jumping up onto a ledge, curb or handrail and scraping the metal wheel connectors, called "trucks" on the edge of the object, and then jumping down with a smooth landing. Well, this "grinding" scrapes the paint off of the curbs or handrails and chips expensive marble ledges. This is destruction of private property as well as trespassing and can result in lawsuits, fines, or being arrested. Many local skateboarders sympathize with Johnston Foster=s opinions on a lack of area to practice. Billy Sheeran commented on the subject, AThe nearest functional skateboard park is located in Hampton(Virginia), and many skateboarders are too young to drive.@ (interview Sheeran) Many reasons tie into the need for a local public skateboard areas. A local skatepark can help keep local skaters out of trouble, and keep local businesses and Police officers happy. Skateboarders have this problem of a lack of area to practice because of the many rules and regulations making it illegal to skateboard. Many different factors tie into the limited area to skate. One factor is the Virginia state law number 46.2-932. The law states ANo person shall play on a highway, other than on the sidewalks thereof, within a city or town or on any part of a highway outside the limits of a city or town designated by the Commonwealth Transportation Commissioner exclusively for vehicular travel@ (interview Davis). Many people are aware of the lack of areas for skateboarding, A Williamsburg police officer, Lt. Doug Davis, said that he is sympathetic to the skateboarders= problem and knows they have nowhere to go. (interview Davis) This problem is not just evident in Williamsburg. Michael Price, a principal of a middle school in California, often has to ask skateboarders to leave and says he would prefer to offer them an alternative site, but doesn=t know of any place public or private where they can go. (Rodgers 95) Quinn Taylor, a sixteen year old Williamsburg skateboarder said, AKids get discouraged when they get kicked out of a good spot. When kids get bored, they usually start to find other things to do, such as go tagging(vandalizing with spraypaint) or start using drugs.@ (interview Taylor). A skater in Leesburg, Va named Phillip Beam provided a similar response, AIf you keep getting kicked out, it becomes pointless to continue trying.@ AAnd most people just get idle. That=s when people get turned on to drugs and alcohol.@ "They do this to take up the hours they used to spend skating, and try to get the rush they used to feel." (Chandrasekaran 95). The City of Williamsburg Police Department reported that most of the calls they receive involving skateboarders are when skateboarders skate on privately owned property such as schools and businesses. These areas are the most desired by skateboarders because of their handrails, planters, steps and curbs. (Matsuda 95) A San Diego newspaper commented on the same subject, AMore often than not, skateboarders practice their sport illegally by sneaking onto school campuses, parking garages or other places with an abundance of hardscape@. (Rodgers 95) Enough complaints lead to city ordinances outlawing skateboarding. The cities dub these laws as Alaws to protect quality of life@. North Arlington recently adopted an ordinance banning skateboarding on public property. (Tedeschi 95) Another example is how Tampa, Florida recently banned skateboarding in it=s downtown area. (Lammers 95) Lt. Doug Davis offered some insight as to why business owners became be so upset with skateboarders invading their parking lots and sidewalks. Lt. Davis commented that the merchants are worried about business being driven away and liability problems that might occur if a pedestrian was injured by a careless speeding skateboarder. (interview Davis) He said AOlder people aren=t used to kids whizzing by on skateboards, they can=t move very fast and are afraid they might get hit. People will sue you for anything.@ (interview Davis) These problems support the local need for a public area for skateboarders to practice. Billy Sheeran, 16, said he would even be happy with a smooth parking lot where they could bring obstacles to skate. (interview Sheeran) In Indianapolis, the city council recently proposed a local skateboard park. The idea is greatly accepted by the inhabitants of the town, including Bryan Howard, 18, who said AThe Broad Ripple park idea is prime. It=s beautiful.@ AAs long as we can go into the park, we can lose Broad Ripple (a local business area where people skate).@ (O=Neal 95). Another local skateboarder in the same area said AWe=re just having fun with no real place to go.@ AIf they made a skate park, it would help. We hang out in Broad Ripple because it=s the only place to go.@ (O=Neal 95). David Kersey, a skater in Leesburg, Virginia said AWe don=t want to cause trouble, we=re just looking for a place to skate.@ (Chandrasekaran 95). The town officials in Leesburg are studying the feasibility of a skateboarding and rollerblading area as we speak. The idea of constructing a Williamsburg skateboarding area is very possible. Lt. Davis commented on the topic, AIt=s worth a try in my opinion. I don=t think anyone has ever approached the city council before.@ (interview Davis). A Williamsburg skater, Quinn Taylor, 16, said a local skateboard park would be great because it could provide teenagers with jobs and give kids a place to go, keeping them out of trouble. (interview Taylor) If the suggestion of a skateboarding area was brought up at a city council meeting and was approved, Taylor said that the local skaters should be able to provide input and would be glad to help raise money or help with construction. (interview Taylor) This would be useful to the success of the idea because when the city of Davis, California opened a skateboard park in 1992, the design was out of date, and because of this, the skateboard park is not used as often as was expected. (Matsuda 94). Even with current parks built in coordination with local skaters, one must contemplate whether or the kids will want to be limited to a small area. Skateboarding requires grace, dedication and inspiration. This may not be easily achieved with having to travel to a skatepark, or abiding by annoying rules that skate parks require (such as wearing protective gear). With proper supervision and help from the local skateboarders, at least the skaters all across the country will at least have one guaranteed option. Skateboarders Nationwide Restless; A problem that needs attention? English 101 Works Cited Chandrasekaran, Rajiv. ASkateboarders seek pavement.@ Washington Post 20 April 1995, sec. Weekly-Virginia: V1 Davis, Doug. Interview, October 24th, 1996 Foster, Johnston. Interview, October 23, 1996 Lammers, Dirk. ASkateboarders learn freestyle had price, Police say this week they=ll step up enforcement of the downtown skateboard ban.@ The Tampa Tribune 3 April 1995, sec. Peninsula: 1 Matsuda, Jeff. ASkateboard Sanctuary@ Sacramento Bee 28 April, 1994, sec. Neighbors: N1 O=Neal, Kevin. ACouncil bans skateboards, Broad Ripple business owners had complained.@ The Indianapolis News 18 July 1995, sec. News: A1. Rodgers, Terry. ASkateboarders practice craft under cloud.@ The San Diego Union-Tribune 28 December 1995, sec. Local: B-1. Sheeran, William. Interview. October 23, 1996 Taylor, Quinn. Interview, October 23, 1996 English 101 Skateboarders Nationwide Restless; A problem that needs attention? Skateboarding. A sport that only requires a board and four wheels. One needs only seventy to one hundred dollars to get one. It seems pretty simple, doesn't it? Well it's not, and for one important reason. On a typical day, a skateboarder usually gets up at about 10a.m., throws their board in the trunk of their car, puts a Bad Religion tape in the tape player, picks up several other skaters and sets off to find a good spot to aggressively push their bodies to doing the unthinkable. Defying gravity, stretching the laws of physics and subjecting themselves to much physical pain and discipline all in a day's work. Everyone takes turns trying new moves and cheering each other on, a sport with no pressure to do better than anyone else, there are no winners or losers. You skate until you are exhausted, and go to bed early only to wake up and repeat the process the next morning. Skateboarders are mostly straight-edge, which means that they do not use drugs, or alcohol. This is because skateboarding, and improving requires almost constant practice. This determination in only clouded by the effects of drugs. Anyway when one performs an intricate maneuver flawlessly, the rush is greater than any pot or coke. Unfortunately, this cannot happen when a skater is denied access to their sanctuaries, there favorite spot. A good example is given by Johnston foster- "Last summer, me and some friends were skating at Phi Beta Kappa Hall, the theater at the College of William and Mary. I pulled a phat 360 kickflip down the three steps out front. The session was hot, we were all on (landing most attempted tricks) and it wasn't too hot out side. We all sat down to rest and then heard sirens in the distance. We saw a blue and white William and Mary Police officers' car pull into the parking lot. We got ready to run, but then realized it was too late. The officer made generalizations and decided that we are the skateboarders that previous complaints had been made about. Not listening to our sides of the story, the officer proceeded to write me and five others, ages ranging from 11-17 trespass warnings, stating that we are not allowed to be on the William and Mary campus for a year. The thing that sucks is that we had never been asked to leave by anyone before, no one at Phi Beta warned us and no signs were posted. How could she do that? How are we supposed to practice with such unnecessary consequences? It=s really frustrating.@ (interview Foster) Good areas to skate are few and far between in most cities. A good spot (place to skate) has curbs and ledges (preferably made out of marble), stairs with hand-rails and lots of flat, smooth concrete. Also, skaters prefer drop-offs from sidewalks, or "banks", which are inclinations which are used to separate uneven levels in parking garages, tennis courts or parking lots. These things that make up the composition of a good spot. Good spots are usually schools, hotels, college campuses or business plazas, which are all illegal to skate. They are illegal to skate for a few reasons. When a skateboarder practices with his friends, called a "session", they usually fly down stairs, and grind on curbs or handrails. Grinding requires jumping up onto a ledge, curb or handrail and scraping the metal wheel connectors, called "trucks" on the edge of the object, and then jumping down with a smooth landing. Well, this "grinding" scrapes the paint off of the curbs or handrails and chips expensive marble ledges. This is destruction of private property as well as trespassing and can result in lawsuits, fines, or being arrested. Many local skateboarders sympathize with Johnston Foster=s opinions on a lack of area to practice. Billy Sheeran commented on the subject, AThe nearest functional skateboard park is located in Hampton(Virginia), and many skateboarders are too young to drive.@ (interview Sheeran) Many reasons tie into the need for a local public skateboard areas. A local skatepark can help keep local skaters out of trouble, and keep local businesses and Police officers happy. Skateboarders have this problem of a lack of area to practice because of the many rules and regulations making it illegal to skateboard. Many different factors tie into the limited area to skate. One factor is the Virginia state law number 46.2-932. The law states ANo person shall play on a highway, other than on the sidewalks thereof, within a city or town or on any part of a highway outside the limits of a city or town designated by the Commonwealth Transportation Commissioner exclusively for vehicular travel@ (interview Davis). Many people are aware of the lack of areas for skateboarding, A Williamsburg police officer, Lt. Doug Davis, said that he is sympathetic to the skateboarders= problem and knows they have nowhere to go. (interview Davis) This problem is not just evident in Williamsburg. Michael Price, a principal of a middle school in California, often has to ask skateboarders to leave and says he would prefer to offer them an alternative site, but doesn=t know of any place public or private where they can go. (Rodgers 95) Quinn Taylor, a sixteen year old Williamsburg skateboarder said, AKids get discouraged when they get kicked out of a good spot. When kids get bored, they usually start to find other things to do, such as go tagging(vandalizing with spraypaint) or start using drugs.@ (interview Taylor). A skater in Leesburg, Va named Phillip Beam provided a similar response, AIf you keep getting kicked out, it becomes pointless to continue trying.@ AAnd most people just get idle. That=s when people get turned on to drugs and alcohol.@ "They do this to take up the hours they used to spend skating, and try to get the rush they used to feel." (Chandrasekaran 95). The City of Williamsburg Police Department reported that most of the calls they receive involving skateboarders are when skateboarders skate on privately owned property such as schools and businesses. These areas are the most desired by skateboarders because of their handrails, planters, steps and curbs. (Matsuda 95) A San Diego newspaper commented on the same subject, AMore often than not, skateboarders practice their sport illegally by sneaking onto school campuses, parking garages or other places with an abundance of hardscape@. (Rodgers 95) Enough complaints lead to city ordinances outlawing skateboarding. The cities dub these laws as Alaws to protect quality of life@. North Arlington recently adopted an ordinance banning skateboarding on public property. (Tedeschi 95) Another example is how Tampa, Florida recently banned skateboarding in it=s downtown area. (Lammers 95) Lt. Doug Davis offered some insight as to why business owners became be so upset with skateboarders invading their parking lots and sidewalks. Lt. Davis commented that the merchants are worried about business being driven away and liability problems that might occur if a pedestrian was injured by a careless speeding skateboarder. (interview Davis) He said AOlder people aren=t used to kids whizzing by on skateboards, they can=t move very fast and are afraid they might get hit. People will sue you for anything.@ (interview Davis) These problems support the local need for a public area for skateboarders to practice. Billy Sheeran, 16, said he would even be happy with a smooth parking lot where they could bring obstacles to skate. (interview Sheeran) In Indianapolis, the city council recently proposed a local skateboard park. The idea is greatly accepted by the inhabitants of the town, including Bryan Howard, 18, who said AThe Broad Ripple park idea is prime. It=s beautiful.@ AAs long as we can go into the park, we can lose Broad Ripple (a local business area where people skate).@ (O=Neal 95). Another local skateboarder in the same area said AWe=re just having fun with no real place to go.@ AIf they made a skate park, it would help. We hang out in Broad Ripple because it=s the only place to go.@ (O=Neal 95). David Kersey, a skater in Leesburg, Virginia said AWe don=t want to cause trouble, we=re just looking for a place to skate.@ (Chandrasekaran 95). The town officials in Leesburg are studying the feasibility of a skateboarding and rollerblading area as we speak. The idea of constructing a Williamsburg skateboarding area is very possible. Lt. Davis commented on the topic, AIt=s worth a try in my opinion. I don=t think anyone has ever approached the city council before.@ (interview Davis). A Williamsburg skater, Quinn Taylor, 16, said a local skateboard park would be great because it could provide teenagers with jobs and give kids a place to go, keeping them out of trouble. (interview Taylor) If the suggestion of a skateboarding area was brought up at a city council meeting and was approved, Taylor said that the local skaters should be able to provide input and would be glad to help raise money or help with construction. (interview Taylor) This would be useful to the success of the idea because when the city of Davis, California opened a skateboard park in 1992, the design was out of date, and because of this, the skateboard park is not used as often as was expected. (Matsuda 94). Even with current parks built in coordination with local skaters, one must contemplate whether or the kids will want to be limited to a small area. Skateboarding requires grace, dedication and inspiration. This may not be easily achieved with having to travel to a skatepark, or abiding by annoying rules that skate parks require (such as wearing protective gear). With proper supervision and help from the local skateboarders, at least the skaters all across the country will at least have one guaranteed option. Skateboarders Nationwide Restless; A problem that needs attention? English 101 Works Cited Chandrasekaran, Rajiv. ASkateboarders seek pavement.@ Washington Post 20 April 1995, sec. Weekly-Virginia: V1 Davis, Doug. Interview, October 24th, 1996 Foster, Johnston. Interview, October 23, 1996 Lammers, Dirk. ASkateboarders learn freestyle had price, Police say this week they=ll step up enforcement of the downtown skateboard ban.@ The Tampa Tribune 3 April 1995, sec. Peninsula: 1 Matsuda, Jeff. ASkateboard Sanctuary@ Sacramento Bee 28 April, 1994, sec. Neighbors: N1 O=Neal, Kevin. ACouncil bans skateboards, Broad Ripple business owners had complained.@ The Indianapolis News 18 July 1995, sec. News: A1. Rodgers, Terry. ASkateboarders practice craft under cloud.@ The San Diego Union-Tribune 28 December 1995, sec. Local: B-1. Sheeran, William. Interview. October 23, 1996 Taylor, Quinn. Interview, October 23, 1996 f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Skinhead Violence.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Skinhead Violence When you here the term Skinhead you probably think about young rebels wearing big black boots and Nazi symbols. These happen to be a few trademarks but across the world "Skinhead" refers to a diverse cult of young people. The origin of this cult goes back to the 60's in England, where menacing-looking, shaven-headed and tattooed youths in combat boots began to be seen in the streets. This cult has matured into a large collection of smaller gangs across 33 countries. The ages of members range from 13 to 25 in which half the members are hard-core activists and the rest supporters. This cult is tied into political and other violent and nonviolent groups, suck as the White Aryan Resistance, KKK, populist Party, British National Party, and several others. They get support from so called punks and football (soccer) hooligans known as "hools" to create riots and violence. From the creation of this cult until today it has supported violence, starting with beatings with boots and small weapons, evolving today into a terrorist like cult armed with deadly military weapons. Just like gangs in the U.S. skinheads also fight among each other. These fights are actually where most deaths by skinheads occur. And just like gangs skinheads have several different beliefs and methods of expression. These types of skinheads range from racist and violent to groups which are political but against racism and violence. The members come from a diverse range of lifestyles among broken homes, poor families, and alienated youngsters. They like the brotherhood of the gangs which they are missing from home. Being a skinhead is not a hobby for the weekends but a lifestyle which ids full of violence and hatred, wreaking havoc on their towns to express their beliefs. The Oklahoma City bombing brought home to American people that no country is immune from terrorism. Although thought to be tied into larger extremist groups, the actual bombing was the work of only a few people. Although they are not responsible for this bombing, the neo-nazi skinheads impose these type threats to their community. Nowhere do the neo-nazi skinheads by themselves constitute a mass-movement. The danger posed by these young racist thugs lies in their taste for violence. Skinheads across the globe have committed numerous murders, firebombing and other crimes of violence against innocent victims whom they deemed to be of the wrong race, religion, nationality, or sexual preference. Their goal whether in Los Angeles or Berlin is a racially pure society like that of the Third Reich. Contrary to their claim to represent the working class youth, skinheads come from widely varying economic backgrounds. Their roots often lie in domestic instability; a high portion of skinheads come from broken homes, or single parent families. Their gangs often serve as surrogate families for their members. Often youngsters join these groups because it is a place where they can be in an environment which supports their views and beliefs. Skinheads frequently live in communal homes and apartments. Those who live with their families often do so under tense conditions. In February of this year two brothers were accused of killing their mother, father, and younger brother. After the murders they fled to Michigan where they stayed with other skinheads. When captured they had nazi symbols and slogans tattooed all over their bodies. This illustrates the domestic discord which can arise from a family trying to turn their sons away from their hateful way of life. The nazi ideology and violent behavior of skinheads has caused fear and anguish in every community they have infested. There are ways to counter these gangs before or after they have infested a community. Germany along with other countries have found that if immediate action is not taken against these small groups then the effect is a dangerous escalation off skinhead gangs and violence. They found the best way to counter was through tough-minded law enforcement . The U.S. and other countries have made the decision to form a task force which had succeeded in convicting numerous skinheads. This type of tough law enforcement has also resulted in a decline of skinhead violence. The bottom line is that where ever skinheads operate, their desire for hate and violence makes them a devious and dangerous force in the community. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Skylab.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Skylab was America's first experimental space station. Some of Skylab's program objectives were: To prove that humans could live and work in space for extended periods, and to expand our knowledge of solar astronomy well beyond Earth-based observations. Skylab made much use of Saturn and Apollo equipment. Through the use of a "dry" third stage of the Saturn V rocket, the station was completely made as a workshop area before launch. Crews visited Skylab and returned to earth in the Apollo spacecraft. THE FLIGHTS Skylab's 1st unmanned mission May 14, 1973 The station was launched into orbit by a Saturn V booster. Almost immediately, problems developed due to vibrations during lift-off. A critical meteoroid shield ripped off taking one of the craft's two solar panels with it; a piece of the shield wrapped around the other panel keeping it from deploying. Skylab was maneuvered so its Apollo Telescope Mount (ATM) solar panels faced the Sun to provide as much electricity as possible. Because of the loss of the meteoroid shield, however, this positioning caused workshop temperatures to rise to 126 degrees F. The launch of Skylab 2 was postponed 10 days while NASA engineers developed procedures and trained the crew to make the workshop habitable. At the same time, engineers "rolled" Skylab to lower the temperature of the workshop. Skylab's 2nd manned mission - May 25th to June 22nd Astronauts; Charles Conrad, Jr. Paul J. Weitz Joseph P. Kerwin The crew meats with Skylab on the fifth orbit. After making many repairs, including deployment of parasol sunshade which cooled the inside temperatures to 75 degrees F, by June 4 the workshop was in full operation. In orbit the crew conducted solar Earth resources experiments, medical studies, and five student experiments; 404 orbits and 392 experiment hours were completed; three EVAs that totaled six hours, 20 minuets. Skylab's 3rd manned mission - July 28th to September 25th, 1973 Astronauts; Alan L. Bean Jack R. Lousma Owen K. Garriott Continued maintenance of the space station and extensive scientific and medical experiments. Completed 858 Earth orbits and 1,081 hours of solar and Earth experiments; three EVAs totaled 13 hours, 43 minuets. Skylab's 4th mission - November 16th, 1973 to February 8th 1974 Astronauts; Gerald P. Carr William R. Pogue Edward G. Gibson Last of the Skylab missions; included observation of the Comet Kohoutek among numerous experiments. Competed 1,214 Earth orbits and four EVAs totaling 22 hours, 13 minuets. Three -man crews occupied the Skylab workshop for a total of 171 days, 13 hours. It was the site of nearly 300 scientific and technical experiments. The empty Skylab spacecraft returned to Earth on July 11, 1979 scattering debris over the Indian Ocean and the sparsely settled region of Western Australia. The chances of being hit by Skylab's debris were 1 in 600 billion. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\slavery.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ It was 1865 when slavery ended, but I still look back at those days. I still remember being beaten by my master. There was nothing I could do because I was a slave all my life. Until slavery ended I was not free. All of us slaves were shy. We did not talk to each other. As a matter of fact, we only talked to people we knew. We barley had a chance to talk to others because we were hard at work. Because of the treatment and conditions of life, we were shy. As I said, these conditions of life were horrible. For example we were beaten and abused by our master because we dropped a glass full of water. I was hurt physically and mentally. Like I said we were abused and beaten by our master. We were not only beaten and abused, but we were also hard workers. We can do a lot in a day. I picked crops and cooked food for the master and his family. My day started at 5:00 a.m. and ended at 7:00 p.m. Just because we were hard workers and messed up at times doesn't mean we deserved the abuse. To sum things up we were shy, but hard workers. We survived the pain our masters unleashed upon us. Now we are free and can put those memories behind us. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Social intergration via Kinship.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Joey Rahimi February 20, 1997 Kinship as a Mechanism for Social Integrating It is often demonstrated in many anthropological studies that kinship acts as an important means for social integrating in a given society. But is it a fair generalization to say that kinship always functions as a mechanism for social integration? Kinship refers to the relationships established through marriage or descent groups that has been proven in some societies to lead to social integrating, or the process of interaction with other individuals. When researching the case studies we have explored, I found that two main events that utilized kinship for social integrating were death and marriage. In the Trobriand Islands of Papua New Guinea, in the northern Kiriwina Island, is where the Trobrianders, studied by Anette Wiener(1988), live. Death in the Trobrianders is a momentous event full of mourning and economical organization. The death of someone is a detailed example of how kinship can lead to social integrating. Wiener explains, " The message of death spreads rapidly to other villages where the dead person has relatives or friends," showing that death is not only uses kinship to integrate individuals, but entire villages too. The Trobrianders are a matrilineal society, meaning that all descent groups and kinship recognition are passed through the mother. They are organize into dalas, matrilineal descent groups and kumilas, one of four named matrilineal clans. During Wiener's fieldwork in the Trobriand Islands, she experienced the death of an old chief, Uwelasi. The preparation of the burial of a dead person is a complicated division of responsibilities. These roles of obligation are filled by those in Uwelasi's dala and his kumila. All these people must come together, from other villages sometimes, to help with he planning of this event. A large part of Uwelasi's death was the distribution of his possessions, this involved the people from his dala assisted by those from his kumila as toliuli (workers) and those who were related to him through marriage or patrilineally as toliyouwa. The toliuli and toliyouwa are united through the man's death because of their cooperation and common responsibilities they share towards Uwelasi as his kinsmen. Marriage, in the Trobrianders society is also a means of social integrating. Marriage can take place out side your village or inside your village, making integrating through kinship possible between individuals in a village and between two villages. When a young woman marries she must move to her husband's house. The parents of the wife bring food to the parents of the groom to make the make the arrangement official. First exchanges at marriage involve the two families and the offering of yams, beku, kuliya, etc.. These exchanges between respective matrilineal kinsmen is a cause of integrating brought about by possible future kinship. The roles of marriage and death are obviously signification the Trobriand Islander's society but perhaps death more so than marriage. In contrast with the society of the Yanomamo marriage appears to play a more prominent role than in the Trobrianders. The Yanomamo as studied by Napoleon Chagnon( ) located in the Venezuela, Brazilian border, use kinship through the fundamentals of marriage to develop social integrating. The Yanomano are a patrilineal society meaning that all descent groups and kinship recognition are passed through the father. Kinsmen have two names in a Patrilineal society, affines if they are marriage related and agnates if they are in your patrilineage, (father, brother, etc.). The Yanomamo practice reciprocal exogamy, a matrimonial idea of the trade of sisters between brothers for marriage. For example, a brother from village A who has a sister can trade his sister, as a wife, to another brother from village B for his sister, as a wife *diagram. This is balance trade of women between two individuals from separate villages; what relates this to kinship is the relationship of affines between marriage partners. The offering of women as wives, (affines) is also a means to established alliances between the neighboring villages. Although, these are examples of kinship as mechanism to bring about social integration in the society, this is not always the case. The Yanomano axe fight that took place in the village of Mishimishimaboweiteri ( pop. 270), clearly is an example of how kinship can create hostile intention between villages and individuals. The people involved in the axe fight initially were Simabimi from the host village and Moheshiwa a visitor. The argument began when Moheshiwa demanded plaintains from Simabimi, when she refused he beat her. Simabimi's brother Uuha, (agnate and also a host) confronted Moheshiwa accompanied by his younger brother, sister, and mother, (hosts) this is when the was fight established. Later as the fight escalated, Simabimi's husband, (host) became involved and so did the kinsmen of Moheshiwa. Chagnon comments,"When you get a village this big this sort of thing is bound to happen." The words 'visitor' and 'host' , implies an occurrence that happens in Yanomamo society, it is called fissioning. Fissioning is when the ties between affines grow greater than the ties between agnates. This is understandable considering the Yanomamo's idealistic form of marriage between cross cousins and their practice of polygamy. Due to this brothers (agnates), are always in direct competition for wives making their relationships sometimes awkward and hostile. Thus an affine (brother in law), who a man is not in competition with can certainly grow closer over time than one's own agnate. The examples of fissioning and the ax fight are in direct contradiction with kinship always being a means of integrating. These two events both involve or are linked to arguments and separation caused by kinsmen relationships. There are an infinite number of variables that cause integration among individuals, groups, villages, or society as a whole; and there can be no dispute that kinship is an important and frequent one of those variables. The inconsistency is assuming that kinship always functions as a mechanism for social integration in society. It is not possible to make generalizations like 'always', when discussing different societies. As we can see from the Yanomamo and Trobriand Islanders, societies can be very different in their culture, beliefs and traditions. There is only one safe generalization: All societies are different, you can always assume what works in one society may not always work in another. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Socialism.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Socialism Socialism is a type of economic system, a political movement, and a social theory. Socialism is based on the idea that governments should own and control a nation's resources rather than individuals. Socialism was first used to describe opposition to the free enterprise and market economies. The Industrial Revolution was the cause of many social problems. Long work hours, low pay, and poor working conditions caused Americans to first consider socialism. With government involvement in business, fairer treatment for all was feasible. Most countries today have socialist parties, many have socialist governments, and others who are in between have adopted socialist ideas. Communism and socialism are often associated together. Socialism is a stage of government usually leading up to communism. Government must first control businesses if it is to be considered a communist nation. Democratic socialists believe some government control is necessary to force people to become good citizens, but too much can lead to not enough freedoms. Socialism is seen as an efficient form of government. Capitalism, on the other hand, leads to unemployment, poverty, business cycles, and conflict between owners. Through socialism a nations wealth can be distributed more equally. Socialism is therefore based on cooperation rather than competition. Socialist believe that by creating an economic plan, farmers, manufacturers, workers, and government officials can properly adjust the production of goods to meet the needs of the people. Some socialist believe that government should go so far as to pay for education and Medicare. It is disagreement among socialists that has made for a wide spectrum of ideas, possibly making it more difficult for socialism to exist. Socialism and Karl Marx are two words that belong together. Marx was the most influential socialist of the 1800's. Marx expressed his ideas in the Communist Manifesto. He believed that all history is a series of struggles between the ruling and the working classes. Marx predicted that the ruling class would be overthrown and predicted the working class would set up a society based on common ownership. Socialism has never been very strong in the United States. Because of the opportunity for even the poor to become successful, socialism has never been able to grow. The strongest movement might have been during World War I. socialists tried to group, but because of problems at hand nothing was accomplished. After World War I a complete collapse of socialism occurred. Today the U.S. still practices a small amount of socialism. Government regulates and controls many private businesses, provides welfare, and strives to maintain a high employment rate. The government also uses its strong taxing, spending, and credit powers. Yet the United States has fewer socialist features than any other industrialized nation. Like many other people, I feel there are pro's and con's to socialism. Socialism would generally make for a more efficient government. If the U.S. had a socialist government, the deficit may not exist. People would all be working because the worker is the benefactor in a socialistic government. Our country would be one united work force controlled by the government. On the other hand, socialism would take away the biggest advantage America has; opportunity. The chance to strike it rich or create one's own business would not be possible. Fortunately, or government has taken only some socialistic ideas and has built a very successful government with happy Americans. and I am one of them. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Society v the Individual Weber v Freud.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The early twentieth century marked a period of rapid industrial and technological change in a society which began to redefine the roles of the individual and society. Max Weber and Sigmund Freud were two revolutionary thinkers of the time who recognized the importance of this relationship and tried to determine whether the power balance between society and the individual was tilted in one particular direction or the other. A world becoming an increasingly complex and restrictive forced these thinkers to ask themselves if society had indeed finally become a force too dynamic for the individual to manipulate; that if in fact it was society that had mastered the man. Although both thinkers provide radically different views of culture and society they are both essentially trying to answer the same question: does the individual control society or does society control the individual? The relevance of such an argument might first be debated, for one might first respond to this question with some doubt; surely we have control of ourselves, do we all not have control of our own faculties at this very moment? At this moment you are reading or being subjected to a reading of this paper, therefore if this indeed is not fufilling some immediate obvious desire it is accomplishing some sort of other goal. Likely this goal is to achieve an education but again we might ask ourselves why? Surely we all want to further our scholarly qualities and develop our minds but more likely this again has an underlying goal: to succeed in society. Society has shown us that in most cases it requires a good deal of education in order to succeed. Therefore we might entertain the question, is our presence here a product of our own desires or that of society's? The point of this reasoning is only to point out something we may not immediately recognize: regardless of what our own free will may dictate, we cannot help but be influenced by the values and morals of modern-day society. And it is because of this influence, the rewards which it offers and the punishments which it threatens, that the individual has found himself actually being manipulated by this larger body. Psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud expresses this point in his greatest achievement, Civilization and Its Discontents. Pointing out this conflict between the individual and society Freud concludes, ". . . the two processes of individual and of cultural development must stand in hostile opposition to each other and mutually dispute the ground." (Freud, 106) And then after describing the affects of civilization as a "drastic mutilization" of his desires, Freud goes on to conclude that ". . . the price we pay for our advance in civilization is a loss of happiness through the heightening of the sense of guilt." (Freud, 97) Again we see a sharp contrast as the desires of the individual and those of civilization. Now it seems that the term "free will" could be grossly misunderstood because everyone's will is in some way bound by society. Freud describes this overbearing consciousness of society as the "superego." In his studies, Freud has dissected the mind into three separate spheres, the "id", where instinct and desire resides; the "ego", which is ones conscious self; and the "superego", the origin of morals and of the conscience. Regardless of the physiological relevance of this schism of the mind, what Freud is trying to theorize is how the human being thinks. But the implications of this model are unique because Freud takes it a step further and applies it to society as well. "It can be asserted that community, too, evolves a super-ego under whose influence cultural development proceeds." (Freud, 106.) This super-ego of society is the basis for the conflict between society and the individual. What Freud is pointing is that society is controlled by a conscience, just as the individual is. "Another point of agreement between the cultural and individual super-ego is that the former, just like the latter, setes up strict ideal demands, disobedience to which is visited with 'fear of conscience'. (Freud, 107.) So if individual and cultural development are in opposition to eachother and each has its own conscience, where does that leave us? As civilization becomes more complicated and engrosses more of our life and through Freud we can see that indeed it is the society whose conscience comes first over the individual. Sociologist Max Weber used the relationship between society and the individual to explain the evolution of capitalism in terms of social development. A value system that was originated in Christian ascetic idealism, gradually found itself becoming embedded into Western society. This system of values, or rationalism, was based on concept of a "peculiar ethic", which Weber identified as "an economic spirit, or the ethos of an economic system." (Weber, 27.) It is this spirit that has embodied society and it is this spirit, rather than the will of the individual, that wields the weapon of capitalism. "Thus the capitalism of to-day, which has come to dominate economic life, educates and selects the economic subjects which it needs through a process of economic survival of the fittest." (Weber, 55.) Regardless of who accepts or rejects this economic system imposed by society, those who posess the instinct to survive will have no choice but to accept it. While this religiously-influenced economic system may have once been desirable, Weber now labels it an "iron cage." In essence, the conscience of society has superceded that of the individual. "The Puritan wanted to work in a calling; we are forced to do so. For when asceticism was carried out of monastic cells into everyday life, and began to dominate worldly morality, it did its part in building the tremendous cosmos of the modern economic order." (Weber, 181.) But what this "Protestant ethic" has really done is force the individual to embrace capitalism and the morals which surround it as a way of life. Society has dictated that in order to succeed we must be employed and we must earn as much money as possible, even if it does not coincide with our own happiness. So, in essence, Weber is portraying society in much the same way as Freud. Weber concludes that the Protestant Ethic that society has enveloped has succeeded today in reducing employment to strictly a means of acquisition. "Specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart; this nullity imagines that it has attained a level of civilization never before achieved" (Weber, 182.) Capitalism has been absorbed into the mainstream of society and accepted not only as a norm, but the only acceptable mode of acquisition. The question of the exact nature of the relationship between the individual and society exists even today. Regardless of whether we are talking about the individual's psyche or about his sociological development it appears that man may not have been all that difficult to master; that perhaps we can simplify our existence into terms of sexual urges or economic needs. Whether or not one subscribes to the complete hypotheses of Weber and Freud though, there is no doubt that both authors describe a society that exercises considerable control over the individual. Now as we approach the turn of the century and again experience another surge of technological development we might do good in asking ourselves how much power over our lives we have as individuals, and how much power has been subverted from us by a society which has its own "individual" needs. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\socio paper.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Julie Moore SOCI 1301 Paper Eclassroom Cootz Montgomery College Roles and Status in Society Don't Laugh At Me Lyrics I'm a little boy with glasses The one they call the geek A little girl who never smiles 'Cause I've got braces on my teeth And I know how it feels To cry myself to sleep I'm that kid on every playground Who's always chosen last A single teenage mother Tryin' to overcome my past You don't have to be my friend But is it too much to ask Don't laugh at me Don't call me names Don't get your pleasure from my pain In God's eyes we're all the same Someday we'll all have perfect wings Don't laugh at me I'm the cripple on the corner You've passed me on the street And I wouldn't be out here beggin' If I had enough to eat And don't think I don't notice That our eyes never meet I lost my wife and little boy when Someone cross that yellow line The day we laid them in the ground Is the day I lost my mind And right now I'm down to holdin' This little cardboard sign...so Don't laugh at me Don't call me names Don't get your pleasure from my pain In God's eyes we're all the same Someday we'll all have perfect wings Don't laugh at me I'm fat, I'm thin, I'm short, I'm tall I'm deaf, I'm blind, hey, aren't we all Don't laugh at me Don't call me names Don't get your pleasure from my pain In God's eyes we're all the same Someday we'll all have perfect wings Don't laugh at me Author: Steve Seskin and Allen Shamblin Performed by: Mark Wills Print Publisher: Hal Leonard Corporation Date Published: 1999 The title of the song I chose for this assignment is Don't Laugh At Me by Mark Wills. This paper is going to be about how people view each other and how we as people of a community assign roles and statuses to other people. I will also address the way in which people judge others and treat others based on these assigned roles and statuses. The lyrics of the song I have chosen to illustrate this idea discuss groups of people with certain problems and how the society views their problem. The solution offered to this problem is having an open mind and realizing God created each of us with a purpose and He views each of us as perfect. A solution would also be having compassion for others instead of constantly thinking of ourselves and how "awful" our lives tend to seem. The first time I heard this song I was on my way back from my 15 year old cousins adoption ceremony where she handed over custody of her daughter to a couple she had chosen to raise her daughter. The verse of the song dealing with "a teenage single mother trying to overcome her past" really touched my heart at the time. I knew of the problems my cousin had come across in her church, her school, and her neighborhood when everyone found out about her unexpected pregnancy. She was looked at as an outcast and parents didn't want their children hanging around with her. Honestly, I can completely understand this. However, she could have used the support and encouragement of those in her school, friendship circle, and church. Instead, she encountered problems at school, home, work, church, and neighborhood. Her status in her environment had changed from being admired and looked up to by many of her peers to being shunned and talked about by her peers. I knew, as she returned to her hometown she would have to face these people again and she would be going through some really hard times. Other lyrics in the song deal with the way children treat other children. I feel children can be harsher than adults sometimes because they are so incredibly honest and do not hold back any feelings they have. Even if these feelings will hurt someone else's feelings. Children also tend to be very quick to judge people, instead of taking the time to actually analyze the situation; they tend to make comments before thinking. This is the case of the lyrics dealing with "the little boy with glasses, the one they call a geek, a little girl who never smiles 'cause I've got braces on my teeth." These two examples deal with being different. It is hard as a child to be different, but these circumstances are unavoidable. Many times people or children who look different are cast out of a certain group. Other instances of children being cruel within the lyrics are, "I'm that kid on every playground who's always chosen last." The child is given a status of not being good at a certain sport or game. These children, even though they are not very good, still want to be included in the games their peers are playing. These children are placed on a lower status when it comes to playing games and sports. I feel this is done all over the world, and in all cultures. Humans naturally want to succeed and do well at whatever they attempt. Many times we don't know the background on people before we judge them. The lyrics dealing with this aspect of stereotyping say, "I lost my wife and little boy when someone crossed that yellow line, the day I laid them in the ground is the day I lost my mind, and right now I'm down to holdin this little cardboard sign." Many times we have driven by people holding signs on the side of the road and made comments on why they are there. We laugh and in our minds give them a lower status than ourselves. They are seen as very low on the social scale. Sometimes we should look at it with the idea they actually "sucked" up their pride and decided to stand on a street corner. We as people just driving by have no idea what their background is, or what circumstances these people are having to overcome. Most of them didn't ask to be put in the situation they are in, however, some of them aren't doing anything to get them out of the situation. The song lyrics also hint at the idea we all have our faults, they are just in different areas of our life. Some of these faults we are able to keep hidden, others are shown on a daily basis to everyone we come in contact with. Many of these faults we have are uncontrollable. Physical deformities are hard to hide most of the time. Someone can be discriminated with or assigned a lesser or greater status based on height, weight, physical deformity, or situation. Solutions to this discrimination are being more aware of feelings of others and having more compassion for people with problems. Many times the laughing and joking about someone else's deformities or hard times are just to build up your own personal feelings of yourself. The lyrics mention "In God's eyes we're all the same. Someday we'll all have perfect wings." This is a solution the author offers to the problem. If we all realize how God created us and sees each of us as perfect and created in His image. This would make each of us more aware of feelings and possibly not be so judgmental of each other. My feelings about the song are stronger in favor of the song than when I started this paper. I feel the song portrays the idea we all need to be more consciously aware of other people's feelings. The song has a little sentimental value to me. I was in a somewhat emotional state the first time I heard the song. Many times people do not ask to be placed in the situations they are placed in. However, they have to deal with it anyway. Looking at each situation explained within the lyrics of the song I have chosen has made me more aware of prejudging people. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\sociolgy.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Sociology The Comparative Method Sociologists have embraced what is known as the comparative method as the most efficient way to expose taken-for-granted 'truths' or laws that people have adopted. But what is this comparative method and how does it work? Are there any advantages/disadvantages to exposing these false 'truths'. What forms or variations of the comparative method exist? In the pages to follow I will attempt to give you some insight and understanding of what the comparative method is, and how it works. The comparative method, simply put, is the process of comparing two things (in our case societies, or the people that make up society) and seeing if the result of the comparison shows a difference between the two. The comparative method attempts to dereify (the process of exposing misinterpreted norms. Norms that society consider natural and inevitable characteristics of human existence) reified (the human created norms or 'truths') beliefs. Obviously there are various ways in which a nomi (a labeled, sometime constructed, norm or truth) can be exposed. Which form of the comparative method should one use however? The answer, whichever one applies to the 'truth' in question. For example, you certainly would not do a cross-gender form of comparison if you wished to expose whether or not homosexuality has always been feared and looked down upon by most people throughout history. No, rather you would perform a historical comparison of two or more different societies to see if these beliefs always existed, or, whether or not this is a newly constructed belief. Let's look at little more closely at the above mentioned historical comparison and see how the comparative method works with a specific example. There is no question that in today's western society there is a lot of fear and trepidation towards people who are labeled 'homosexual'. The question we will attempt to answer however is whether or not it has always been like this and is this a universal truth. In ancient Greek societies people had a very different opinion of men that slept with men. For example, it was considered quite an honor for a family with a young boy under the age of 10, to be given the privilege on an older man of high society taking their son into his house. The young boy would go and live with this older man. The older man would have sex with the young boy on a regular basis until the boy developed facial hair. It was not until then that the boy was considered a man. Society thought that an older mans, of great reputation, semen would help the boy develop into a fine young man. Once the boy developed the facial hair, the sex between the two would stop. The older man's job was finished. Obviously this would be considered an atrocious and disgusting act these days. The older man in this case would certainly go to jail for the 'crimes' that he had committed. However, in Ancient Greece this was not only considered perfectly normal, but as I already stated, it was an honor and a gift that not every boy was 'lucky' enough to be given. Therefore, we can conclude from this comparison that homophobia, as we know it, is not a natural truth, nor is it a universal belief. Rather it is a socially constructed belief that many people have taken for granted as an inevitable part of human existence. It is important at this point to clarify something however. It is said that the role of the sociologist is a descriptive one as opposed to a prescriptive one. That is to say that the sociologist should describe the various practices, customs and structures that exist in various societies rather than suggest to people which one is actually the correct belief or the 'real' truth. Cross-gender comparisons is another commonly used comparison used to reveal socially constructed truths. In Carol Gilligan's book 'In a different voice' we find a fine example of a cross-gender comparison. She states that most people believe that the majority of people, both men and women, view morale issues in the same way. However, through empirical data collection, Carol Gilligan concludes that this is not most often the case. Rather, she states that men tend to approach moral issues quite differently than women. Where as men view morale issues with a "don't interfere with my rights" view, women focus more on the "responsibility" end of the morale involved. Thus we can conclude, thanks to the comparative method, that the constructed truth that all people view morale issues the same is not a correct one. Another quick example of a cross-gender comparison would be that of the house-wife. Still today most men view the role of the married woman as one that involves being a house-wife, in the traditional sense of the term. However, women today certainly would not view themselves in the same manner. The data collected from a comparison such as this could help to dereify this socially constructed truth. Cross-class comparisons is also a comparison commonly used when attempting to expose constructed truths between two classes. i.e. lower-class, upper-class, middle-class. For an example I refer to my lecture notes. Our professor gave us a fine example of a cross-class comparison involving his own life. He was from a middle-class family and attended a public school where he got involved with various kids from the middle and lower class. He grew up in this type of environment and accepted it as the his life as the way society was. To him, there was not another lifestyle. This was life. Several events occurred and because of these events our professor was moved, by his parents, to a private school. This private school and the 'new' society that accompanied it resulted in a form of culture shock for him. All of a sudden he was placed in a new world, a world that he never even knew existed. As you can see, our professor socially constructed the view that society was like the one that he lived in when he went to his public school, hung around with middle and lower-class friends, and did what middle and lower-class kids did. When he was afforded the chance to compare that type of lifestyle to one of the upper-class he dereified his constructed view and his eyes opened to a new reality and a new view of the way society was. Another major comparative form is that of the cross-generational. This one is fairly straight forward. The name basically says it all. In fact, it's much like the historical comparison method but on a much smaller scale. I believe that in order for it to be termed cross-generational, the generations that are being analyzed have to be living at the same time. Otherwise it becomes a historical comparison. Karen Anderson gives an example of a cross-generational comparison in her book Sociology : A Critical Introduction (1996, pg. 12). "Canadians pride themselves on their tolerance and lack of prejudice. But we do not need to look very far into our history to find examples of taken-for-granted understandings that have led to discriminatory and prejudicial treatment. Some segments of the population have been classified as undesirable and thus as unwanted or undeserving outsiders..." Anderson is pointing out that the constructed view in Canada is that we pride ourselves on the fact that we have very little prejudice in Canada. She goes on to point out that this is not at all the case. She gives the example of Canada's history of immigration. She discusses the fact that a lot of Chinese people were allowed to immigrate to Canada, much to the dismay of current residents and already established European immigrants, during the time when the transcontinental railroad was being built. Sir John A. Macdonald was the Prime Minister at this time and defended his reputation by telling the people of Canada, who were very disturbed by his actions, that the Chinese immigrants would live in Western Canada just temporarily. To reassure the people further Macdonald said "...no fear of a permanent degradation of the country by a mongrel race". This would be considered horrific these days. Most Canadians would not even realize that their country was very closed to the idea of the immigration of certain types of people. The social idea that Canada is, and always have been, a very tolerant country is exposed as a false, constructed truth through this cross-generational comparison. Finally we come to the last major comparative form. That of the cross-cultural. Cross-cultural comparison consists of comparing two societies or cultures in an attempt to reveal and expose some socially constructed 'truths' in order to prove that they are not universal but rather they are relative to each society. There are literally thousands of differences between almost every culture that people would be surely shocked to learn of. For the next example I will show how the cross-cultural comparative method dereifies some of the constructed so-called universal-truths that people in our society may have. India differs in it's customs considerably from that of Canada or Northern America. For example, in Western Civilization families sit together when they attend church, in India this is not acceptable at all. Men and women must sit on opposite sides of the church. Men and women in India for the most part will not eat together, whereas in Western civilization it is a common practice and is actually looked upon as a good time for a little family bonding. In India it is considered rude to eat with both hands at the table. The right had is solely used for eating and the left for drinking. Obviously we have a completely different practice in Western society. Another shock that a Westerner might face if he/she were to travel to India would be the fact that it is still considered a major social impropriety for a man to even touch a woman in public. In North America public displays of affection can been seen everywhere. . (Stott, John. Down To Earth. 1980. Pg. 12-15) These are all prime examples of Western universal truths that are exposed when compared to another culture. One of the major benefits for exposing these truths through the comparative method is the fact that dereifying accepted truths leads to a decrease in ethnocentrism. Ethnocentrism is the act of interpreting all societies through one's own cultural lenses and believing that there idea of truths are the only correct ones. This could lead to the imposing of one's own beliefs onto other societies. In other words, comparing, exposing, and dereifying helps educate and eliminate ignorance when it comes to social 'truths'. However, there is a danger to exposing social constructs. It could lead to one taking on the perceptive of a radical relativist (all truths are correct) or a nihilistic view (the belief that all truths are relative and therefore there are no truths). Obviously this is a very negative, and possibly a destructive, way of thinking. As you can see, the comparative method is an essential part of a sociologists practice. Without it there would be a lot of confusion and misunderstanding between people and societies. Hopefully I have shown by example the various forms of the comparative method and how each of them applies to society and how they attempt to expose falsities. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\sociology Corporate Crime.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Corporate Crime 'Now as through this world I ramble, I see lots of funny men, Some rob you with a six gun, And some with a fountain pen.' (Woody Guthrie, 'Pretty Boy Floyd') 'The real criminals in this society are not all the people who populate the prisons across the state, but those people who have stolen the wealth of the world from the people.' (Angela Davis) 'What can be done to reduce significantly the volume of killing, maiming and economic deprivation caused by corporate crime? One brief terse answer is **** all!' (Box, 'Power, Crime and Mystification') Marxist approaches to Law For Marxists, the state, which makes the law, represents (directly or indirectly) the interests of the ruling class. Law is a coercive instrument of the state, used to maintain the existing social order. While some laws protect us all they do not protect us all equally. 'Criminal laws against murder, rape, robbery and assault do protect us all but they do not protect the less powerful from being killed, sexually exploited, deprived of their property, or physically and psychologically damaged through the greed, apathy, negligence, indifference and the unaccountability of the relatively more powerful.' (Thio, 1978) Corporate crime is a real killer: Neglect of safety equipment - Piper Alpha, Herald of Free Enterprise. Inadequate testing - Ford Pinto, Low dose contraceptive pills. Avoidable industrial disease/accidents. Corporate crime injures 1. Thalidomide - 8000 - Chemie Grunenthal falsified test data and concealed the truth about side effects. 2. Opren? Corporate crime robs 1. General Electric - price fixing $50 million. 2. Hoffman La Roche - Valium - NHS overcharging £25 million. 3. Maxwell - pension fund. Overall, the economic cost of corporate crime is greater than any other form of crime. Additionally, there is the social cost, corporate crime often involves a betrayal of trust. Pearce (1976) 'Crimes of the powerful' Examines the relationship between the ruling class and crime; argues that the ruling class often uses criminals; for example. Ford and GM both used strikebreakers. Control of Unions. Chambliss (1978) 'On the take: From petty crooks to Presidents' Suggests that the ruling class is an integral part of the criminal world. Study of Seattle, 1962-1972. Crime occurs in all social strata - differences are in type of crime committed and in level of law enforcement. Leading crime syndicate - establishment figures; businessmen, politics, law enforcement. Criminals belong to the elite. Ruling elite benefits from crime - money laundered finances legitimate business. Ruling elite crime is not penalised - blind eye and police corruption. Marxists also refer to laws which are not passed (or even discussed). Acts that are not defined as crimes - for example, laws on wealth and poverty, hunger, etc. 'Isn't it time to raise serious questions about the assumptions underlying the definitions of the field of criminology, when a man who steals a paltry sum can be called a criminal while agents of the state can, with impunity, legally reward men who destroy food so that price levels can be maintained whilst a sizeable proportion of the population suffers from malnutrition.' (H and J Schwendinger, 1975) 'Those who are well off commit acts that are not defined as crimes and yet are as harmful or more so than the crimes people fear.' (Lea and Young, 1984) Marxists argue that ideological hegemony (ruling class control of beliefs) ensures that these ideas are not even discussed, or are regarded as nonsensical. Crime: Who gets caught? Crime is widespread but official statistics give the impression that crime is largely a working class phenomenon. This is refuted by self-report studies. Middle class crime is more expensive. Numerous examples, Conklin (1977) robbery in US cost $3-4 billion; White collar crime $40 billion. Prosecution of the elite is rare, but occasional prosecution maintains the myth of equality before the law - 'justice is blind'. The small number of elite prosecutions creates the impression that elite crime is minimal. Law enforcement serves to protect the capitalist system: Crime is presented as an individual problem - the system itself is not seen as a cause of deviance. Individuals rather than institutions and structural arrangements are to 'blame' for crime. By defining criminals as misfits it provides a justification for imprisonment; the nasty products of capitalism are thereby kept hidden and this avoids questioning the system that produces such behaviour, for example, rapists and muggers. Additionally, such criminals can become scapegoats for the frustrations of the working class. Hall et al, 'Policing the Crisis' suggests that moral panics (muggers, football hooligans, poll tax rioters) occur as diversions during the crises of capitalism and they justify increases in social control measures. Box, 'Power, Crime and Mystification' suggests that the social control function of the police is of special importance. The police act as a 'front line' mechanism of oppression. In times of political crises, for example, the miner's strike, the urban riots of 1981, the police are given greater freedom to act against subordinate groups. 'Much police behaviour seems most easily explained when one considers that whenever there is a conflict of interests between the dominant classes in a society and less powerful groups, the police protect the interests of the former and regulate the behaviour of the latter.' (Galliher, 1971) Stephen Box - Marxist analysis In traditional Marxist analysis, crime is created by the social structure. In capitalist society, the desire for profit leads to greed and competition and breeds aggression. Crime is seen as rational behaviour, a response to the nature of capitalist society. The type of response merely varies by class location, for example, working class mugging, stealing, prostitution; middle class business fraud. Below is a taster of a Marxist analysis of crime drawn from Stephen Box, 'Power, Crime and Mystification': Some sociologists have... come to the conclusion that criminal law categories are ideological constructs... designed to criminalise only some behaviours, usually those committed by the relatively powerless, and to exclude others, usually those frequently committed by the powerful against subordinates. Criminal law categories are resources, tools, instruments, designed and then used to criminalise, demoralise... and sometimes eliminate those problem populations perceived by the powerful to be potentially or actually threatening the existing distribution of power, wealth or privilege. Not every criminal law represents the interests of the ruling class. Some laws are passed purely as symbolic victories which the dominant class grants to inferior interest groups, basically to keep them quiet; once passed they need never be efficiently or systematically enforced. Occasionally, the ruling class is forced into tactical retreat by organised subordinate groups... but these victories are short lived. Powerful groups have ways and means of clawing back the spoils of tactical defeats. In the last instance, definitions of crime reflect the interests of those groups who comprise the ruling class. Some criminal laws are in all our interests. None of us wants to be murdered... none of us wants our property stolen... in that sense criminal law against murder, for example, is in all our interests. But this is not all the truth... some groups of people benefit more than others from these laws. It is not that they are less likely to be murdered or raped, for example, although the best evidence shows this to be true - but that in the criminal law, definitions of murder, rape, theft and other serious crimes are so constructed as to exclude many similar acts, and these are just the acts likely to be committed more frequently by powerful individuals. The criminal law defines only some types of avoidable killing as murder; it excludes, for example, deaths resulting from acts of negligence, such as employers failure to maintain safe working conditions; or deaths which result from governmental agencies giving environmental health risks a low priority; or deaths resulting from drug manufacturers failure to conduct adequate research; or deaths from a dangerous drug that was approved by health authorities on the strength of a bribe; or deaths resulting from car manufacturers refusing to recall defective vehicles because they calculate that the costs of meeting civil damages will be less. We are encouraged to see murder as a particular act involving a very limited range of stereotypical actors, instruments, situations and motives. Other types of avoidable killing are either defined as a less serious crime, or as matters more appropriate for civil proceedings... it may be just a strange coincidence that the social characteristics of those persons more likely to commit these types of avoidable killings differs considerably to those possessed by individuals more likely to commit killings legally defined as murder. The criminal law sees only some types of property deprivation as robbery or theft, it excludes, for example, manufacturer's malpractices or advertiser's misrepresentation; it excludes shareholders losing money because managers behaved in ways that benefited only themselves; it excludes the extra tax citizens have to pay because the wealthy are able to avoid tax, or because drug companies overcharge the NHS. If an employee's hand slips into the boss's pocket and removes any spare cash, that is theft; if the boss puts his hand into the employee's pockets and takes their spare cash by reducing wages even below the legal minimum, that is the labour market operating reasonably. The criminal law includes only one type of non-consensual sexual act as rape. It excludes sexual intercourse between husband and wife (not now though)... It excludes sexual acts achieved by fraud, deceit or misrepresentation. It excludes men who use economic or social power rather than force. The outcome is that men who have few resources other than physical ones are more likely to commit legally defined rape. Thus criminal laws against murder, rape, robbery and assault do protect us all but they do not protect us all equally. They do not protect the less powerful from being killed, sexually exploited, deprived of what little liberty they possess, or being physically or psychologically damaged through the greed, apathy, negligence and unaccountability of the relatively more powerful. Another example of the work of Box is: Recession Crime and Punishment (1987) Is there a link between recession and crime, including corporate crime? There has always been less research on corporate crime: Scarce funding. Ideological bias. Access. Most studies focus on one dramatic example: Pinto car scandal (Dowie,1977) Ford Motor Co 500-900 deaths. Scotia Coal Co (Caudill,1977) 26 deaths. Electrical Industries Price fixing (Geis,1967) 29 leading companies. New Right Realism Introduction Realist criminologies are so called because of their emphasis on treating crime as a real and serious social problem that requires practical solutions, rather than simply a sociological problem that requires understanding. There is a commitment in this approach to pragmatic, policy-orientated research. These approaches came about in response to an increased concern over crime during the 1980's, and also to a considerable rise in recorded crime. The 'law and order'debate became - and continues to be - (tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime) a central electoral issue. In the mid 70's in the USA,Wilson (1975) 'Thinking about Crime', claimed that crime resulted from selfish and wicked people, and that the criminal justice system had gone 'soft' on criminals. Wilson (Reagan's adviser on crime) advocated the strengthening of penalties for crime. By the 1990's, the USA had the highest rate of imprisonment in the world. Much of the right realist approach comes across like common sense, yet it also draws on liberal ideas of freedom, choice (criminals chose crime), and responsibility. There are also functionalist ideas concerning communities and social order, at present reflected in the Labour Party debate concerning communitarianism. Key areas of analysis 1. Poverty The link between crime and poverty is questioned, specifically the idea that poverty causes crime. Wilson, in fact argues that affluence and prosperity may well be more linked to rising crime. It was from the early 1960's, a period that saw the longest sustained period of prosperity since World War II that crime in the USA started to soar. It rose at a faster rate and to higher levels than at any time since the 1930's. 'It all began in about 1963. That was the year, to over-dramatise a bit, that a decade began to fall apart.' (Wilson, 1975) 2. Culture It is suggested that there has been a decline in 'civility' and respect for authority in communities that are characterised by anomie and cultural dis-organisation. Special mention is made of 'fatherless families' and its detrimental effect on young men denied an appropriate role model. There is a denial of any direct association between unemployment and crime. According to Dennis and Erdos (1992): 'High unemployment was associated with low criminality in the 1930's. Low unemployment was associated with growing criminality in the 1960's. Unemployment between these extremes was associated with high and rapidly increasing crime in the mid-1980's. In the early 1990's, there was high unemployment and high crime rates.' Given the lack of correlation between unemployment and crime, which could have formed the basis for a structural explanation of crime, the new right turns to a cultural explanation. They see a decline in 'family values', in particular a lack of discipline both inside and outside the home. Murray (1990), on the other hand, blames the welfare state. He argues that the welfare state has sapped moral fibre and eroded Christian ethics thus threatening family values. The welfare state, it is argued, has created a 'dependency culture', which results in the weakening of the work ethic. The result is a social sickness, which reduces the strength of those moral values and mechanisms of social control so essential for preventing criminal behaviour. 3. Opportunity and choice Exclusive blame is not placed on cultural factors outside of the control of individuals, such a view would be cultural determinism, and would remove, at least partially the notion of 'blame' and individual responsibility. Given their commitment to the idea that persons exercise choice and freedom of action it follows that they see an important aspect of deviant and criminal behaviour as freely chosen. People do not have to be deviant. A similar emphasis on choice can be seen in the work of Clarke and Mayhew (1980) at the Home Office. Their concern is the practical question of how to control crime - hence the term Control Theory. The question, why do people commit crime? is reversed and instead they ask the question, why don't people commit crime?Their answer is because of social control and deterrents. Two factors in particular are identified, 'target hardening' and 'surveillance'. Although not actually right realists themselves, Clarke and Mayhew do lend support to the belief that crime and delinquency is a result of choice. Crime Statistics Contemporary patterns Reiner (1996) points to a number of clear patterns: Between the wars the level of crime remained relatively constant. Recorded crime has increased rapidly since 1950. The 1994 and 1995 crime statistics illustrate a 6% fall in recorded crime. The uses of statistics: Comparison - reveal trends. Police efficiency - clear up rate. Identify problem areas - resource allocation. Public information - for example, high crime areas. To explain crime - causation (positivism). However, the general view is that they reveal more about the process of reporting and recording than about the extent of criminal activity. It is generally agreed that crime statistics are seriously flawed and that there is a dark figure of hidden crime. Factors that distort crime statistics 1. The public Most crime is reported by the public 90%. The BCS found that the public: Don't report petty crime. Report for personal advantage - insurance. Don't report what they see as private matters - domestics. Don't report friends/family. Don't report crime that could shame/frighten them. Don't report crimes that are unknown - don't realise. Lea and Young 'Losing the fight' - some communities won't report crime. Lack of confidence in police. 2. Visibility Crimes without victims - drug dealing; prostitution. White- collar crime - 'fiddles', 'perks' - for example, Ditton. Customers/people unaware they are victims. Corporate crime - often dealt with by other state agencies. Don't want to get 'involved'. In some communities, 'informal' policing might be used. Some crimes more likely to be reported - rape, assault over-represented in official figures? Police crime - Box (1995) beating up suspects, fabricating evidence, etc. 3. Police The Police decide: Response - more likely to respond to some groups - PSI survey of the met. Found more likely to respond to ethnic minorities! Categories - police decide what category a crime fits. Dispersal - police decide which areas to police. Differential enforcement - some offences rather than others. Discretion - who to stop. Culture - promotion seeking - arrests are important. 4. Courts 80% of offenders plead guilty - possibility of plea bargaining - negotiating Justice, Robertson (1977). Majority who appear in court are working class. 5. Media and politics Existence of 'moral entrepreneurs'. Marxists argue that law is used to repress working class. Police concentrate on working class areas. Media amplifies deviance and creates moral panics. Conclusion The statistics are so inaccurate that we don't know if a recorded rise in crime is actually a rise, or just an increase in convictions. Similarly, with a fall in the crime rate, is it an actual fall or just the result of fewer convictions? Only about 30% of recorded crime is actually 'solved'. Therefore, we can't tell to what extent convicted criminals resemble un-convicted ones. Attempts to improve the reliability of statistics Self-report studies Box, Deviance, Reality and Society claimed that: The figures are not valid - people lie. The offences are trivial and of little relevance. They are not representative - deals with delinquency rather than crime. Victim surveys First used in USA with staggering results. BCS started in 1981. Most recent = 1998. A large gap between crime committed and that recorded by police. Most crime committed against young males. 1 f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\SOCIOLOGY ESSAY.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Everyone is unique. Many people have certain characteristics that are unique and special to ones self. Life's experiences help to mold a person into who they are. Whatever they have gone through will help to shape one into whom they are. Whatever the experience, life is full of little lessons. Life has these lessons so that we can learn from them. You do not even realize it, but you learn so much in your life. You are learning and may not even realize that you are learning. Right from the day you are born, you begin to learn. You learn to cry as a baby to get food and attention because you can not talk for yourself at this point. As a toddler you learn that if you are not kind and sharing to other children you will not make many friends. Other children will not like to play with you and will not want to share with you. As a child you learn characteristics such as politeness and friendliness help you to make healthy friendships with others your age. When one is in adolescents they learn to make decisions on their own to Benin fit oneself. They begin feelings of great independence and trust. There for they need to make actions and decisions on their own. As an adult you make life decisions about work, your family, and yourself. You need to think ahead and plan out the best routes to take. This is all independent and may be stressful but is a must in life. Of course everyone is not perfect. Sometimes people make decisions that are not positive. Mistakes do happen but when one makes a mistake the best thing to do is learn from their mistake. The whole idea is to learn from life' experiences .learn specific ways to deal with life. Sometimes you need to make the same mistake twice before you learn. But eventually you will learn. It is only natural to make mistakes, and it is natural to have feelings of greed, or jealousy in life but it is natural to learn from mistakes as well. Sometimes if you do not learn from your mistakes then you will repeat them over and over. Eventually in some scenarios it can lead to horrible behavioral problems. If it is not stopped in the beginning this then allows room for more mistakes. This will not only cause the individual who made the mistake problems, it will cause others problems possibly. When deviant behavior occurs it is best if it is stopped immediately other wise things may be worsened. Generally all that is needed is a small fixture in attitude. But sometimes small punishments will not help. If the same deviant action is reoccurring then one needs a different form of punishment. It is best to try several kinds of punishment and when all else fails then harsh punishment is necessary. This is the same for disciplining your child. If you truly want the best for your child then you will not let them get away with horrible actions. Generally you should always use discipline. With your child this will allow you to gain respect that you deserve and will teach your child to respect you and others. When all forms of punishment fail then sometimes, it is acceptable to punish your child physically by spanking them. It is not good to always use spanking but occasionally when your child is being very disobedient then spanking is acceptable. It will cause your child to realize that they should not miss behave and if they do, to accept the slightly painful punishment that is result of their behaviors. Many argue that using physical punishment is very harmful to a child. But it is not harmful unless it is used too frequently and for inappropriate reasons. Usually other forms of punishment will make your child learn to stop what ever they are doing. But if the other methods fail then spanking is acceptable. Many people in our society are against spanking. Lots of people believe spanking is a brutal form of punishment and can often be classified as abuse. A lot of the newer and younger people in society believe spanking is harsh and unnecessary. Generally elders believe spanking is a good form of punishment. There is a stereo type that spanking is an old fashion way to discipline your child. 1You should use discipline sparingly. Teach your children positive ways to behave. The Best way to be a good parent is to use consistency and never give up your child. Do not Use empty threats. Be predictable for your children and follow through with you word. This allows the child to know, that you will not be pushed over. If you maintain this style of attitude and behavior with your child then it is most likely That you will not have to discipline your child so often because he or she will be aware That you follow through with your threats. When one threatens a child and the child gets away without the threat, then it sends a message to the child that they may break the rules again, and will not be punished. As a parent consistency is important because it shows your child that you mean business, and no matter what they will not be able to get there way. Eventually this will trigger a positive thought process in your child's brain that they will not be able to over come your ways. From a young age it is important to teach your child many positive ways to behave. This will rub off on a child and create positive characteristics. It will make less room for your child to develop un positive behavioral patterns. If it is possible children will take advantage of an adult. That is why it is so important to lay down the rules and be strict with them. 2You need To stress the importance of expressing ones feelings so your child does not keep feelings locked up inside of them self. Keeping the connection open with your child is so important, because sometimes deviant behavior is really a call out for attention. Then Your child is trying to tell you something and you are responding in a harsh manner. It is important that a parent is educated about parenting. It is a job that needs to be done well. 3Children need to be taught discipline. You can not expect discipline to come naturally installed in your child. Because no one is born with discipline. Discipline is most effective if parents teach it to their children little by little. It takes time and practice for effective discipline. You need to guide your child in a particular order. By making routines it helps to install discipline in your child. This makes your child feel safe because they know what parents expect, and how much a parent expects. You need to give your child limits. This allows the child to make some decisions on their own (keeping in mind the limits). Whenever you discipline your child or tell your child "no" it is important that you explain why you are saying no. As a parent you always need to know why yourself. Otherwise you are poorly disciplining your child. Children are very smart. In order for the child to understand their discipline it is important that you as a parent give the child a logical explanation. Many agree that before you spank your child it is best if you try to use many other forms of punishment. First warn your child. Then follow through with the warning. Warn your child for the third time of a worse punishment....etc. Your child will learn the limits. As a parent it is important that you do not allow society to interfere with the way you discipline your child too much. Disciplining your child should be a decision made between parents, not the rest of society. But stay with in the norms. People need to realize that spanking is not abuse unless it is severe. Tapping your child on the bottom is not severe. Back handing your child across the face is severe. Beware of what is acceptable and what is not. Whenever you discipline your child o not do it out of anger and hate, do it out of love. Let your child know that it is out of love. The idea is not to have your child fear you. It is to have your child respect you. Discuss the issue with your child after wards. Think of possibilities to do next time. Get input from your child. Make sure you have the discussion well after the incident. That way everyone is cooled off and not angry. Through research I have generally found that approximately 57% of teenage youth in Uxbridge think that spanking is acceptable. It is important to find out the youths opinions because the youth are our future parents. Many people do not plan to spank their children. But sometimes it just gets to that level of discipline. * It is so important that if you are a parent you realize that spanking is not the way to solve your problems with your child. But occasionally when other methods fail then spanking is acceptable. Always love your child and treat them with respect. Shower your child with love and always let your child know that you are aware of their feelings. Point out positive steps that your child is making. This will help your child to know how much you love them. Of course your child will make mistakes and the parent will make mistakes too. But it is so important that they are fixed this way you will have a positive healthy relationship with your child. Learning is a process that does not occur over night. It takes time. But eventually your child will learn to be well behaved and have respect for others. Sometimes spanking will help your child learn. Just remember to spank out of love. 1 Jane Williams, Help For Parenting, America, www.nea.org./helpfrom/connecting/tools/disc.html 2 Jane Williams, Help For Parenting, America, www.nea.org./helpfrom/connecting/tools/disc.html 3 Marilyn Gootenan, Disciplining Your Children, Chicago America, www.kidsource.com --------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ --------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\sociology obs ex.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Paula E. Alvarez April, 2004 Sociological and Psychological Foundations of Learning Dr. Soler Classroom Observation Extra Credit Introduction I visited St. Francis of Assisi School in Astoria New York on four separate occasions for a total of 20 hours observation as course requirements for the Graduate Education Program at St. John's University during the Spring 2004 semester. From a sociological and psychological perspective, I was impressed by the students and teachers in this school, which has a strong principal. Mrs. McArdle is passionate about her responsibilities, the level of support she gives her teachers, the timely and comprehensive information which gets passed to parents, and most importantly, the academic achievement of the students. Mrs. McArdle was a teacher for 30+ years (reading specialist) prior to her position at St. Francis. She knows each of her 500 students and their parents by name, can be seen in the schoolyard during line-up in the morning, in the cafeteria at lunch time, at every sports event, and even at dismissal. Each child is dismissed to the care of a designated parent or guardian or does not leave the school. The school's program runs from toddler time through eighth grade. In addition to the basic academics, each child also has "specials"; computer, Italian, Music, Library, Health/Guidance, and a full gym program. They do not serve a hot lunch, but have Pizza and bagels available for purchase twice weekly, a daily milk program ($60/year) , and 20 minutes supervised recess each day in the school yard or gym. Tuition for the school year is $3320 per child, payable in 10 installments, plus a $7 weekly donation to the church. The school in clean, quiet, and safe. The socioeconomic status of the families which attend this school in my estimation is greater than $60,000 per year. P.S. 2 is the public elementary school in the area, which is a Title 1 school. PS 2 is located between "Upper Ditmars" (Astoria), which is predominantly single family dwellings and Jackson Heights, which is predominantly multiple family dwellings and some low cost housing. This community has a varied SES, ranging from low SES to incomes which are well into $100,000 per year. The Upper Ditmars area of Astoria is a neighborhood located 20 minutes from Manhattan, with modest single family homes to homes costing in excess of $1 million dollars. Property taxes are at the city rate, and are much lower than Long Island and Westchester. My first experience in the school was with the 6th Grade during their library period with Mrs. Carpanini, their librarian. The children assisted me in completing an interest inventory for a literacy class I am taking at St. John's. The library was small, with round tables accommodating a small group of about 25 students. The children had been told in advance that I would join them, and they stood up and greeted me with "Good Morning, Mrs. Alvarez". I introduced myself and the task they would be helping me with, and they completed the survey. They needed very little assistance from me or the librarian, they knew their titles and authors. After I had thanked them for their help, Mrs. Carpanini quickly returned their books, and pointed them individually to their favorite authors. She had a mental picture of what each and every child was waiting for or wanted to read. On a separate occasion I had the pleasure of Mrs. Stefandl's 4th and 5th grade math class. I spoke briefly with this teacher, certified to teach mathematics, who was a career change person. This teacher had a wonderful command of the content, treated her students with love and respect and it was clear that the students were returning this gift to her. Mrs. Stefandl demonstrated long division with single digit divisors on the board asking them to listen and watch the first time. Prior to this demonstration, she discussed the terms divisor, dividend and quotient, constantly asking for the correct math terms when eliciting responses from the children. Divisor was presented as the door, the dividend as the house, and the quotient as the roof. She also referred to the times tables as a "help" to the children when they were performing this operation. She talked about groups of four asking the children to use their fingers in the problem 76 divided by 4 equal 19. She asked them to remember that division is all about equal groups. She talked about the importance of checking the math using the times tables and estimation. She then wrote down the following steps 1. "d"ivide, 2. "m"ultiply, 3. "s"ubtract, 4. "ch"eck that the difference is less than the divisor, and 5. "br" ing down. In order to help them remember the steps she created the following sentence: "Did Mom Serve Chocolate Brownies?" All the examples she presented at this point were without remainders. After she presented several problems going through the various steps and checks, the children began to see shortcuts. She clearly told them no shortcuts yet. At this point the children were asked to begin doing the operation on their own from examples in their book. The teacher checked for comprehension as she walked around checking and correcting notebooks, asking questions to help children through the problems. She talked with individual children about specific problems they were having, offering comments i.e. "if multiplication is making groups, then division is taking out groups." As she spoke with individual children, she demanded the correct "math language" and it appeared that for some children this was difficult. Mrs. Stefandl kept this class on track. In my observation, she knew exactly where the children would make the mistakes and intentionally pointed them in the right direction. The children were respectful of Ms. Stefandl and their fellow classmates by raising hands and helping each other during notebook time. Ms. Stefandl also respected her students and showed this by "promising" to work with them until they mastered the operation. The children asked really good questions which showed that they were engaged in mathematical thinking, which she promptly answered either by referring to larger math concepts, additional problems, or promising to show them something at a later date. Once she was comfortable that they had grasped the concept of division without remainders, she moved on. I was also impressed that she insisted on correct math language. Ms. Stefandl was constantly pointing the children back to their addition, subtraction and multiplication families. She knew exactly which students to ask specific questions of, one boy in particular always knew which step came next, which students were good with the math facts, which students still needed to study multiplication tables, etc. Looking at the time, she proceeded on to division with remainders and briefly presented a problem and the check, divisor times quotient plus remainder. The kids got excited for the second time. Again, she would show them no shortcuts even though some of the children were doing the problems in their head. At the conclusion of class, about 5 minutes, she had the children stand up in a single line and they played a memory game with multiples of two. It was obvious that they had played this game before and got into it quickly and had fun doing so. Fifth Grade After class, we had a quick discussion and she told me I was in for a treat with the Fifth Grade. This was the second year she has been teaching them math. There were 32 children in this class compared to 17 in the fourth grade. The class was about factors and divisibility rules. The teacher handed back a test they had taken the previous day as the students moaned and groaned. As she went over the correct answers on the board, she knew exactly which children were being disruptive (with her back to them) and quickly got everyone under control. The "classroom" contract was prominently displayed on the bulletin board closest to the blackboard. They discussed factors for 24, 35, 26, 56, 27, and 72 and divisibility rules for even numbers, a number ending in 5 or 0, a number ending in zero, and sum of the digits. This class clearly had its math stars, it appeared that everyone else was struggling. Again these gave them problems to do in their notebooks as she monitored comprehension and checked answers. After class, she discussed that these students were great in math in the fourth grade, but needed lots of extra help this year partially due to class size and age. The school is departmentalized in Math and Reading, therefore, Mrs. Brooks teaches ELA exclusively. Upon entering the classroom the children stood up and it was clear to me again that they were familiar with greeting guests. The daily schedule was posted in addition to classroom rules to the front of the room which involved issues of "self control", "never settle for less than your best, and a beautiful hand made banner with the words "Explore, Dream, Wonder". The room was clean and organized, with a special library area with two round tables for reading. There were sample's of student work posted on the bulletin board outside, and a collage with the first names of the children titled "Our Efforts". I spoke to the teacher, Mrs. Brooks, before class who told me the focus of the lesson was on Tall Tales, chain of events, author's craft, genre, and vocabulary (figuring out meaning from content). The students have been on this unit for about two weeks and they were very familiar with graphic organizers which she would use to explain chain of events. No actual writing other than note-taking would be produced in this class, but homework questions would be reviewed. The book being read was "If You Say So, Claude" by Joan Lowery Nixon. This is a fictitious story about pioneer life and was included in their ELA text book. There was a teacher's edition to this lesson. The children have a book report due on April 27th so one main point of the lesson was to reinforce skills for gathering information and that they do not need to record every detail in their reports, only key events. The graphic organizer and chain of events was used to identify key events in the story. The teacher modeled reading for the children very nicely reading aloud excerpts to be used in graphing several chains of events in the lesson. She spent some time around "the first event" to get the chain going, the difference between verbs such as looking and throwing, and that chain of events relates to physical movement that causes a reaction. The children were given practice reading specific parts of the text and creating graphic organizers on their own. The teacher informally assessed students by walking around the room checking notebooks. After the exercise was completed, she asked open ended questions and created a graphic organizer on the board. She talked about subtle differences that words can connote such as "stepping" and "looking down my foot was planted square on the snakes neck." The first suggested the action was intentional; and the second was not a deliberate action in the chain of events. Throughout the lesson she referred back to "vocabulary words" presented in an earlier lesson". There was some talk about words such as "suddenly", "diverge", "furrow", "pallet", "landscape", "boulder", "bank" and "damn". The children identified the text supports that would allow them to figure out meanings, and also suggested use of glossary when the words were not supported. She also talked about gathering information is different based on the question asked. It appeared that she ran out of time, but concluded the class by referring them to their workbook section on tall tales and simply tied this to the concept of exaggeration. She noted that they would continue their discussion the next time they met and the class ended. What I did observe was a satisfactory climate, and the components identified in the postreading, skill and strategy, and satisfactory teacher practices. I did not witness the prereading or guided reading phase to this lesson. Materials and tasks of the lesson consisted primarily of children working silently at their seats and writing in their notebooks, although they were relevant to the task of the lesson mentioned earlier. I felt that the children were engaged, that is to say they were doing what they were supposed to be doing, but they were not overly excited about it. For the most part, the teacher's interaction with the student's was positive and encouraged answers. She knew her students academically and held good answers requiring further discussion for later and came back to them. For the most part, she treated students respectfully but it was clear that she required "certain" behaviors from them, i.e. hand raising. She corrected the same boy twice about covering his mouth, commented about yawing so early in the morning, and was clearly bothered by a student who walked in late and set her quickly to task. The children were seated in groups of four but there were no group activities to this lesson. Overall, the quality of the lesson in relation to the goals and the assessment was clearly aligned. The teacher had a good command of the lesson that was executed in such a way that demonstrated this and also engaged students. In having to deliver this lesson, I would like to elicit a little more excitement from the children and relate critical events to more than information gathering. There are many instances in other topics areas such as math, science and social studies that children could also relate to. Simple activities where children could compare their own graphic organizers and negotiate one group answer, possibly graphing them on their own at the board for class discussion, would contribute to excitement, along with group writing around a series of critical events identified in class which would serve to have them apply their knowledge. My final observation was again with Mrs. Stefandl, and I spent the entire day with her and her fourth grade class. The class opened with the greeting that I had become accustomed to, and the first five minutes was dedicated to prayer and patriotic songs. Although the prayers were set, the children picked Yankee Doodle for their patriotic song. She asked the children what day it was 6 months and five days ago! It took them a couple of minutes but they reached the correct answer, October 23, 2003. The next warm up activity was Shirly Temple, Did you know that when she was 9 years old only six people in the U.S. made more money than her? They then did a Riddle for the day, What gets wetter the more it dries? A towel. She read them a book about Cathedrals and talked about Iroquois belief that what you do has an effect on seven generations to come. She talked about the word Exhaulted and had them look this up in the dictionary. They then reviewed a practice test they had taken of the State Math Exam and it appeared that they had done well. The children then took a vocabulary test, moving their desks, taking out rulers, etc. The words were focus, troublesome, quake, extreme, marine, discard, magnify, coarse, circular, bristle, grasp and one synonym for encourage. They then had to put these words in "fifth grade" sentences. She then did a "fun" activity with the children. They had to write a jingle about Spring in New York City for the radio. The children had a lot of fun with this, some even sang their jingles. All the children took their turn in a democratic way. She was really impressed as was I, the children did a great job and she referred to them as future "marketers". She gave out her most valuable student award. The children were given soft pretzels for a snack. There are no specials on Friday, so she told me they would have more time for "fun stuff". Everyone in this room was having fun. All of the students had a "voice". One little girl in particular caught my attention because of the constant "pained" look on her face. I discussed her with Ms Stefandl who said that not only does she "get it" she gives it 110%. Throughout the day, it was clear that Ms. Stefandl has a great relationship with these students and that she is having just as much fun as they are. It is clearly a democratic classroom, children checking other kids for homework compliance etc, board monitors, door monitors, everybody contributing something. After lunch, the class was science, proton neutrons, and electrons. The children conducted experiments with balloons which they then got to take home. They were out of their seats, learning and having fun. She was comfortable with children moving freely around the room and was able to get them back to task quickly and back to their seats for some concluding thoughts on religion, the right to life, and a fun weekend. Overall, I think her example is the best of the best and I would aspire to this clear example of what we can and should give students in the classroom. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Sociology.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Chapter 1-Branding America After reading the first chapter of this book I was blown away by how the government can actually hire an advertiser to make an image for the United States. When a country doesn't like us they can just fix American's on the television to make us seem more like the viewers that are watching. The first image that popped into my head was a show that was like MTV. It didn't say in the book but I think that they would direct this towards the younger audience because the adults already have an image in their heads of us. The parents of the teens are trying to raise their children to hate the U.S. but with these TV programs it makes them see a softer or "nicer" side of the United States. By knowing that our government is putting these images and making the foreign countries feel differently about us I begin to question everything I watch on television. Has our government been "brainwashing" us much like the Muslims have to their children? The phrase "actions speak louder than words" comes to mind. No wonder many countries are so angry at us. Here we show them one thing but yet we act like another. The US government went and hired a person who was once an advertiser to "sell" us to the foreign nations. We even went to Walt Disney to ask him if he could "as a patriotic duty" make a film that would defend democracy. In many press conferences we tend to dehumanize and demonize Saddam Hussein, we have this horrible image of him because we think he has strong ties to Osama Bin Laden. But, is the reasons the government told us for going to war true or were they pulling a "television show" on us like they have done in the past to other countries. When we went to war we were invading Iraq because they had weapons of mass destruction; however, there is a part in the chapter that says that we had given them most of them to help them with their war. Sure is strange how we come to find out now instead of at the beginning of this war. Chapter 2- War is Sell Every move our government makes, even the exact time they "allow" something to show up on our television screens is planned. When we went to war and even when there was talk about war Bush planned it to the anniversary of Sept. 11th. He planned that we would have so much hate and he basically poured salt on an opened cut. During this time our government went ahead and spent millions of dollars to put together an advertisement to make us believe and come together to make sure that Saddam Hussein needed to be put down. Just after reading that I question why our government would go through so much to just make us think this way. Why waste all of that money and time to buy our approval if Saddam really needed to be stopped. Wouldn't we all just see it for ourselves without the government clouding our minds? During class time we watched a movie about how FOX NEWS hires or makes contracts with different people to have views about us going to war. What if all of this is just some huge game that government created to make us see things or to cover things up? When we first went to Iraq and they tore down the statue of Saddam we saw hundreds of Iraqis with American flags and they seemed to be helping and cheering on the American soldiers when they were helping tear it down. However, that wasn't all true. In the book it says that, that was just something played out. There weren't actually hundreds of people out there; In fact there were only about one hundred. And on the other side of the street there were even more protesting. Here they want us to believe one thing but yet it isn't the whole truth. It's almost like a Hollywood movie that they are playing for us. Why wouldn't we believe it, we see so much in the movies, why wouldn't we think this was true? Chapter 3- True Lies "All warfare is based on deception." This quote remains in my head. The entire section about psyops, "are designed to convey selected information and indicators to foreign leaders and audiences to influence their emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately their behavior," while "military deception misleads adversaries, causing them to act in accordance with the originator's objectives." This statement right here tells me that our government has used our air waves to basically brainwash us. If they can put something on television that makes us hate our mothers or to cry when we see a certain color blows me away. Do we even know how to control our emotions anymore of are we just some strange robots being told how to act by our parents [government]. In the late 1990's the story of "babies torn from incubators" by Iraqi soldiers was aired throughout the United States and this story alone made a huge public favor to go to war; however, comes to find out that this wasn't entirely a true story. I say entirely because Saddam was gassing people but during the time when he was killing women and children we were supplying the chemicals for the killings. I don't think we entirely knew that he was doing this but why wasn't that aired along with the baby stories? This reminds me of why we went to war this time. President Bush thought that or had intelligence that Iraq was hiding weapons of mass destruction. Sure is funny how this storied aired right after the plane crash into the twin towers. Then when we finally get there we find no weapons at all, but yet we're still there looking for something. I feel that this was just a way of getting the public to be ok with us going to war. Chapter 4- Doublespeak Doublespeak is a word that I have never heard before. However, it's something that I can now understand as I go through all the press conferences that I've seen throughout this summer. To mean something completely different than what you are actually saying. When the president said one thing it was actually a code for something else. It reminded me of when I was in elementary school and we would lie to our friends. They thought we were talking about one thing but really we were saying something that had not relevance to what was actually being said. The government pays writers to write so that the normal American and even foreigner will not understand what's going on. George Carlin makes an excellent point about all the different "wars" we declare. We really don't do anything about the different things we declare war on but yet we through the word around as though its nothing. Chapter 5- The Uses of Fear It is said that most terrorist do things just so spark the fear in the country and then others would see this and do the same. When the planes crashed into the twin towers fear was raised everywhere. It really scares me when they say that "media coverage and terrorism are soul mates- virtually inseparable." That is really true if you think about it. That morning of September 11th the only thing found on the news for at least a month were the plane crashes. Then each time Bin Laden sent a tape it was plastered all over the televisions and our fear level increased all over again. Its almost as though he wanted us to fear him and he was doing it on purpose so that we wouldn't forget about him. The media coverage almost makes it worse because here he's getting what he ultimately wants. When Goering said how the communist dictatorship, fascist dictatorship, parliament, and democracy are all alike it really made sense. Even though we vote in our presidents and our congress and our house reps it doesn't really make a difference in certain matters. Even though there is a large amount of people who are not in favor of the war we are still there. Most of the people who are in favor only want to be there to stop terrorism; however, we think this will work because our government tells us that if we don't do it we will be attacked again. And as Goering said "it works the same way in any country." And the land the free has made that statement true. Out of this whole chapter I found the comments about SUV's to be rather amusing and hit somewhat close to home. When Psychiatrist Clotaire Rapaille said the reason behind car manufacture's models of the cars I just laughed. But then as I was driving down the streets I began to look around at all the cars. When you see a hummer you think that you feel really safe in it. It looks like nothing could hurt it. However, the death rate is so much higher for these cars. If you were to ask someone that owned one of these "killer" cars they would probably tell you that they feel safe. I know I would and all I want is a big Tahoe. Chapter 6- The Air War f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Soil Salanity.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ SOIL SALINITY Salinity in both the rivers and on the land is one of the main and most costly results of overclearing and irrigation. Salinity is caused by changes in the delicate balance between surface water and groundwater systems. A small increase in the infiltration of water from the topsoil to the groundwater, due to rainfall or irrigation, can result in a dramatic rise in groundwater pressure and watertable levels. The trees of the open forests are now replaced by shallow-rooted crops and pastures which absorb far less water than the native trees. Those trees had been massive water pumps, sucking up moisture from deep underground and putting it back into the atmosphere through the evaporation from their leaves. With those pumps gone, excess rainfall accumulates underground and watertables rise to the surface, bringing ancient sediments of salt with them, often in heavy concentrations. Once exposed to the air and sun, the salts become even more concentrated due to evaporation, leaving a white crust of salt crystals on the land. Most plants cannot tolerate the scalding chemical effect of the salt, and so they die. As they die off, the soil succumbs to erosion and a double dose of salt and sediment enters nearby rivers and wetlands. In cattle-grazing areas, the animals often gather at saline seeps to lick the salt, which leads to further erosion. Salinity affects around 560,000 hectares of the Murray-Darling basin's most productive irrigation lands, mostly in southern New South Wales, and northern Victoria, and partly in South Australia. This represents more than half the total irrigation area. In Western Australia, about 250 square kilometres of agricultural land is going out of production every year because of soil salinity caused by overclearing of native vegetation. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\South Korea.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Stefan Albrecht Economics South Korea South Korea, officially known as the Republic of Korea, country in northeastern Asia that occupies the southern portion of the Korean Peninsula. South Korea is bounded on the north by North Korea; on the east by the Sea of Japan; on the southeast and south by the Korea Strait, which separates it from Japan; and on the west by the Yellow Sea. It has a total area of about 38,023 sq. mi., including numerous offshore islands in the south and west, the largest of which is Cheju (area, 1829 sq. km/706 sq. mi.). The state of South Korea was established in 1948 following the post-World War II partitioning of the peninsula between the occupying forces of the United States in the south and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in the north. The capital and largest city of South Korea is Seoul. In contrast to North Korea, South Korea is relatively poor in mineral resources. The principal resources are coal (mostly anthracite), iron ore, and graphite. Other minerals include gold, silver, copper, lead, tungsten, zinc, and uranium. Reserves of natural gas have been discovered offshore. These minute resources are not as depended upon by the people of South Korea as in the North. The north is heavy in mining these resources because they have a large surplus of them, and the north is not; they have moved on and found other economical niches. The population of South Korea (1995 estimate) is about 45,182,000 people. The country's estimated population density of 1188 per sq mi is one of the highest in the world. The majority of the population lives in the southern and western coastal areas. The annual rate of increase has dropped steadily from more than 3 percent in the late 1950s to 0.8 percent in the mid-1990s. Urbanization of the country has proceeded rapidly since the 1960s, with substantial rural to urban migration; approximately 78 percent of the population is now classified as urban. Since the establishment of North Korea, some 4 million immigrants have crossed the border to South Korea. This increase has been partly offset by emigration from South Korea, especially to Japan and the United States. The country's chief industrial center is Seoul (population, 1990, 10,612,577). Other major cities include Pusan (3,798,113), the principal seaport; Taegu (2,229,040), center of the silk industry; Inch'ôn (1,817,919), the major port on the Yellow Sea; and Kwangju (1,139,003), an ancient commercial and administrative center. South Korea's economy, traditionally based on agriculture, has, since the early 1960s, undergone an extraordinarily rapid industrialization; the gross domestic product (GDP) expanded by more than 9 percent yearly between the 1960s and the early 1990s. A series of five-year economic plans begun in 1962 have concentrated on the development of manufacturing, much of it oriented toward exports. Economic aid, especially from the United States and Japan, was important to the economic growth of the country, which in the span of a generation grew from one of the world's poorest to a mid-ranking industrial power. In the early 1990s estimated annual national budget figures showed revenues and expenditures balanced at $48.4 billion. Labor In the early 1990s the total labor force was estimated at 19.8 million. Of this figure, some 15 percent were engaged in agriculture, forestry, and fishing; 33 percent in industry; and 52 percent in services. The principal labor organization is the Federation of Korean Trade Unions, with a membership of more than 1.8 million. Agriculture Land distribution programs were carried out after World War II (1939-1945). With 1.6 million farms, the average cultivated land area for each is 1.3 hectares (3.2 acres). Agricultural methods remain largely traditional and unmechanized. About 21 perceent of the land is arable, and nearly all of this land is under cultivation. The chief crops in the early 1990s were rice (5.7 million metric tons per year), the principal food crop; onions (810,000), potatoes (726,000); sweet potatoes (315,000); barley (315,000); maize (92,000); and cucumbers, cabbages, and tomatoes (together totaling 567,000). An important development has been the great expansion in the output of fruit, notably apples, melons, peaches, and pears. Other crops include soybeans, cotton, hemp, and silk. The estimated livestock population in the early 1990s was 5.5 million pigs, 2.5 million cattle, and 500,000 goats. Forestry and Fishing The forestry industry is small; roundwood removals in the early 1990s were about 6.5 million cu m (about 230 million cu ft) per year. Since the late 1960s South Korea has become one of the world's leading fishing nations, with a modern fleet of more than 780 deep-sea vessels. The ports of Ulsan and Masan have been developed as deep-sea fishing bases with fish-processing plants. The annual catch (which included pollock and oysters) in the early 1990s was some 3.3 million metric tons. Mining South Korea does not have extensive mineral resources. Annual output of anthracite coal was 12 million metric tons in the early 1990s; zinc ore output was about 43,800 metric tons. Other minerals exploited were graphite, iron ore, lead, tungsten, gold, silver, and kaolin (a fine clay). Manufacturing The division of the Korean Peninsula in 1945 created two unbalanced economic units. The north held most of the natural resources and heavy industries developed during occupation by the Japanese; the south contained most of the agricultural resources and a large labor pool. Industrial development in the south concentrated initially on light manufacturing of export-oriented items, especially in labor-intensive industries such as textiles and apparel, footwear, and foodstuffs. Beginning in the early 1970s, however, emphasis was placed on heavy industry. Manufacturing is dominated by chaebol, large conglomerate companies with greatly diversified interests. Major manufactures in the early 1990s were electrical machinery, transportation equipment such as automobiles and ships, chemical products, textiles, iron and steel, and food products. The annual output of industrial products included passenger cars (1.5 million), trucks (300,500), merchant ships (5.4 million gross deadweight tons), television sets (16 million), fertilizer (831,100 metric tons), woven cotton fabrics (479.5 million sq m/5.2 billion sq ft), and pig iron (21.9 million metric tons). Energy About 54 percent of South Korea's electric power in the early 1990s came from conventional thermal facilities, 36 percent from nuclear installations, and the remaining 10 percent from hydroelectric plants. Installed electricity-generating capacity in the early 1990s was 27 million kilowatts. Annual output of electricity was some 105 billion kilowatt-hours. Transportation A well-developed highway system connects the major urban centers. The country has about 63,201 km (about 39,273 mi) of roads, including 1551 km (964 mi) of expressway. The state-owned railroad system consists of some 4137 km (some 2571 mi) of track. The country's chief ports include Pusan, Inch'ôn, Mokp'o, and Kunsan, and its merchant fleet numbers about 2140 vessels. Korean Air Lines and Asiana Airlines provide both domestic and foreign service. Communications Mass media have assumed large importance since the 1950s. In the early 1990s about 44 million radios and 9.1 million television sets were operating in South Korea. National daily newspapers number 23. Currency and Banking The unit of currency in South Korea is the won (806.8 won equal U.S.$1; 1994). The Bank of Korea is the bank of issue. Foreign Trade Following the disruption of trade during the Korean War (1950-1953) and its aftermath, exports increased at the remarkable annual rate of 27.2 percent from 1965 to 1980 and 14.7 percent from 1980 to 1988. Major imports include industrial machinery, petroleum and petroleum products, chemical products, transportation equipment, raw materials (such as wood and raw cotton), and electronic components. Exports include electrical machinery, fabrics, telecommunication and sound equipment, electronic microcircuits, clothing, ships, automobiles, chemicals, office machines, and footwear. Annual imports in the early 1990s were valued at $83.8 billion and exports were worth $82.2 billion. Principal trading partners for exports were the United States, Japan, Hong Kong, Germany, Singapore, Great Britain, Canada, and Australia; chief partners for imports were Japan, the United States, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Australia, and Indonesia. To sum this up, South Korea is a very industrial, high-export country. It has many people, so they can have huge factories and be very productive. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Spanish Conquistadors Heroes or Murderers.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Spanish Conquistadors: Heroes or Murderers "The Indians in the first fatal decades of the white man in America were conquered because they could not conceive what it was that the white man was after, and what manner of man he was." (The Indians of the Americas, p97) This misconception, was that the Indians could not imagine was that the Spanish Conquistadors would come to the Americas and brutally murder men women and children in the name of a god. They could not see how a group of people could follow such a god. The Spanish conquistadors raped the American natives of their naiveness. The Spanish conquistadors took away the Indians right to their way of life and their land. Living in the United States of America, it's hard to imagine a group of people coming into our country, and taking our land. But this event has already happened, almost 500 years ago. The people who dominated the United States before the Spanish invasion roamed among a 2 large continents. Today the Indians are restricted to reserves or "reservations". Their land has been taken from them, and little if any was given in return. The people who live among these reservations try to preserve the "old way of life." Another thing taken from the Indians of Americas was their way of life. One thing almost all people hold close to their heart is their way of life whatever it may be. The Indians however were persecuted for their beliefs and either killed or converted to the "Spanish Catholicism" or many other varying ways of life. This conversion did not take place peacefully. Many resisting Indians died for their cause. The Indians of the Americas could no longer hunt and gather food freely. Nor could they farm just for their community. Strong men were taken as slaves either to Hispañola (Modern Day Haiti), Cuba or taken back to Spain. Such slaves were often worked to death, because of the seemingly endless supply of American Indians. Other Indians were forced to pay tribute to the Spanish by working on farms to feed the invaders when they themselves were barely nourished enough to live. Some American Indians went so far as to commit mass suicides and not to have children, because they knew their fate if they were to go on living or to bring another child into the world only to see him or her worked to death (Collier, 63). Another very important factor in the demise of Native American Indians was disease, the native Americans had no immunity to the European diseases. A large percentage of the American Some natives died from "Alien diseases." As the population of the American Indians decreased the Spanish had to bring more and more native Spanish people. American Indians became Catholic and intermarried with the Spanish. Other natives moved to desolate mountains in Mexico in order to preserve the "Indian way of life." The majority of the American inhabitants also lost something that would never be restored, their respect for nature. While Spain, Portugal, Northern China, and other countries were taking from nature without remorse, the American Indians respected nature so much that their way of life was altered to preserve the environment that they had. The Indians gave back what they took. They lived for the environment. Only recently have countries like the United States of America looked at these concepts with anywhere near the intensity of the Indians of the Americas. What has been lost may never be restored. The current inhabitants of the Americas do not have the same respect as the Incans or the Aztecs or the Pueblos. Instead of paying tribute to the environment the Spanish paid tribute to the King or the Queen and God. In turn the Spanish demanded that the American Indians pay tribute to themselves; taking from the earth and not giving back. All of these factors contributed to the downfall in of great Empires. This downfall was not a peaceful transfer of power but, a ruthless murder of millions of Indians living in the Americas. These ideas are hard to imagine, people coming and taking your house, your way of life, and making you work until you die. And if they couldn't didn't die then they would most probably die of a foreign disease. In my idea there is no parallel to this monumental mass murder. 95% of the population was depleted. Although the chances of this happening in our own country are slim, the United States of America, the consequences are unimaginable. But, what would happen if another country "raped" the USA? Bibliography 1.) Aiton, Arthur Scott. Antonio de Mendoza. New York: Russell & Russell, 1967. 2.) Collier, John. The Indians of the Americas. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1947 3.) Lummis, Charles Fletch. Spanish Pioneers and the California Missions. Chicago: A.C. McClurg & Co., 1930 f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Stay Tuned The exploitation of Children in Television Advert.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Stay Tuned: The Exploitation Of Children In Television Advertisements Across America in the homes of the rich, the not-so-rich, and in poverty-stricken homes and tenements, as well as in schools and businesses, sits advertisers' mass marketing tool, the television, usurping freedoms from children and their parents and changing American culture. Virtually an entire nation has surrendered itself wholesale to a medium for selling. Advertisers, within the constraints of the law, use their thirty-second commercials to target America's youth to be the decision-makers, convincing their parents to buy the advertised toys, foods, drinks, clothes, and other products. Inherent in this targeting, especially of the very young, are the advertisers; fostering the youth's loyalty to brands, creating among the children a loss of individuality and self-sufficiency, denying them the ability to explore and create but instead often encouraging poor health habits. The children demanding advertiser's products are influencing economic hardships in many families today. These children, targeted by advertisers, are so vulnerable to trickery, are so mentally and emotionally unable to understand reality because they lack the cognitive reasoning skills needed to be skeptical of advertisements. Children spend thousands of hours captivated by various advertising tactics and do not understand their subtleties. Though advertisers in America's free enterprise system are regulated because of societal pressures, they also are protected in their rights under freedom of expression to unfairly target America's youth in order to sell to their parents, regardless of the very young's inability to recognize the art of persuasion. In the free enterprise system, the advertiser's role is to persuade consumers to buy their products/services. They are given a product/service and are required to use their best creative effort to make this product desirable to the intended audience (Krugman 37). Because of this calculated and what many deem as manipulative way of enticing the target audience, the advertising industry is charged with several ethical breeches, which focus on a lack of societal responsibility (Treise 59). Child Advocacy groups and concerned parents, among others, question the ethicality of advertising claims and appeals that are directed towards vulnerable groups in particular, children (Bush 31). The fundamental criticism is that children are an unfair market. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) regulates the advertising industry to ensure consumers' protection from false or misleading information. The question many assert is should the government be allowed to monitor what is legitimate simply because some do not approve (Hernandez 34). This question requires value judgments that can only be answered through constructing public policy (Kunkel 58). Most people in society recognize that television advertising directed towards children is excessive, manipulative and takes unfair advantage of children (Kunkel 60). In a recent survey from the researcher, it was documented that 80% of adults with children wanted governmental regulation to protect children from television advertising (See Appendix 1). Research in the social science fields such as psychology and communication documents how the child interprets a given television advertisement. Findings indicate for one, the majority of children up to age five "experience difficulty distinguishing perceptually between programs and commercials" (Kunkel 62). It is noted that children at this young age tend to treat all television content as a unidimensional type of message. For instance, child viewers do not begin to discriminate between fantasy or reality dimensions of television content at the most basic levels until grade school. Advertisers compound this issue by using perceptual similarities in program content and commercial content which adds to the difficulty children already have in distinguishing between the two variables. Secondly, the study substantiates that, "A substantial proportion of children, particularly those below age eight, express little or no comprehension of the persuasive intent of commercials" (Kunkel 63). This is a crucial argument in regards to the legality of unfair advertising. Children eight and younger are an unfair market, for they do not understand the intent of the advertisement. For the child to recognize and appreciate the persuasive intent of television advertising, he/she would be able to identify the following characteristics: "the source of the advertisement has perspectives and interests other than those of the receiver, the source intends to persuade, persuasive messages are biased, and biased messages demand different interpretive strategies than do unbiased messages" (Kunkel 64). Thirdly, research has found "younger children who are unaware of the persuasive intent of television advertising tend to express greater belief in commercials and a higher frequency of purchase requests" (Kunkel 64). Children are an unfair market in this regard because they simply do not understand the commercial claim may be exaggerated and biased. The child often does not understand that when he/she gets the product , it may not be as spectacular as it was made out to be in the advertisement (Kunkel 64). Popular studies give evidence that children are often mesmerized by television (Signorielli 34). Children fixate upon television and become hypnotized by watching. The attention level of young viewers is elevated in the presence of children, eye contact, puppets, and rapid pacing (Van Eura 23). Television advertisements target younger audiences by using colorful images and rapid movement often in the form of animation (Brady). The advertisements primarily directed towards the childrens' market are for toys and foods (Pediatrics 295). Studies show that children see the images on television as a window of the world, these images affect their thoughts and ideas (Pingree 253). Therefore, advertisers are manipulating children by predominantly showing advertisements that encourage materialism and eating. Research findings on how children interpret television commercials are not the only indicator of what constitutes a fair market. Public opinion, along with the observations of other regarded professionals, observe the exploitation of the children's market. According to Cynthia Schiebe, assistant professor of psychology at Ithaca College and director of The Center for Research on the Effects of Television, has the following to say in relation to children as an unfair market: "The point is not that advertising is wrong, but it often plays unfair...Children can't distinguish the persuasive intent of commercials. There is enormous evidence that young children have various difficulties in understanding the nature of commercials. They give more credibility to the person speaking than they should, especially if it's someone like Cap'n Crunch or Ronald McDonald, or someone who is a role model." Ms. Schiebe, through her work as a psychologist and a researcher, asserts that adults have the capabilities to detect persuasive strategies where children do not have the same capabilities. Peggy Charren, leader for 25 years of Action for Children's Television (ACT), believes that advertising takes advantage of impressionable youngsters. Charren states, "Children are the only unpaid sales force in the history of America. Advertisers don't expect kids to buy the product. The kids are being used to sell the product to the parent." According to James U. McNeal, a Texas A&M University Marketing professor , states, "What distinguishes children from other viewers is not so much what advertiser's show them, but how they interpret it. Children are literalists, which makes them more vulnerable to advertising's message. For them seeing is believing" (Guber). Though questions of ethicality are denounced extensively, advertising to children persist on the forefront of American culture. Advertisers continue to focus on the children's market because children have become a tremendous source of revenue and an increasingly important commodity for the advertising and marketing industry. In 1993 alone, children between the ages of four and 12 in the United States had a disposable income of 17 billion dollars. Not only do children have their own money to spend, but children with two working parents influence their parents to spend annually 155 billion dollars (Collins 4). Advertisers do not only see children in terms of immediate discretionary income that is available to spend, but perhaps even more valuable to the marketer is the brand loyalty potential. The advertiser's mission is to convince the child to want a particular brand, to then have a preference and liking for the brand and therefore to purchase the product again and again which then implies a brand loyalty has been established (Sissors). Advertisers do not only employ this brand loyalty tactic in commercials aimed at the child, but they also implicitly target other campaigns to meet the appeals of children. For example, children surveyed had a particular fondness for the Michelin tire campaign which features babies. Though these children will not be buying tires for awhile, the implication that brand loyalty has been established seems great (Wujtas 50). Research has confirmed that children establish brand loyalty as early as the age of two years old. An older audience has an awareness of close to 1500 brand names where as a young child has little preconceived preferences. (Guber) With a combination of money to spend and an open mind for the potential to create a brand loyal consumer at an early age, children are an irresistible market to American businesses. With such tremendous potentiality for revenues and brand loyalty, advertisers target the children's market with vengeance. Advertisers annually spend close to 471 million dollars on advertising to children. While the rest of the advertising industry is suffering from a three year decline, the amount of money spent on children's advertising continues to increase despite heated controversy over the ethicality of targeting a vulnerable and unfair market (Wartella 461). Contemporary advertisers flood the marketplace in practically every outlet daily with their claims and appeals. Advertisements can be found virtually everywhere. Common media vehicles used for the children's market are, television commercials with an increase during children's programs, especially Saturday morning programming, on videotapes, in children's magazines , in malls, and even in the classroom through television- educational programming (Collins 4). One television outlet that has received a considerable amount of negative publicity is Channel One. This is a program where marketers enter the classroom setting by embedding advertisements aimed at children into segments of a 12 minute newscast that is shown daily in more than 12,000 schools across the country. The appeal to advertisers is to guarantee reaching the intended target audience (Wartella 451). The result to children is exploitation which is basically sponsored by the school system via television advertisers. Many other vehicles are used in the targeting of the children's market, however, television advertising is perceived as the most effective source in reaching children. The increase of cable options and the amount of time children spend watching the television allows the advertiser to make his exposure and frequency appeals more readily than ever before. Next to sleeping, children spend the majority of their free time watching television (Lazar 67). By the time a young child graduates from high school, he/she will have seen an estimated 350,000 commercials (Carlsson-Paige 68). For the average child, the television set is on in the home for an average of seven hours per day. In a one week time frame the average preschool-aged child (ages two through five) watches 28 hours of television. The average school-aged child (ages six to 11) watches 24 hours of television (Kotz 1296). With such an advent of exposure time the young child is repetitively exposed to the advertisers persuasive dialogue. Children are drawn to the mystique and excitement the television set offers. Due to demographic shifts in the American family it is unlikely that parents will give up the television's entertaining baby-sitting function. In the last two decades, the number of working women with young children and the number of single parent families has sharply risen. In addition statistics recorded in 1990 report, reflect that nearly three-fourths of both parents in married-couple families with children work on a full or part-time basis. Therefore, with the current increase of pressures from home, work, and single parenthood the child becomes attached to the television and all it has to offer, which to a large extent is a selling medium (Lazar 68). The lack of social policy which supports families and regulates children's television leaves the child vulnerable and exploited from the marketplace. The venues advertisers use to market products to children have widened with increasing technology, marketing ploys and an increase of child oriented products/services. Beginning in the middle of the 1970's, the children's television market grew through the addition of independent television channels and cable networks. The early 1980's introduced a successful marketing device known as the program-length commercial which capitalized on taking advantage of an unaware audience (Wartella 449). The program- length commercial is a television show where the main character is modeled after a toy product. The entire program is built around demonstrating to children how to play with a product then encouraging them to buy it. This strategy is extremely successful for many in the toy industry who usually are the ones funding the marketing and production. Mattel who was the first to pioneer the program-length commercial in the early eighties doubled their sales for their He-Man action figure shortly after implementation of the advertisement (Carlsson-Paige 69). This implies that such advertising manipulates children through a character they admire and encourages the child to want this product by extending the exposure so that the child will demand the product. The proliferation of new products aimed for children increases the number of television commercials as well. Common categories are videotapes, 900 number information services, a wider range of food products, including children's TV dinners and other foods that can be prepared by children, an expanded line of clothing and apparel, and an increase of travel advertisements, such as Disneyland, which are aimed explicitly for children to influence their parents vacation choices (Wartella 449). Children have dominant influence on purchases and consumption rates in American families for several changing sociological reasons. Children are influencing more purchases because families today are having only one child, hence the increase of one parent families forces the child to a do a great extent of his/her own shopping. More women are delaying childbearing, therefore, when she decides to have a child generally their is more money open to spend than when she was younger. And in 70% of U.S. households both parents work , requiring children to become more self-reliant than earlier generations (Wartella 451). Besides being an ethical issue, exploiting children creates adverse effects. A study conducted by the American Dietetic Association reveals that advertisers primarily promote high fat and/or high sugar foods and drinks to children. The foods being advertised are not consistent with dietary recommendations. With the extended periods of time contemporary American children spend watching television, concern has risen on the implications this has on health attitudes and behaviors of children. By broadcasting the antithesis of a healthful diet, it may be a significant contributor to obesity in children. Obesity is the result of an energy imbalance that is created when the diet contains mostly high fat and sugar (Kotz 1298). The American Dietetic Association conducted their study by viewing 52.5 hours of television during children's programming. In that time 997 commercials were for a product and a mere 68 were public service announcements. More than half (56.5%) were advertisements for foods while only 10 of the 68 public service announcements were nutrition related. On the average of the 19 commercials advertisements per hour 11 were for food. This means a child views a commercial for food every five minutes (Kotz 1297). This may be an acceptable practice if the foods advertised were nutritious, however, predominantly the foods were inconsistent with what constitutes a healthful diet. Of the 564 food advertisements, 43.6% were for foods in the fats, oils and sweets group. 37.5% were for foods in the breads, cereals, rice and pasta food group, however, 23% of those ads were for high sugar cereals. In this particular study there was not a single advertisement for fruits or vegetables (Kotz 1297). This skewed portrayal of a healthful diet has detrimental consequences not only as a short term effect but the overall effect will stay with the child throughout his/her life. In the United States nine out of 10 adults are at an increased risk of diet related chronic disease. The American Dietetic Association recommends a diet high in vegetables, fruits, whole grains, legumes and to keep fat intake to a minimal, a diet many Americans are lacking perhaps due to advertising's neglect. Because dietary patterns of children mirror those of adults, children too are lacking a healthful diet. Evidence indicates that the atherosclerotic process begins in early childhood and that preventing or slowing this process could extend years of healthful living for many Americans (Kotz 1296). Although it is difficult to distinguish the effect television has on behavioral effects of children, studies show that the amount of time a child spends watching television directly correlates with the request , purchase, and consumption of foods advertised on television. Heavy marketing of high fat and/or sugar foods and not advertising foods with nutritional value is exploitation; the child does not have the knowledge of what is healthful and is not able to understand that commercials are designed to sell products (Kotz 1299). This view is accepted by The American Academy of Pediatrics as well. Their position is stated as the following: Parents rather than children should determine what children should eat. Children are unprepared to make appropriate food choices and do not understand the relationship of food choices to health maintenance and disease prevention....Because young children can not understand the relationship between food choices and chronic nutritional diseases, advertising food products to children promotes profit rather than health (Kotz 1300). Profit seems to be the main motivation in the advertising world. The second effect advertisers promote in young children is materialism coupled often with a loss of self- sufficiency in their ability to make the best with what they have. Due to advertisers influential power on children and the advent of the program-length commercial, children think they have to have certain toys just in order to play. In the past, children created their own accessories, props and so forth in acting out their play. Today, advertisers convince children they must have a manufactured accessory and prop to play. Basically, the advertiser is taking control of the situation and therefore undermining the child's basic sense of self-sufficiency (Carlsson-Paige 69). Not only do advertisers dictate how children should play, but they are also creating an environment where children consistently demand more. Toy manufacturers produce lines of toys which are correlated with cartoons or other children's programming. This type of strategy is successful in making the child want it more. The toys being sold in this way have only one specific function so the child has to get other components to play effectively. The advertiser is getting the child to think in terms of quantity (Carlsson-Paige 69). This creates profit for the advertising industry and creates a materialistic view of the world for the child. Concern of the implications of television has received attention for more than 30 years. Through the pressures of children's advocacy groups, the television market has received some regulation, though minimal. Many critics argue it is not enough and the government must intervene to stop the exploitation of children through television advertising. Current and past regulations imply that the profitability of the market place is regarded more highly than the welfare of children (Kunkel 57). The controversy heated up in the late 1960's when children were considered their own market because of the vast array of commercials directed explicitly to the children's market. Advertisers used direct hard-sell approaches in attempts to persuade the children's market to want the product/service. The advertisers focused their approach on exaggerated claims and showed these commercials often. The public took notice of the repetitiveness and appeals being used and voiced their concern to the Federal Communications Commission (Kunkel 59). In 1970, pressures from a child advocacy group, Action for Children's television (ACT) presented ample evidence to the FCC on television advertising exploitation of children. According to findings conducted by the Surgeon Generals Report, advertising is exploiting children because, one, children the age of five can not distinguish program content from commercial content and , two, children eight and under do not have the cognitive skills to identify persuasion (Lazar 69). Therefore children are an unfair market and the public expects protection on a government level. ACT petitioned the FCC to ban all advertisements directed towards children eight and under. Despite receiving more than 100,000 letters in support of ACT's petition, the FCC did not comply with the request. It took the FCC four years to come up with some restrictions. The restrictions included: advertiser's must limit advertisement time to 9.5 minutes per hour on weekends when viewing is highest and 12 minutes during the week (Lazar 70). The FCC believed reducing frequency would offer the child some sort of protection from exploitation. In order to protect the child five and under who cannot distinguish program content from advertisers, the FCC required all stations to comply with the separation principle. This policy was applied in three different areas: One new requirement was that all television programs adopt a separation device referred to as a Bumper. This device signals to the child a commercial is about to be broadcast. For instance, an announcer might say, "And now a word from our sponsor" (Kankel 62). Critics claim that advertisers have circumvented the rules and they minimize the warnings. For example when speaking disclaimers such as the one mentioned before, the voice over is spoken rapidly and is not understood fully by the child viewer (Pediatrics 295). The second area of regulation prohibited host selling. Host selling is when a character from the program promoted products either directly or adjacent to their show. For example a Barbie Doll commercial could not be seen during a Barbie Doll television show. And thirdly, program-length commercials were prohibited at this time (Kankel 62). In the early 1980's during the time of the Reagan administration, the advertising industry basically deregulated itself. Mattel and other toy companies reinstated the program-length commercial. In 1984, ACT responded to the proliferation of program length commercials by filing a complaint to the FCC. However, according to the FCC, "marketplace forces can better determine commercial levels than our own rules" (Lazar 70). Kunkel and Roberts had the following conclusion to make: "When forced to choose at an extreme level, society(at least in the form of its representative government) valued the protection of private enterprise, commercial speech, and some degree of the concept of caveat emptor more than it valued the protection of children in their interaction with these institutions" (67). The government needs to intervene with some form of regulated guidelines because a child can not be regarded in the same sense as an adult audience. Children are vulnerable to persuasion and should not forced to succumb to materialism so early in life. There have been others concerned with this position and freedom of expression in the free enterprise system has allowed television to become the mass marketing tool. Advertisers seem unconcerned about ethical obligations. So it has to be individual families to shield their children from exploitation. Cynthia Scheibe, psychology professor, and Peggy Charren, founder of ACT, has the following recommendations to lessen the degree of exploitation of children. The amount of television watched should be limited in order to decrease its negative effects. Adults should impress upon youngsters that having more toys or clothes won't always bring satisfaction. As a parent, one should watch the advertisements with the child and ask the child such questions as "What is it they're trying to sell?" The parent should also take the child to the store to see if the desired products are really as exciting in real life as they appear to be on television. The parent should point out to the child that the objects surrounding the product are unrealistically big meaning the toy is probably smaller than it appears. And lastly, get the child to make up his or her own commercial and try to sell a product to another child to see how difficult it is to sell a product fairly in 30 seconds (Collins 5). Although these suggestions are useful they still are not a remedy for the problem advertisers create. It is society's responsibility to push for regulation that will protect America's children from advertisers' exploitation. The first amendment gives all citizens responsibility along with freedom: the responsibility to protect their vulnerable youth, the responsibility to limit their excesses, which with the pervasion of advertising has become next to impossible, and the responsibility to insulate children from a world of adults who employ unfair tactics just to sell. It is the duty of adults to teach sound ethics to children rather than to breach all ethical considerations for the purpose of selling, thus brainwashing our children through commercials and making them feel incomplete, inferior, and inadequate if they do not purchase various advertised products. It is citizens' responsibility to nurture children to become self-sufficient, creative, healthy adults who have not a distorted propensity for materialism. The welfare of America's children is the welfare of her future. Appendix I Survey of parents with children between the ages of one and eight years old. The following questions were answered by the 10 parents who participated in the survey: 1. Do you think children's advertising is manipulative? 80% Agreed 10% Disagreed 10% No opinion 2. Has your child ever asked you to purchase a product they saw advertised? 90% answered Yes 0% answered No 10% did not remember 3. Did the purchased advertised product live up to your child's expectations? 50% answered Yes 40% answered No 10% do not remember 4. Do you think the government should regulate children's advertising? 80% answered Yes 10% answered No 10% had no opinion Works Cited Brady, Diane. "The Power of Cowabunga." Maclean's Dec. 1992: 50. Bush, Alan J., and Victoria Davis Bush. "The Narrative Paradigm as a Perspective For Improving Ethical Evaluations of Advertisements." Journal of Advertising 23.3 (1994): 31-41. Carlson-Paige, Nancy and Diane E. Lerin. "Saturday Morning Pushers." Utne Reader Jan. 1992: 68-70. Collins, Claire. "Fighting the Holiday Ad Blitz." The New York Times Nov. 1994: 3-4. Guber, Selina S. and Jon Berry. Marketing to and through kids New York: Mcgraw-Hill, 1993. Hernandez, Debra Gersh. "Unfair advertising defined for FTC." Editor and Publishing Oct. 1994: 34. Kotz, Krista. "Food Advertisements during Children's Saturday Morning Television Programming: Are they consistent with dietary recommendations?" Journal of the American Dietetic Association 94.11 (1994): 1296-1300. Krugman, and others. Advertising: It's Role in Modern Marketing. Fort Worth: The Dryden Press, 1994. Kunkel, Dale and Donald Roberts. "Young Minds and Marketplace Values: Issues in Children's Television Advertising." Journal of Social Issues 47.1(199 f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Stress For and against.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Stress Introduction You come home from work feeling as though you have been run through the spin cycle of your washing machine. You can't wait to take off your shoes and pour yourself a (stiff ) cool drink. Stress! Everybody knows what stress is. Stress is an integral part of our urban lifestyle. It has become a normal part of life, although it is generally known that stress is bad for health. But, doesn't stress also have advantages? Is stress the same as burden? What is stress? First of all we want to make clear what exactly stress is. The body's adaptive response to abnormal circumstances (like threats or demands) from a new or changing situation is called stress. The term "stress" refers both to certain heightened mental and body states and to the causes of such states. Nowadays the symptoms of stress are well known. When the human body is under stress (whether it is real or imaginary) Adrenaline is poured into the bloodstream. As a result of that the pulse quickens, the blood pressure raises and the muscle tension increases. Furthermore you may feel more criticised by others, become more pessimistic, cynical, or resentful than usual. Things you normally look forward to may seem like a burden. A lot of people are not aware of being under stress. Some are frequently under so much stress that they assume the feeling is normal. Pros By hearing the word "stress" most people think of something unpleasant and bad. But that is only conditionally true. Stress has also several positive aspects: - A lot of people (students!) take stress as a replacement for self-discipline. They just can't start working without time- pressure. They need to know a certain date when they must finish their work.. (like students before a test) - It is known, that people work better, faster and more effective under stress. There are people, who are even more creative under stress! This is because of the height Adrenaline content into your bloodstream. - Stress is said to be the best sport doping (Adrenaline). During a sport activity, Stress encourages and raises the attention / strength. Under stress the human body is able to do better to do better physical achievements. Last but not least, some producers of stress (such as physical exercise, various emotional states, and creative activity) are usually very healthy! But be careful, continuous high levels of stress are not. Contras On the other hand, stress has much more disadvantages than advantages. - Stress is bad for your health! A lot of people react to stress with aggressiveness, competitiveness, and self-imposed pressure to get things done. This behaviour has been linked to increased rates of heart attack, high blood pressure and other diseases. Stress can also affect the immune system, causing the body to be less resistant to a wide range of other health problems. - Most people can't think clear under stress. They make false decision and work superficial (slapdash). Stress causes reduced concentration ability. - Stress doesn't only affect you, it also has an effect on your environment. If you're under stress and nervous, your (school/work) friends automatically become like you. A stressed person has a bad influence on the work/school atmosphere. A lot of friendship have broken down because of excessive stress. Ending It is said, that stress is the most common "illness" at the moment. I am not of the same opinion. As I look at it, everybody reacts different to stress. While some people become aggressive and nervous, other people may be equally serious in their intentions, but are more patient. So, it is not possible to say, whether stress is good or bad. It just depends on the person. Furthermore I think that stress is unavoidable nowadays. But if you're once under stress, try to manage it the best possible. Why not making stress work for you as a source of energy? Better you use your energies by being creative than wasting them by getting furious. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Strikes and Alternative forms of Coping.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Strikes and Alternative Forms of Coping Are strikes the most beneficial way of resolving labour - management conflict? Or are alternative forms of coping more beneficial?. Throughout this paper I will attempt to answer these questions by, first giving a description of each of these forms of coping. Then I will examine the effects, both positive and negative, that each of these forms of coping has on the collective bargaining process as well as the labor - management relationship. Finally I will compare the effectiveness of strikes as opposed to the effectiveness of alternative forms of coping. A strike occurs when unionized workers collectively agree to stop working in order to try and force management to agree to a new collective bargaining agreement. Under the law a strike can only occur if the existing collective bargaining agreement has expired and generally strikes do not occur unless labour and management have reached a stalemate in the contract negotiations. Negotiations often stall for a number of reasons, but the most common reasons are wage and benefit levels. Often both sides over estimate the other sides willingness to concede and when both sides have given all they are willing to give without reaching a compromise, a stalemate is reached. During a stalemate both sides try to convince the other that they are unable give any more. In order to show there determination unionized workers often decide to go strike, and will stay on strike until management is ready to give in to their demands. The workers determine whether or not they feel the need to strike, by a strike vote. If the majority of workers are in favor of going on strike then the union declares a day and time that an agreement must be reached, or there workers will walk off the job. A number of restrictions apply with respect to the actions of workers once a strike has begun. First, there are restrictions on picketing, you must have permission to picket on privately owned property. Second, you can not legally stop people or shipments from going in or out of the company, nor can you cause harm to anyone wishing to cross the picket line. If the employer sees that you are violating these laws, he or she can seek an injunction, to limit your ability to picket. The employer has certain rights during a strike. First they have the right to continue operations during the strike, be it by filling in them selves or by hiring replacement workers. Secondly, they can fire anyone who takes part in sabotage or violence during a strike. Third, they can discontinue benefits during a strike, and they do not have to follow the old agreement, they can change the terms and conditions of employment until a new agreement is reached. The benefits of striking include higher wages, more benefits, better working conditions, etc... There is also a negative side to striking. If management decides to hire replacement workers during your absence, you may not have a job to return to. Management may be prepared to leave you on strike for long periods of time, for example, Federated Co-Op allowed the workers in Nipawan to stay on strike for seven years. Also during a strike you are not receiving a paycheck, unions usually try to pay strikers, but this is usually a fraction of your old paycheck. Finally during a long strike, the company may have not been able to meet its orders and may have lost business, this could lead to layoffs when a settlement is reached. Strikes are most common among highly skilled workers, because they possess a lot of strike power. Strike power is what it would cost management if you went on strike. If you are a worker at a fast food restaurant you possess very little strike power because in the event of a strike you could easily be replaced. But if you have a highly skilled job, it will cost management to hire and train someone to replace you. Striking does not, in most cases, alter the labor - management relationship. Once a contract is reached most workplace return to business as usual. Managers as well as labor should not take what is said at the negotiation table personally, because each side is just trying to prove it is right. For example during contract negotiations of athletes, players will often try to compare themselves to another player, and state that he is better and deserves to payed so. Management will try to prove that he not as goad as that player and that he deserves less. After a contract has been reached both sides are usually content and proceed with their jobs. Labor doesn't always have to go on strike to get managements attention. There are numerous alternatives, however I will only concentrate on two of these alternatives; slacking and sabotage. Alternative coping behaviors may or may not be used by a collective group, and contrary to striking, they can be used at any time during the collective agreement.. Many times a worker, who is unsatisfied with his or her working environment may use one of these alternative forms of coping to get managements attention. Slacking is a situation in which a worker slows his or her production to a minimum or refuses to work any overtime or above and beyond his duties. This can have a profound effect in an assembly line, because if one worker slows down the entire production line slows down. Also if an order needs to be completed by a certain date, workers will usually work overtime to complete the order in time, but during a work slow down they will refuse and the order will be late, thus causing the company money. During collective bargaining workers may decide collectively to slow down, the speed at which they work, instead of striking. By doing this, labor is able to keep their wages, but are still forcing management to agree to their demands. Slacking may also be used during the existing contract to let management know that labor is not content with certain aspects of the work environment, and if management does not fix what is wrong before the next contract negotiations, labor will be prepared to go on strike until they are fixed. There are positives and negatives to slacking. If slacking is effective management may concede to your demands in order to get production back to its old level. Also you are able to vent your frustration towards management, and still keep your paycheck. The negatives to slacking are the fact that you could be fired or you might force management to lock you out until an agreement is reached. During the lock out you will not have a paycheck. Sabotage is another alternative to striking. It is defined as the destruction of machinery or tools, a hindering of the manufacturing process or a waste of materials by workers as a threat or act to protest against management. Sabotage can also be used by an individual or by a group of workers. Sabotage will usually have the same effect as slacking but may cost the company a little more. For example if a worker on an assembly line purposely breaks something, the line must be stopped in order to fix the problem, thus slowing production. The companies costs are, the cost to repair the problem as well as the loss in production. The risks of choosing sabotage are greater than those of slacking, because there is no concrete way of proving that you were slacking, other than the loss in production, that may not be noticed by management. But when you participate in sabotage, management is sure to notice, and it would be hard to claim that it was accident if the sabotage is occurring often. The risks involved with sabotage are also greater for an individual than they are for a group. If an individual is caught he or she is likely to be fired or to have their wages reduced to pay for the repair or replacement of the damaged article(s). If a group is seen to be purposely sabotaging stuff, management is more likely to force the entire shift to pay to replace or repair the damages, then they are to fire an entire shift. As was the case with striking and slacking, the effects of sabotage can both be positive and negative. The positive effects of sabotage are that management sees the need to improve the workplace and does. Also during contract negotiations, management may be forced to concede on certain issues in order to stop the sabotage. The negative aspects of sabotage include the possibility of being fired, or the loss of pay that could result from the replacement cost. Also during contract negotiations management may see the costs of sabotage as being to great and decide to lock its workers out until a new contract is reached. Slacking and sabotage are most likely to be used by the worker who possess' very little strike power, meaning if labor were to go strike management would have problem replacing them with scabs. By public sector employee's, who are forced to under go compulsory arbitration in the event that they cannot reach a settlement on their own and by workers designated as providing "essential" services, such as firefighters or police officers. In conclusion to compare strikes to alternative forms of coping, would be like comparing apples to oranges. A workers best option is determined by the level of strike power he or she possess. If the worker is highly skilled he possess a lot of strike power, and therefore the cost for management to replace him or her would be considerable. Even the threat of strike by highly skilled workers could be enough to force management to concede to labors demands. Management will try to do all they possibly can to keep highly skilled labor from going on strike, if they see the loss' at the bargaining table as being less than the loss' if a strike were to occur. If the worker is low skilled, he or she does not possess a lot of strike power. In the event of a strike replacement workers could take over with a minimum amount of training. The best option for a low skilled worker is then to use alternative forms of coping, and to use them effectively. If slacking or sabotage, for example, are used incorrectly they may cause management to lock out the workers and this leaves them no bargaining power because of the ease with witch they can be replaced. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Survey on Human Compassion Towards Their Pets.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Survey on Human Compassion Towards Their Pets Problem: Due to recent charges of animal abuse among pet owners, I have decided to do a survey on the amount of respect owners give to their animal companions, also known as pets. Animals, other than us "intelligent" humans, seem to be treated with little respect, if any. In Spain they celebrate their dominance over animals once a year. This celebration consists of the mass murder and torture of goats, bulls, sheep, and other "subhuman" creatures. Throughout the world animals are undergoing constant experiments on their body tissues, organs, and immune system. There is no mercy for the animals in today's modern and fast paced world where cures are more and more needed, and the tasty flesh of animals is in demand. Or is there? Recently, animal rights activists and organizations are sprouting up like dandelions, nice looking and hard to get rid of. Vegetarianism is also becoming more popular, and may very well be the way of the future. The problem is most people think that animals are less better than us, and should be treated with far less respect than we would give a fellow human being. Hypothesis: I think that people care less for animals due to the way society programmed to think and behave. Since the day that we were born, most parents preached to us "Be nice to the family dog," or the cat or whatever the case may be, and right after that they would say "Time for supper." When the children came to the table, on their plates would be some nice broccoli, a potato, and a slab of meat. The way society teaches us to be nice to animals while they stab the animals in the back, literally, is a hypocrisy. They say one thing, and then do the complete opposite. Society, in more cases, cannot even follow their own morals they teach. Luckily, thanks to the animal activists and organizations, society is having to revise their misguided ideology about the rights of animals. Human compassion is blossoming, and that is why I hypothesize we are more caring toward animals now, than we have been in the past. This will be proven by a series of questions, each showing how much they either care, or don't care. Data Gathering: To obtain the information I needed, I could have used many different methods. However, I decided to use the telephone as a tool to acquire the answers and responses I would need to validate my hypothesis. I devised a table (on the next page) to keep track of the information. Eleven questions were asked and are listed below: 1 Do you have a pet? 2 What type of animal is it? 3 Is it a male or female? 4 Where did you get him/her? 5 How long has he/she been with you? 6 Do you bring him/her in for regular checkups? 7 Do you groom him/her? 8 Is this done professionally or personally? 9 Who cares for your pet when you go on a vacation? 10 Do you consider him/her a part of your family? 11 Do you eat meat? With this series of questions I hoped to get a good idea of how they treated and cared for their animal companions. The first question about having a pet led to the asking of the other questions, except for the last one which will be explained later in this portion of the survey. Obviously, if someone doesn't have a pet I can't ask if they groom it or if they consider it to be part of the family. The next few questions after the first are seeing how much knowledge the respondent has of their pet, and the questions after those are seeing how much they seem to care or not care about their pet. When I started to phone around to get the results, I chose only random numbers. This way I hoped to get a broader picture of the whole pet-owner scene. I introduced myself, and asked the questions as politely as I could. Every answer given was put into the computer and saved frequently incase of a malfunction in the program I was using. I pretested the questionnaire with some of my friends and mother, which was successful. I was pleased to see that they understood my questions clearly and answered as I expected them to be answered. That does not mean that the answers were fixed, only that the answers replied to the questions made sense. Since everyone answered in the same correct format (answers actually answering the questions), I found no need to make any revisions. Fortunately, my planning of the questions before testing them has paid off. Data Analysis: My hypothesis of people being kinder to animals than they would have in the past proved to be correct. However, through the data gathering and the tabulation chart, I have surprised myself. I have made the misconception that people are mean and disrespectable toward animals other than the human race. Humans are kinder than I ever thought possible. I was expecting to hear some respectful comments here and there to prove my hypothesis correct, but instead I found out that a lot of the respondents respect their animal companions and have great pride of them. Out of the people who had animal companions (75%), more than half of them (60%) take time out of their own schedule to groom them. The noble cat seemed to be the most popular of the "pets" (47%), in second place are the dogs (27%) which surprised me as they are the stereotypical pets in North American culture. Birds ranked in third (20%), followed by the rat (6%). The females were the dominant sex in this survey (73%). I think that females are more common as domestic pets because they are less aggressive in most situations. Male animals tend to be violent when another animal passes into its territory, which could harm itself, another animal, or human. Sixty-six percent of all the animal companions were bought at a pet store, and the others were family (20%), friends (6%), or other (6%). More than half of the subjects (66%) bring their pets to the veterinarian for regular checkups, which clearly demonstrates the owner-pet attachment is fairly high. It shows that they want their animal friends to be healthy and safe, so they can live longer to provide company and love for both the owner and the pet. I thought that the owner would like the animal companion to be taken care of by the most trustworthy being they know, that usually being family. Only forty-seven percent of the respondents have their pets taken care of by the family, and fifty-three percent taken care of by friends. Now I think it isn't always the family who is more trustworthy. It is possible that the friends can be as or more trustworthy than family. Another possibility could be whoever is around to take care of the pet. If the animal lives in one part of town, and so does a friend, and the family lives on the other side, the friend would probably be the one chosen to take care of it. It would be a burden on the family to travel across town when a friend could easily walk or take a short drive over there. I have also found that twenty-five percent of all of the respondents are vegetarians in some form or other. That means if this percent was constant throughout the world, one in four people would be a vegetarian. Unfortunately this probably isn't the case, but it is a really nice thought. This experiment could have been improved by doing more surveying to get a broader view of the problem. The results would be more accurate if more people had a chance to give their valuable input. I could have also had more questions to ask to validate my hypothesis. But when all is said and done, I think I have composed a well-written survey. Conclusion: The human race is a constantly changing species and hard to monitor. One moment we are driving thousands of animals to extinction and endangerment. Now we are trying to repair the damage we have caused. Every day is a new, unpredictable day and is impossible to say what the next new trend in society's treatment of animals will hold. Hopefully the trend will be to respect them more as the trend seems to be now. The results of this survey have shown how we are respecting animals more and more. It has also shown how I have underestimated the humanity of the humans. Humans aren't a bad species, we just make a lot of mistakes and it is up to us to correct them. The sooner we start correcting our many mistakes, the longer the human race and all of the other planet creatures will exist. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Sweatshops.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ?ñ|ñÔ%€Ôñ|ñSweatShops:?  ° ????à  àUsual€sweatshop€conditions€consist€of:???Children,€women,€and€teens€worki ng€15€hours€a€day,€such€at€reporting€for€duty€??at€7:30€am,€and€not€gettin g€off€untill€9€at€night.€€Every€day€of€the€week.€€A€75€??hour€work€week€i s€not€uncommon.€€Along€with€the€minors,€pregnant€women€??were€also€forc ed€to€work€these€grueling€shifts,€on€their€feet€15€hours€a€day,€??usually€in €extreme€heat.€€A€majority€of€sweatshops€keep€the€bathrooms€locked,€??so€ you€must€get€permission€to€use€them.€€And€they€may€only€use€it€twice€a€d ay!€Ï?And€nobody€is€allowed€to€communicate€with€other€workers€when€on€th e€job,€??they€are€also€usually€physically€searched€on€the€way€into€the€plant €for€candy€of€?food,€which€is€prohibited.€€The€supervisors€scream€all€day€fo r€the€workers€to€??work€harder€and€faster,€they€also€don't€provide€healthcare €or€sickdays.????à  àThe€women€told€investigators€from€the€National€Labor€Committee,€a€U.S.€? ?based€human€rights€organization,€that€they€are€frequently€shortchanged€of€the ir€?proper€overtime€pay,€and€maternity€benefits,€not€bringing€home€enough€to €??properly€feed€their€children.€€The€children€are€forced€to€work€long€hours €under€??close€watch€and€are€often€not€allowed€to€go€outside,€those€who€tr y€to€escape€??are€beaten€and€tortured.€€???à  àChildren€work€in€rich€countries€too.€€In€the€U.S.€for€example,€in€1988€??a bout€28%€of€fifteen€year€olds€were€working.€€In€striking€contrast€with€poor€? ?countries,€in€the€United€States,€children€from€low"income€families€are€less€li kely€?to€be€employed€than€children€from€high"income€families.€In€the€U.S.€po or€youth€?  ¥-?(- ?‡ñ}ñÔ%€Ôñ}ñhave€high€levels€of€unemployment.€€Enforce ment€of€child€labor€laws€in€many€??states€was€weak€at€best...????à  àChildren€are€exploited€for€their€labor€throughout€the€world.€€The€horror€?? stories€of€children€in€carpet€mills,€brick€factories,€and€even€prostitution€rings€ ??are€well€documented.€€The€condition€under€which€children€work€is€usually€ ??determined€by€international€markets€forpaticular€products.€€Rugs€made€of€? ?Kashmir€for€example€are€bound€for€the€international€market.€€Children€who€p eel€??shrimp€in€sheds€in€Thailand€are€also€responding€to€the€demands€of€a n€??international€market.€€In€some€cases,€however,€the€fact€thaat€quality€stan dards€??are€higher€and€ruless€are€generally€more€stringent€for€exported€produ cts€may€??mean€that€children€are€more€likely€to€be€regulatedto€work€serving €domestic€??markets.€This€appears€to€be€the€case€in€the€marketing€industries €of€Thialand.???à  àOverall€sweatshops€and€child€labor€is€no€laughing€matter,€it€is€a€sad€??th ing€that€these€people€are€forces€to€work€these€god€aweful€hours,€in€these€? ?extreme€conditions,€with€harsh€rules,€and€very€low€wages.€€Most€sweatshop€ ??mothers€dont€even€make€enough€money€to€get€milk€for€their€baby's€so€th ey€are€??forced€to€feed€them€sugar"water,€says€one€Global€Fashion€(makers€ of€Kathie's€??Line€of€clothing)€worker.€€As€you€can€clearly€see€these€people' s€human€rights€??are€being€violated,€let's€end€thisfor€these€poor€people,€boy cott€sweatshop€??products...ó ó f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Technology in Modern America.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Technology in Modern America U.S. Wage Trends The microeconomic picture of the U.S. has changed immensely since 1973, and the trends are proving to be consistently downward for the nation's high school graduates and high school drop-outs. "Of all the reasons given for the wage squeeze - international competition, technology, deregulation, the decline of unions and defense cuts - technology is probably the most critical. It has favored the educated and the skilled," says M. B. Zuckerman, editor-in-chief of U.S. News & World Report (7/31/95). Since 1973, wages adjusted for inflation have declined by about a quarter for high school dropouts, by a sixth for high school graduates, and by about 7% for those with some college education. Only the wages of college graduates are up. Of the fastest growing technical jobs, software engineering tops the list. Carnegie Mellon University reports, "recruitment of it's software engineering students is up this year by over 20%." All engineering jobs are paying well, proving that highly skilled labor is what employers want! "There is clear evidence that the supply of workers in the [unskilled labor] categories already exceeds the demand for their services," says L. Mishel, Research Director of Welfare Reform Network. In view of these facts, I wonder if these trends are good or bad for society. "The danger of the information age is that while in the short run it may be cheaper to replace workers with technology, in the long run it is potentially self-destructive because there will not be enough purchasing power to grow the economy," M. B. Zuckerman. My feeling is that the trend from unskilled labor to highly technical, skilled labor is a good one! But, political action must be taken to ensure that this societal evolution is beneficial to all of us. "Back in 1970, a high school diploma could still be a ticket to the middle income bracket, a nice car in the driveway and a house in the suburbs. Today all it gets is a clunker parked on the street, and a dingy apartment in a low rent building," says Time Magazine (Jan 30, 1995 issue). However, in 1970, our government provided our children with a free education, allowing the vast majority of our population to earn a high school diploma. This means that anyone, regardless of family income, could be educated to a level that would allow them a comfortable place in the middle class. Even restrictions upon child labor hours kept children in school, since they are not allowed to work full time while under the age of 18. This government policy was conducive to our economic markets, and allowed our country to prosper from 1950 through 1970. Now, our own prosperity has moved us into a highly technical world, that requires highly skilled labor. The natural answer to this problem, is that the U.S. Government's education policy must keep pace with the demands of the highly technical job market. If a middle class income of 1970 required a high school diploma, and the middle class income of 1990 requires a college diploma, then it should be as easy for the children of the 90's to get a college diploma, as it was for the children of the 70's to get a high school diploma. This brings me to the issue of our country's political process, in a technologically advanced world. Voting & Poisoned Political Process in The U.S. The advance of mass communication is natural in a technologically advanced society. In our country's short history, we have seen the development of the printing press, the radio, the television, and now the Internet; all of these, able to reach millions of people. Equally natural, is the poisoning and corruption of these medias, to benefit a few. From the 1950's until today, television has been the preferred media. Because it captures the minds of most Americans, it is the preferred method of persuasion by political figures, multinational corporate advertising, and the upper 2% of the elite, who have an interest in controlling public opinion. Newspapers and radio experienced this same history, but are now somewhat obsolete in the science of changing public opinion. Though I do not suspect television to become completely obsolete within the next 20 years, I do see the Internet being used by the same political figures, multinational corporations, and upper 2% elite, for the same purposes. At this time, in the Internet's young history, it is largely unregulated, and can be accessed and changed by any person with a computer and a modem; no license required, and no need for millions of dollars of equipment. But, in reviewing our history, we find that newspaper, radio and television were once unregulated too. It is easy to see why government has such an interest in regulating the Internet these days. Though public opinion supports regulating sexual material on the Internet, it is just the first step in total regulation, as experienced by every other popular mass media in our history. This is why it is imperative to educate people about the Internet, and make it be known that any regulation of it is destructive to us, not constructive! I have been a daily user of the Internet for 5 years (and a daily user of BBS communications for 9 years), which makes me a senior among us. I have seen the moves to regulate this type of communication, and have always openly opposed it. My feelings about technology, the Internet, and political process are simple. In light of the history of mass communication, there is nothing we can do to protect any media from the "sound byte" or any other form of commercial poisoning. But, our country's public opinion doesn't have to fall into a nose-dive of lies and corruption, because of it! The first experience I had in a course on Critical Thinking came when I entered college. As many good things as I have learned in college, I found this course to be most valuable to my basic education. I was angry that I hadn't had access to the power of critical thought over my twelve years of basic education. Simple forms of critical thinking can be taught as early as kindergarten. It isn't hard to teach a young person to understand the patterns of persuasion, and be able to defend themselves against them. Television doesn't have to be a weapon against us, used to sway our opinions to conform to people who care about their own prosperity, not ours. With the power of a critical thinking education, we can stop being motivated by the sound byte and, instead we can laugh at it as a cheap attempt to persuade us. In conclusion, I feel that the advance of technology is a good trend for our society; however, it must be in conjunction with advance in education so that society is able to master and understand technology. We can be the masters of technology, and not let it be the masters of us. Bibliography Where have the good jobs gone?, By: Mortimer B. Zuckerman U.S. News & World Report, volume 119, pg 68 (July 31, 1995) Wealth: Static Wages, Except for the Rich, By: John Rothchild Time Magazine, volume 145, pg 60 (January 30, 1995) Welfare Reform, By: Lawrence Mishel http://epn.org/epi/epwelf.html (Feb 22, 1994) 20 Hot Job Tracks, By: K.T. Beddingfield, R. M. Bennefield, J. Chetwynd, T. M. Ito, K. Pollack & A. R. Wright U.S. News & World Report, volume 119, pg 98 (Oct 30, 1995) Word Count: 1,277 f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Teenage Suicide.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Teenage Suicide The killing of own life intentionally is referred as suicide. Over the past years, American society has been concerned about this issue, especially teenage suicide. The suicide rate among teenagers is not constant for a period of time; it keeps changing over time. Most of the time, the suicide rate among boys is greater than that among girls. Different types of people in our society respond to this issue in different ways. Earlier in this year, some 932 parents of adolescents completed a questionnaire of 30 common psychological medical concerns of adolescence, among which suicide was one item. They were asked how important it is for pediatricians to discuss these with their kids during checkups. The result showed that more than 66% of the parents being questioned said 29 of the 30 items were important to be discussed with their teenage children. This survey showed that American parents are somehow concerned about suicide among teenagers. This concern is pervasive among American teenagers. In 1993, a national survey of adolescents about their knowledge of, and attitudes toward, youth suicide was made. The survey reulted that 60% of the teenagers reported knowing another teen who had attempted suicide while 6% reported having make an attempt themselves. The above two examples indicates that it is very important for parents, counselors, or different institutions to become aware of the reasons and symptons of teenage suicide and to find out possible preventive procedures. Recently, an examination of suicide rates among Black and White adolescents from 1986 to 1991 was made. It showed that suicide rate among girls of all ethnicities remained stable. Also, the rate for White boys were pretty much stabilized; however, the rate for Black and other minority boys increased significantly. Those increases were more rapid in areas where suicide rates were historically low. This phenomenon tells that there are various kinds of reasons for suicide and different types of methods for suicide are also being used. During the late 1970s and early 1980s in Oxford, the rate of deliberate self-poisoning and self-injury in older female teenagers declined, but it increased again between 1986 and 1989. For male adolescents, self-poisoning with minor tanquillizers and sedatives had declined, but paracetamol self-poisoning increased in that period. In Zimbabwe, young women during 1970s used poison as the method of suicide; however, self-immolation was frequently being used in the mid 1980s. There are various types of reasons why teenagers commit suicide. Suicide in teenagers is sometimes linked to, or in relation with, vision therapy. It was argued that an inadequate level of concentration or short attention span of a patient is a common cause for the academic, personality, and behavioral symptoms. Therefore, unless treated well, these symptoms might lead to committing suicide. The reasons for gay, lesbian, or bisexual adolescents committing suicide are a little different than other teenagers. Research shows that gay, lesbian, or bisexual teenagers often lack peer support and positive role models, and therefore, find it difficult to establish a positive adolescent identity. As a result, a large number of them suffer from psychological dysfunction, running away, droping out of school, prostitution, violence, AIDS or other sexually transmitted diseases. Eventually, these dangerous behaviors sometimes lead them to suicide. Teenagers may also want to commit suicide if they are sexually or physically molested for a certain period of time. In 1992, data from 352 pregnant adolescents (aged 12-19) were collected, in which 80 acknowledged having been physically or sexually abused, and 40 admitted to having suicidal ideation or actions. In 1994, two cases of Italian teenagers who had attempted suicide were discussed and compared. The suicide attempt of a 17-year old female is traced to masochistic impulses based on a sense of guilt, while that of a 18-year old male is explained by a narcissistic neurosis stemming from a sense of shame. A panal formed by national medical and educational associations issued a report in 1993, which painted a dire picture of the state of adolescent health. The analysis of the report presented youth problems, including social and emotional problems, school performance, drug use, drinking and driving, violence in school, pregnancy, crime, etc. as common reasons for and characteristics of a teen's self-destructive nature, which eventually leads him or her to suicide. In Canada, researches were made to figure out the reasons for teenage suicide. It showed lack of moral parental support, an over-permissive educational climate, and doubtful economic prospects as placing pressures on the fragile ego and the still-unformed identity of teenagers. In this situation, some react with drug abuse, dilinquency, or compulsively sought scholastic achievement, while others, unable to cope with these psychological pressures, commit suicide. Sometimes, there is a relationship between network TV news stories and subsequent suicides. For example, some teenagers (also adults) may react deeply to a sudden news presented, and eventually, it might cause them to commit suicide. During the past two decades, the incidence of suicide and suicide attempts among U.S. gifted students has steadily increased. There are many reasons for these suicides. In addition to the usual stressors, gifted teenagers also confront such issues as perfectionism, societal expectation to achieve, differential development of intellectual and social skills, and impotence to effect real-world change. These kinds of difficulties sometimes make the gifted teenagers to commit suicide. Another one of the most important reasons for teenage suicide is depression. Depression can occur due to various factors. A survey in 1990 showed that depression has a strong correlation with suicidal preoccupation than shyness, allienation, or academic performance. Also, reports said that chronic self-destructiveness in teenagers is related to depression and suicidal preoccupation. Both chronic self-destructiveness and depression are associated with suicidal ideation. Since teenage suicide has been a burning issue, it is important to take efforts to prevent such an incident. Recently, a review of a literature indicated a need for suicide awareness and prevention programs for the early identification of teenagers at risk for suicidal behaviors. In this case, the most logical and appropriate location for suicide prevention programs and activities is in the schools where the greatest numbers can be reached. Since the issue is involved with teenagers, high schools are the best place to set prevention programs. Therefore, in a joint effort, school personnel and the master's- prepared psychiatric mental health nurse specialists may be able to decrease significantly the number of suicidal behaviors among adolescents. Teenage suicide can also be reduced by properly treating adolescents with learning disabilities (LDs). In general, those with non-verbal LDs eventually attempt suicide at some point than those without LDs. Therefore, optometrists should be aware of patients with learning disabilities and refer them to mental health professionals when indications of depression is observed. In this way, many teenagers can be prevented from committing suicide. A few years ago, the American Academy of Child Psychiatry identified some warning signals indicating possible suicide such as: changes in eating and sleeping habits, violent or rebellious behaviors, etc. In these kinds of situations, counselors can play a vital role for preventing suicide in teenagers. Most of the time, counselors are the first professionals confronted with symptoms or threats of suicide. They can apply coping techniques, which include anxiety reduction, creating hope, and improving adolescents' communication skills to reduce the risk of suicide. In 1991, a journal stated some risk factors for suicide to which prevention procedures can rationally be directed. Suicide prevention interventions include hotline and crisis services, school-based educational and screening procedures, effective treatment of suicide attempts, and minimizing opportunities for suicide. These methods may become helpful in preventing teenage suicide. It is sometimes very difficult to eliminate a crisis completely from the society. Likewise, teenage suicide is also not quite easy to wipe out from the American society. However, people in general, parents of adolescents, teachers, counselors, and other kinds of social workers can work together to fight against teenage suicide. ****************************** f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Television Violence 2.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ December 12, 1996 Television Violence Violence in television, is it turning our children into violent, destructive, and hateful toddlers. Yes or no? In today's society television plays such a big role in our everyday lives that it is hard to see if it effects our children's behavior. Television has the potential of being a very constructive learning tool, if used correctly. On the other hand if used in a destructive manner it could, hypothetically, turn our children and future leaders of tomorrow into deadly hate mongers. I believe that television does effect the way people think and behave. In a survey given in 1978 at an unnamed college in Washington D.C., when asked if what was seen on T.V. effected the way they acted ,2% thought it did ,7% didn't know and ,91% didn't think it effected them at all(2). In 1993 a similar survey was given in London by the Broadcasting Standard Council( BSC ). When people were asked if they thought T.V. effected the way people behaved 41% said yes, 4% left without finishing the survey, and 55% said that they didn't think it effected the way people acted(14). As seen in the survey the problem of television violence is being made more aware to the people of the world. The problem has also grown over the years to a more serious dilemma making the government start to try and solve the problem by initiating laws in which television stations must limit violence on T.V.(6). It is still not enough though the problem must be taken care of promptly before it changes society as a whole. If the problem is not taken care of swiftly then it could effect the future of the world by having violence rampage the streets of our towns. In the past when television was first invented it was a much happier time. people could walk on our streets without having to care if they were going to make it home alive. I'm not trying to say that television is the reason that society today is so dangerously violent, but as violence on television evolved so did the violence on our streets. In the past there were not as many violent T.V. shows if there were even any. Also T.V. was more of a family recreation, most families could only afford one T.V. set so when children watched T.V. they were supervised by their family making violence almost an impossible thing to see if parents were not interested. Today, there are an average of three televisions per household so it is harder for parents to make sure their children are watching suitable programs. This also makes it easier for a child to watch unsuitable violent television shows(7). In today's society violent acts occur commonly that can be linked to television or movies. In December of 1993 a young ten year old child after watching an episode of Beavis and Butthead went into his two year old sisters room and lit her baby crib on fire. This not only burnt the house down , gave the ten year old kid serious third degree burns, but also killed the two year old baby by burning to death(8). Also in October of 1993 after watching a movie intitled " The Program " a handful of college kids mimicking a scene from the movie laid down in the middle of a busy intersection and dodged traffic. This little sheraid killed two of the kids, gave another two serious injuries which put them in the critical care unit of the hospital for a month before recovering , and gave one student a fractured collar bone and multiple fractured ribs(15). Because of these two incidents and many more television violence has been brought to the attention of the citizens of the world. It has also grabbed the attention of the United States government. Since these occurrences the government has strengthened there hold on the collar of the television stations around the U.S. by making stricter restrictions on T.V. shows(3). In the future, The government has put together laws that they would like to pass to limit television violence. Such rules are 1) A set of 1-800 numbers for parents to call to get information on T.V. shows that contain violence. This way the parents can choose or limit the viewing of violent programs for there children. 2) Also there would be a count of violent incidents in a show before each program on the television, this would also allow parents to regulate children's viewing. 3) Violence warnings would be shown before each show containing violence ( This is already done with most television stations ). 4) The government would monitor promotional spots for violent shows. The government would prohibit a commercial for violent television shows until an hour later in the evening when children are asleep. 5) There would also be the organization of a presidential commission to identify other potential solutions to television violence. 6) Finally, there would be a disallowance of tax deductions for the cost of advertising on violent shows(9). Also there is anew invention out called the V-chip that would be put into all new television sets. This invention takes signals sent from the television stations, and then translates them telling the T.V. if there is violence in the television show being watched. Then if the parents want to program the T.V. set to not show violent material the T.V. blacks out such material preventing children to watch(13). There are many arguments why television can't be completely abolished. One of these reasons is the constitution. The first amendment states freedom of speech, this is the biggest reason for television stations to continue delivering violent programs to are homes through television sets. Any time the government makes a substantial move towards relieving the problem of television violence the television stations cry out that it is interfering with their right to freedom of speech(5). This may be true but where in the constitution does it state that we can not have the choice to choose what are children can watch. The T.V. stations believe that it is are right to choose what we watch, but the best way to do this is not by limiting what the stations can show but by screening television viewing in the home by the parents. Many people feel the same way, in a book intitled Classroom Combat teaching and television by Maurine Doerken she writes that it is not the responsibility of the television stations to keep children from watching violent shows, but is the responsibility of the parents to teach their kids to turn such garbage off themselves(4). Another argument for the television stations is that children here violent terms and see violence any way so why take it off the air. This argument states that children at school hear such terms as "drop dead out-fit ", and " break a leg " so why stop it on television . They also state that at schools children see fighting and hate between other students so why don't people try and ban violence at school before they try to ban anything else(1). Television stations also fight that there is no substantial evidence saying that violence on television directly effects the way people and children act, and until there is they refuse to take such violence off the T.V.(11). Although all these reasons if looking at them from their point of view sound good enough there are also some very good reasons to put a stop to television violence. First there are the stated deaths of many adults and children that can be linked back to a scene from a television show or just the show itself. Included in these are the ones mentioned earlier in this paper, but there are also more. Such as: In 1990 when the movie "Natural Born Killers" came out two kids one male one female went on a killing spree stating they had gotten the revelation after watching the movie, in which to similar people go around killing person after person just for fun. Also after the movie "Dracula" was released three teenage kids in Florida killed a tourist and tried to suck her blood. There are also many more accounts of incidents such as these all relating to a movie or television show that contained a violent nature. All these violent occurrences and yet television stations see no direct relation between them and television? Another thing is that when the constitution was written there was no such thing as television, so how can that be used as an excuse to keep violence on television(12). T.V. stations also suggest that it is not there responsibility to teach children what is right and wrong, but it is the responsibility of the parents. This may be true but with so many families with two working parents it is almost an impossible feat to regulate what their children watch, so there has to be some kind of regulation on the violence to keep the children from getting these horrible ideas in their head. Television violence is a problem, there is no possible way to say that it isn't. We have to stop that problem, and the only way to do so is to put tougher restriction's on television stations. There is no doubt that television and movies can be used to help children as a learning tool. In New Mexico, an organization offers entertaining alternatives to television violence, to families afflicted by violence. This organization puts video's out so parents can give their children something to watch other than the violent material on television(10). Organizations such as these are great. They are trying to help the youth of today before the problem gets to big. In conclusion, I hope that this information given can help show the problems with television violence. It is said that by the time children graduate from high school they would have seen eight-teen thousand murders or other violent acts on television(10). That is to many acts of violence to not effect the way children or adults behave. There must be something done before it's to late, and our children grow up violent, non- caring, hate filled people. We must stop it now or in the future, our future leaders who are the generation X , who learned from watching television well be terrible people doing terrible things around the globe. It is not to late we just have to get busy and make things right, starting now. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Television Violence.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ TELEVISON VIOLENCE In today's society television plays a big role. People watch T.V. for many different reasons. People watch T.V. mainly for entertainment, they also watch T.V. to learn, and to find out news. Some people watch T.V. and get the wrong idea about what they're watching, they feel that what they are watching is okay to do. Violence is a major factor, it affects people of ages. The worst outcome of T.V. is that it sends out the wrong messages. Some people get bad ideas from the violence on T.V. Although violence on television is not the greatest thing, it should be not be banned or restricted in any way. Most people watch T.V. to get away from reality. Watching shows that depict a fantasy world are a lot more interesting to watch. People don't want to see things that happen to them on a regular bases. Although sometimes seeing something that has happened to you before may be funny. Watching T.V. relieves stress and can be good for your health. Doctors say that laughing is good for your health. Violence on T.V. is a very debatable issue. Some people say that it is totally wrong and that it should be banned. Most people like the violence and find it to be very entertaining. Parents find it very hard to restrict their kids from watching violent television programs. The child would want to watch that program twice as much just because their parents said not to watch it. The child would be curious to find out what is so wrong about the program. Some people get the wrong messages or get bad ideas from watching some shows. If parents were to educate their children before watching shows like "Mighty Morphan Power Rangers", " X-Men" and "Cops" , then they wouldn't have to worry about their child getting wrong messages. Television shows also send out wrong messages to adults too. People that watch shows like "Cops" may and try the violent acts that are shown on this show. T.V. can a very strong influence and can have a major affect on the ways we see things. Some people feel that violence on television should be banned. Other people feel that it is entertaining. The people behind the whole thing feel that whatever the majority wants, it's what they're going to get. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\term paper for sociology.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Today I was in an accident. The light was green as I proceeded on my way home. Out of no where some shithead came around the turn like a bat out of hell and plowed right into me. I immediately went to a lawyer and began a court case. My lawyer's name is Mr. Ed Masry. Today I went to court to plead my case. The man who hit me pleaded not guilty and used the excuse that if it were not for his achieved status of being an Emergency Room Doctor he would not have been rushing to the hospital. He continued to state that I was the one who ran the red light and caused the accident. What an asshole! Due to my Relative Poverty from trying to raise 3 kids all alone I began looking for a job today. Calling nearly every number in the "Help Wanted" ads I had no luck. No where seemed to think I was capable for the job due to the fact that I have no computer skills, no sales experience, or no resume. I will continue searching for a job tomorrow. Well today came and went in search of finding a job. I decided to call Mr. Masry and see if I could possibly work for him. Since he did not help me out with my court case I demanded this would be a great way to make it up to me so he hired me - well after begging a little. Today I began my new job. Nothing exciting - just some paper work and a lot of filing. He said he would hire me with no benefits but I took the job. What else could I expect? No where else seemed interested. Just as I was putting the baby to sleep some asshole is outside my house reving up his motorcycle. It is the new neighbor, George. He seemed nice but nice doesn't cut it for me. I said to him, if it weren't for my achieved status of being a mother of 3, divorced 2 times, and with only 74 dollars in my bank account there would be little time for him - even if it meant only being friendly neighbors. Today Mr. Masry approached me at work and told me I should rethink my material culture and perhaps change my wardrobe because it makes the other employees feel awkward. I said "the hell with them, I'll wear what I want - if that's ok with you." Obviously my fellow employees and myself have different values. After a long, hard day at work I went to pick up the kids from the new babysitter. To my surprise when I arrived no one was home. I ran home looking for them and found George taking over the "babysitter role" and cooking on the grill for my kids. The latent function became apparent from George when he told me he would take over being the new babysitter. Hell with the lady who smelled like chicken fat anyways! I took him up on the offer. The Manifest Function became clear as I was looking through my files for work. I came across medical records for some families. This seemed odd to me due to the fact that I had been looking through Real Estate files the whole time. I asked Mr. Masry if it would be possible for me to investigate these files more. He said that was fine so I proceeded to my first client, Donna Jenson's home. I asked about the life her and her family live and why her husband and herself have been sick. I also asked her why their medical files were included in their Real Estate files. Her reply was that the Pacific Gas and Electricity Company had paid for the Doctor's bills due to their water containing Chromium. Today I went to a toxicologist, Dr. Frankle, to find out more about this Chromium in the water. He began describing all different types of Chromium and their side effects if any are harmful. He told me specifically that a Chromium called Hexavalent Chromium (a.k.a. Chrome 6) can be lethal if people have it in their system. He said he would do some research for me and let me know for sure. I went to the County Water Board in Hinkley County today in continuing my research. I introduced myself to Scott, the employee and flirted with him to let me into the back room with all the files on everyone living in this particular county. My ascribed status as a woman with boobs will get me anywhere! I return to work today to find all my things are missing. Mr. Masry fired me for missing a week of in the office work because I was out looking for files. I come home to George under the sink fixing a leak and roaches in the house. He sat me down and comforted me about losing my job. He told me that I am someone to him and kissed me. This was the first night we were intimate with each other and he told me I am a very special lady. Well after getting fired I opened up the newspaper and began looking for a new job. Just at that time the doorbell rang. It was Ed Masry who had come to tell me that Dr. Frankle, the toxicologist had called for me with the update on the different types of Chromium. He wanted to know what I was up to so I told him if he hires me back and offers me a raise I will tell him and give him the copies of all the Real Estate clients. He hired me and I ended up receiving a 10% raise with benefits! Today I returned to The Jenson's home to educate them about their water and what types of chemicals are actually in it. The chemical causing all the illnesses had come from the Chrome 6 in the water. Donna Jenson and her husband both have the symptoms (cancer, nose bleeds, etc.) and the reasons their medical records were in with their Real Estate records was for the cover-up of PG&E paying for their doctors visits in order to not realize that their sickness was from the water they had been using since living in Hinkley County. This Book Belongs To: ________________________ Today will make 9 months with the process still going strong with PG&E. Mr. Masry and I hosted an open picnic in order for residents of Hinkley County to receive information about what has been taking place with PG&E and their homes. We had a great turn out and the people seemed very interested with what we had been investigating. From the information given, people were able to realize that their illnesses have been caused by the chromium in the water they use every day. Today began the first day of court with PG&E. The judge made his decision and had denied the demurs given by PG&E. There now will be a trial between Mr. Masry and I and the people of Hinkley County. We need to kick butt! Tonight after work I come home to find George sitting on my bed holding a little jewelry box with his bag packed on the floor next to him. He told me he bought me earrings one day while he was at the mall but did not plan on giving them to me until the next time I said or did something nice for him. That was 6 months ago. I guess with work and everything I just got caught up in my hectic life and did not seem to be giving enough attention to George and my children. He told me either I have to find a different job or find a different guy. I told him I could not leave my job and to please not ask me to give it up. That didn't seem like a good plan to him. He stood up with his bag and left. I will miss him so much but I just couldn't give up my job - my life. Just as I was starting to read the newspaper I heard a motorcycle. It had to be George! I ran outside to see him driving away. Just at that same time a man approached me with an envelope in his hand and asked me to sign for it. I opened it up to find a 5,000 dollar check made out to me from Ed Masry and also a set of keys for a brand new Jeep parked in front of my house. This is by far my lucky day!!! When picking up my kids today after work my babysitter told me she would no longer be able to sit for me anymore. Her daughter bought a new house with a room in it for her so she would be moving by next week. Great just another super day. What do I do now? Who's going to watch Matthew, Katy and Beth? Where am I going to get the money to pay someone to watch them? Terms used throughout my diary: Achieved Status - a social position that is assumed voluntarily and usually reflects a significant measure of personal ability and effort. Relative Poverty - being deprived of social resources in relation to those who have more. Material Culture - tangible elements of human society such as clothing and cities. Values - standards by which members of a culture define what is desirable and undesirable, good or bad, beautiful or ugly. Manifest Function - the recognized and intended consequences of any social pattern. Latent Function - the unrecognized and unintended consequences of any social pattern. The trial begins in a few days and I need to get papers signed by over 100 more plaintiffs. This will take approximately 2 days if I work fast, therefore, I need to find a sitter for my kids. I decided to ask George if he could spare a couple days and help me out. He said ok and came over tonight. What a big help! Today was the last day of trial. We Won!!!! This is the most exciting day for everyone of Hinkley County. Everyone gets a portion of the money PG&E must give. I am glad to announce to The Jenson's that they will be getting 2 million dollars and not have to worry ever again about the environment they are living in. I feel great! After rewarding these people with what they deserve I feel rewarded myself. I am so grateful for my job and nobody, not even a man, can ever take that away from me. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Terrorism 2.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Terrorism 1) It is very difficult to resolve the international problem of terrorism for several major reasons. Terrorists usually don't claim responsibility for their actions until the fuse is lit, it's not a case of Jack The Ripper sending an ear to the cops and warning them who his next victim will be. Terrorists usually do claim responsibility for their actions after the media is aware that something happened, this gains recognition for their cause, which is often the reason they resort to terrorism in the first place. These groups are often underground and individuals rarely step forward, how can you arrest an entire group that you can't touch? Governments endorsing terrorist acts and providing a safe house for them once they're on the run just adds to the problem. Hijackers can take their hostages, get the ransom and fly the plane to the country of their choice. That country is usually ready to welcome the criminal, for a small cut of the ransom. Algeria used terrorism as a business to raise capital. By providing immunity, they became a haven for terrorists. Many Middle Eastern countries resort to terrorism when dealing with other nations. Saudi Arabia sponsors Islamic terrorists to lay siege to Egypt. Terrorism is a means of influencing international relations. How can you prevent acts of terrorism when those paid to protect the people are among the guilty? The Ku Klux Klan is a prime example of police corruption and a government that turned its' back on its' people. Dirty cops and prejudicial governments provided the fuel that burnt black churches of the Southern States in the past . Many white citizens were not members of the Ku Klux Klan, but most whites were reluctant to take a stand against the Klan until the KKK's acts of violence began to threaten whites who were not white supremacists. When whites began to oppose the Klan, they went underground and were thought to have disbanded but they arose again before the first war and once more during the civil rights movements of the 1960's. This problem has arose again as Negro churches have again been targeted by arsonists. The police have been unable to solve the majority of these crimes. Hitler and his Nazi Regime could possibly be the worst example of a government applying acts of terrorism on its people. When those at the top are corrupt, how can the people defend themselves? Hitler's methods and ideologies have made him one of the most feared and hated men in history. Stalin also used acts of terrorism on his people. His death squads that patrolled the streets at night and annihilated the homeless was supposedly done for a good cause. I think that is very questionable. Negotiating with terrorists can also be bewildering. Recently Prime Minister John Major of Britain and Prime Minister John Bruton of Ireland were engaging in peace talks with the Irish political party Sinn Fein. Sinn Fein is the oldest Irish political party and has been striving for the independence of Ireland for years. They were founded in 1905 and have representatives in every major Irish town, they are considered to be the political wing of the Irish Republican Army. Sinn Fein claims to have genuinely sought after peace but continuing British bad faith has caused the IRA to act. The British deny these accusations of bad faith and became puzzled when the IRA broke a long standing cease fire with a bombing in the urban center of Manchester. Negotiations can be impossible in the case of suicide bombers. Many Japanese Cults can not be traced. Though their agents are always caught, they can never be questioned. Suicide is deemed heroic by the Japanese, the Japanese cult Aum Supreme Truth used sarin nerve gas on a Tokyo subway to cause terror, other previous Japanese cults have committed mass suicide at the order from their leader to avoid interrogation and incarceration. Often these leaders have some type of mind control on their followers. Some countries don't bother negotiating with terrorists. They take a stance where if the terrorist asks for a million bucks they get squat. The United States has a policy that is meant to deter terrorist-acts, no negotiations, no mercy. 2) My position on this topic is anti-terrorism because terrorism is an unethical method of gaining money or stealing publicity for a cause. Terrorists are bullies that prey on the fears of the innocent. They drag women and children into their wars with little concern for the lives that they shatter. They get what they want by endangering the people that their enemies are responsible for. The threat of a terrorist bomb is as petty as black mail. Terrorists don't need to resort to violence, they should negotiate first. If they are a developing country crying for help, they should use the media to get the word out. I am sure that foreign countries would rather lend a hand rather than dealing with terrorists. Terrorists are wrong because they target the defenseless, they cause fear, death and destruction among the public and if they're not fighting for a cause, their motives are probably greed. Terrorists may not directly kill millions of people, but the spark that started many wars came from a terrorists match, foremost the assassination of Arch Duke Ferdinand. 3) Seven important questions that could adequately describe terrorism are: 1. What police groups are involved in preventing international crime? 2. Do governments give in to the demands of terrorists? 3. Do certain countries and their governments endorse terrorist activities? 4. What methods do terrorists use and what do they accomplish? 5. Where are felons tried for committing international crimes? 6. Which countries are heavily troubled by terrorist acts? 7. What are the names, leaders and methods of prevalent terrorist groups globally? 4)Information answering the seven preceding questions: 1. Most countries have their own agencies for dealing with terrorism, but one global force that deals with terrorist activities is Interpol. Interpol is a global police agency that links the police forces of the world. They trade information and relay suspect information amongst each other. This makes it difficult for hijackers landing in foreign countries to get away. Interpol relays messages through a central intelligence system that filters down into the systems of each countries police stations. By sharing information and man power international crime becomes less appealing to criminals thanks to interpol. Peru has a new anti-terrorist directorate called Dincote. General Maximo Rivera Diaz has established this new "Delta" force to shut down the terrorist activity of the Shining Path in Lima. Prior to it's break up, Russia had virtually no terrorist problem because of the efficiency of their secret service, the KGB. Now that the former Soviet Union is in shambles, terrorism in Russia is becoming more evident. 2. Depending on the severity of the case governments must make a decision on handling affairs with terrorists, pay them, hold out or send in an anti-terrorist group to neutralize the situation. One country that stands out from the rest is The United States of America. They stand by a policy that does not give terrorists what they want, which would divert greedy terrorists from the States. Clinton began a harsh anti-terrorist bill as a result of the Oklahoma bombing. He wishes to make terrorism a priority among the police and other crime fighting agencies such as the FBI. He wishes to accomplish this by giving these forces the best surveillance equipment and crime fighting tools available. A chemical applied to all bomb making chemicals would make bombs apparent at airport check points and would cut down on hijacking. He also wishes to bar products from countries that endorse terrorism. 3.Terrorists and governments occasionally work hand in hand. Algeria brought in large sums of money by housing terrorists. Hamas is terrorist group working in the Middle East. It was formed in 1987. They conduct attacks on Israeli military and civilian groups, disrupting politics and causing explosions. The group is large, with thousands of sympathetic supporters. They also receive aid from Saudi Arabia and Iran. The Palestine Islamic Jihad is a similar group working in the Middle East. They act to form an Islamic Palestinian State and to destroy Israel through a "Holy War". Their strength is unknown but they have been linked to Syria and Iran. The Palestine Liberation Organization(PLO) has been around since 1969. Yassir Arafat became the chairman and still holds the position today. This group has a more global range of actions, but is basically striving for the same goals and also has ties to middle eastern nations. Another group banded with Saudi Arabia is The Tigers Of The Gulf. It is highly secretive and little is know but it is anti-American, and it is aided by Saudi Arabia. 4.Terrorists use a broad spectrum of methods to get their jobs done. Most of them either gain recognition for the terrorists cause or throw a kink in someone else's plans, this would usually further the terrorists cause, for example assassinating a rival political leader would give your leader a better chance. Assassinations by terrorists are usually aimed at someone in the spotlight that the media will react to. It is also often a member of the terrorists rival or someone close to him, like the assassination of the Czar and his family in Russia. Guerrilla warfare is also considered an act of terrorism, this would almost classify the Vietnam war as a terrorist's war. Bombing is also a preferred method of destruction used by many terrorist groups, at the front of these is probably the IRA. Bombs leave little evidence and a large margin for error. Hijacking and kidnapping are also strong ways for terrorists to make demands and gain money. Kidnapping can be used to push the buttons of influential people and hijacking works as kidnapping with an escape route. Both of these are often used to trade the hostages for the freedom of imprisoned group members. Threats and propaganda are also widely spread by mainstream organizations. 5. International terrorists don't care about police jurisdiction, but it does make a difference. Committing a crime in one country may have altogether different punishments than those of a different country, as the boy who was caned in Singapore found out all too well. The internationally renown guerrilla troop and terrorist, Carlos The Jackal, was captured and arrested on bomb related charges. He is from Venezuela but has caused trouble in several countries and they all want his hide. France is the lucky country that gets to punish him because he was captured and convicted in France. The criminal is charged in the country that he commits the crime in, they often seek citizenship in foreign countries to gain protection, much like the two men in Canada that are wanted by Bangladesh for committing murders. Both men are now Canadian citizens and refuse to return because they fear they will not have a fair trial. Canada has to make a decision now on whether to honor The Country of Bangladesh or to honor the rights of the two men. 6.Every country has some degree of terrorist activity, be it large or small. The Middle East seems to be a hot spot for terrorist activities, maybe due to many of the nations' roles in hiring terrorists to join their side than to perform dirty work for that government. There are also many disgruntled minorities that use terrorism as a way to get what they want. Japan has it's own problems with cult-religious groups that resort to terrorist acts. These groups are often related to suicide bombers and such, kind of a modern day kami kaze. Areas of Europe also suffer from high rates of terrorist activity, many stemming back from the territorial and religious disputes of times long ago. Monarchy seems to be the enemy of the majority of European terrorists. The States also gets its share of terror, some domestic but much from overseas, their policies help keep the levels low. More people die in bath tub accidents than from terrorism in the States. Canada is even scathed by the knife of terrorism. The FLQ was Canada's most dominant and violent terrorist group, though short lived they created a stir in Francophone relations with the rest of Canada. 7.-The Shining Path is a highly organized terrorist group with coordinated tactics, but a low violence level. Their leader, Abimael Guzman, was captured by the Peruvian government. Guzman's capture has lead to the re-election of the countries' president Alberto Fujimori. -The Provisional Irish Republican Army(IRA) is active in Northern Ireland but carries out it's actions in Great Britain. They often rely on bombs to get their point across, their main goal is the independence of Ireland from Great Britain, and the unification of Ireland. The Northern Irish(IRA) want freedom and independence for themselves and their Protestant religion while the Southern Irish don't want to leave and wish to remain united with Britain. The IRA was falsely accused of being hand in hand with the Nazi's during the war. The IRA does have ties though, they are allied with the Irish political party Sinn Fein which handles the groups political affairs and negotiating. -The Red Army Faction is a German based group which originated in the 1960's. Their ideology is a combination of theories from both Marx and Maoism. The result is a commitment to armed struggle. The group announced that it would end it's terrorist activities in 1992. While the group was active they engaged in bombings, kidnappings, assassinations, robberies and has targeted both German and American governments. They were even bold enough to attempt to assassinate the head of NATO, Alexander Haig. The RAF has several hard-core cadres that carry out their terrorist missions as well as a large civilian following that spreads the groups propaganda. The group has survived over the years despite the repeated capture of it's highest ranking members. The RAF has ties with several middle eastern terrorist factions and a very strong tie with GRAPO of Spain. They are attempting to destroy western capitalism and promote world wide Marxism. -The True Teaching of Aum/Supreme Truth of Aum is a Japanese based faction that was formed in 1987 by Shoko Asahara. It was recognized as a religious group in 1989. It was headquartered in a small farming village near the base of Mount Fuji. It contains five branches scattered among 130 sites. It's membership is estimated 10,000 in Japan, 30,000 in Russia and about 100 in Manhattan. They practice a doctrine of Hinduism and Buddhism and they follow a goddess named Shiva, lord of destruction and regeneration. They believe the world will end some time in 1997. They were the group responsible for the sarin gas attacks on Tokyo metro systems that hurt thousands. The groups current leader Shoko Asahara was arrested. 5)Some would say that terrorism is a valiant deed, the ultimate sacrifice for ones cause, the only thing that a terrorist sacrifices is the lives of the innocent, the terrorist is a butcher of human rights. Others would also say terrorism is an act of retaliation, well two wrongs don't make a right. If a terrorist organisation responds to a terrorist attack against themselves with another act of terrorism, what do you think the other groups response will be? This situation is currently occuring in Great Britain, the Irish accuse the English of something and act, the English deny it and accuse the Irish of commiting unwarranted attacks and responds. This conflict has been raging for years and no end is in sight since the ceasefire was broken. What if a developing nation has no resources or commodity to trade to the rest of the world, wouldn't you take foriegn hostages to make enough money to feed your country? I believe that foriegn countries would rather help to solve the crisis before it reached the stage where terrorism would be put into effect. Negotiations prior to the problem's begining could benefit both sides of the table. 6)Three case studies that would provide further insight into the world of terrorism would be: -The FLQ's affect on Francophone relations with the rest of Canada. Did the kidnapping and assassination of government officials gain anything? Did it actually hurt Quebec's dealings with English speaking Canadians or was it neccesary? How long did the FLQ remain active and how many members did they have? Did the Front de Liberationd pour Quebec have the people of the province behind them? -The IRA has been battling for it's freedom for years. Does each bomb they place bring them closer to freedom or does it push their goal further apart? Would peaceful negotiations reach their goal faster or is violence their last resort? Finally is freedom worth that much? Thousands of lives have been lost over a grudge between nations, could it all have been avoided with a little bit of equality? -Japanese religious cults have even less mercy than the brutal terrorists of the west. Can you blame a terrorist when his actions are being influenced? Should religious cults be shut down before they reach the terorrist stage? Chemicals used to make bombs and gas like sarin could be marked in the manufacturing stage, could this avoid the entire probleb? 7)Terrorism is a terrible deed, sometimes committed in the name of a not so terrible cause. I feel terrorists use their cause to gain the sympathy of the people, the masses can add to success of a terrorist groups cause. Compromising values to achieve a goal is wrong, many terrorists act because their human rights were disturbed, what are they doingwhen they take hostages? Sometimes the cause is good but the method is always wrong if terrorism is resorted to. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\terrorism.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Terrorism JUNE 1914: a young man in Sarajevo steps up to a carriage and fires his pistol. The Archduke Ferdinand dies. Within weeks, the first world war has begun. The 1940s: the French resistance kill occupying troops when and how they can. June 1944: at Oradour-sur-Glane, in central France, German SS troops take revenge, massacring 642 villagers. August 1945: the United States Air Force drops the world's first nuclear weapons. Some 190,000 Japanese die, nearly all of them civilians. Within days the second world war has ended. Which of these four events was an act of terrorism? Which achieved anything? Which, if any, will history judge as justified? And whose history? Terrorism is not the simple, sharp-edged, bad-guy phenomenon we all love to condemn. No clear line marks off politics from the threat of force, threat from use, use from covert or open war. Who is or is not a terrorist? The suicide bomber, the rebel guerrilla, the liberation front, the armed forces of the state? Terrorism is fundamentally a political act. Terrorists act to advance a cause they mean to create tyranny, either directly or indirectly, so that the political order that they prefer can take the place of the current one. Terrorists can be either rebels seeking to overthrow a state or states seeking to overthrow the international order or states seeking to maintain privilege for rulers and stifle dissent among the people. In every case the motivation for terrorism is explicitly without an exception, political. Terrorism has a long, if tainted,. pedigree. Aristotle recognized it, even if it had no name at the time, when he wrote that "the first aim and end of tyrants is to break the spirit of their subjects." What we know as terrorism can be traced to the Russian nihilists and anarchists of the 19th century, who gave a name to what would otherwise be considered "random acts of violence" that were performed to advance their revolutionary cause. They elevated terrorism to a high moral plane. One of them, Mikhail Bakunin, exclaimed: "The passion for destruction is also a creative passion." British military analyst Brian Crozier wrote in his 1974 book, "Theory of Conflict, that terrorists have several aims, falling into two categories. Through "disruptive terrorism," they try to, (1) Gain publicity for their movement or arouse admiration . (2) Secure funds and build up the movements, morale or prestige . (3) Discredit and demoralize the authorities. (4) Provoke the authorities (5) To take excessively harsh repressive measures desired to alienate citizens and force a large- scale opposition to counter-terrorist measures. "Coercive terrorism, " is similar but complementary. (1) It attempts to demoralize the civilian population (2) Weaken its confidence in the government and instill fear of the revolutionary terrorists. (3)It also by making examples of well- publicized victims, tries to enforce obedience to the terrorist movement leaders. Until after World War II, most terrorists adhered to a set of rules for moral behavior that excluded the killing, capture, or torture of civilians who were not also government officials. In other words they respected the rights of non-combatants as defined by various treaties that set the rules for armed conflict (such as the Geneva and Hague Conventions). Since the with the rise of terrorist groups and revolutionary guerrilla movements around the world, such rules have been discarded. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\The 1a The Proclamation of 1763 was a British law that forba.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1a. The Proclamation of 1763 was a British law that forbade American coloniststo settle west of a line that ran along the Appalachian Moutains. 1b. The Stamp Act was a law passed by parliament that taxed legal documents, newspapers, almanacs, playing cards, and dice. 1c. The Townshed Acts British laws passed in 1767 that taxed goods such as glass, paint paper, silk, and tea. 1d. The Quartering act was a law passed in 1765 that required English colonists to provide candles, bedding, and housing to British soldiers stationed in the colonies. 2. The colonists broke out in riots, threw rocks, and even tarred and feathered the agents when they inforced the Stamp Act. 3. On the night of March 5, 1770 a crowd gathered outside the Boston customs house, people insulted the soldiers threw ice, snow, and oyster shells. The soldiers panicked and fire d a shot that killed five people. 4a. boycott-To refuse to buy certain goods or services 4b. repeal- To cancel 4c. commitee of correspondence- A group of colonists who wrote letters pamphlets to inform and unite and inform colonists against British rule f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" gives a visual look at the time in which the author Samuel Clemens lived. He explains how he felt about his life through the eyes of a young boy named Huckleberry Finn. Huckleberry Finn has many adventures that teach him life lessons we can learn from today. Although there are differing opinions on whether Huck Finn is a good role model for today's young people, I will explain why I think he is. Huck is a good role model for several reasons. First, he believes that slavery is wrong. He believes in treating people equally regardless of color. When Huck sees the widow's runaway slave Jim on Jackson's Island, he has mixed emotions about what he should say and do. He feels badly that the widow is going to sell Jim and separate him from his family. Huck decides against better reasoning to help Jim escape down the Mississippi River to Cairo. Another example of good role modeling is Huck's faithfulness to those he loves and cares for. Huck lies to protect Jim on several occasions. Lying is not the best thing, but to Huckleberry, the truth is not always a black and white issue. He is faithful to his friends and chooses friendship instead. He knows that Jim's family needs him. In today's language, Huckleberry's reaction to Jim's situation would reflect what Spock of Star Trek says, "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few." An illustration of another positive side of Huck shows us that he has a good and true heart, and the best intentions even though they may not turn out right. For example, the widow tells Huck to pray for the dinner they are having. Huck's interpretation is, "God thank you for the meal and if you get the chance, please let me catch a big catfish." The widow tells Huck that he shouldn't pray for material things. Huck disagrees because his Sunday School teacher teaches him to pray to God for what you want, and it will be granted. The widow tells him that the teacher is talking about spiritual things. He still disagrees, and is sent to his room. Even though his intentions are the best, he still comes up short; but he keeps on trying. Finally, Huckleberry Finn thinks life is precious and shouldn't be wasted. This is the most important lesson he can teach today's young people. He and Jim find themselves in a situation as they are floating down the Mississippi River in the fog. All of a sudden, they see a ferry boat and Huck jumps off of the raft to avoid being hit. He swims to shore and meets a family named the Grangerfords. Huck stays with the Grangerfords and gets to know them. The Grangerfords have been feuding with another family named the Sheperdsons. One day a fight breaks out over love between the Grangerford's daughter and the Sheperdson's son. Huck watches from a tree in terror as the two families fight each other to the death. He realizes from this awful experience how easily life can be taken away, and that people should try to come together and work out their problems before they get out of hand. Throughout "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," there are many instances of positive role modeling behavior for young adults in my view. At first sight Huck's actions look questionable to many. I choose to look at Huck as a kid without a lot of adult supervision and support who tries to make his way in the world. He is only human and makes mistakes, but I think he learns from them, and that is all that any of us can try to do. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\The American Revolution.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The King of England and Parliament were the direct causes of the American Revolution, because of their demands on colonists and harsh reactions after the colonists failure to meet their ridiculous expectations. These demands were far greater than any loyal American was able to provide. The taxes placed on Americans were so heinous that the sugar in their mugs was taxable. Survival while paying these taxes was slim to none. How could Britain force such severe taxes on the greatest asset of the crown. The Stamp Act forced the colonies to purchase a stamp with prices of upwards of four pounds on all legal papers, advertisements, newspapers, calendars, and playing cards. The colonists politely petitioned Parliament and the King but only to find they were speaking to a deaf ear. The Quartering Act was the worst demand placed on colonists. This forced colonists to provide food and shelter to men who took American jobs and raped American women. Why should Americans waste their hard earned money on men sent to enforce the unbearable English demands. The Currency Act hurt colonists by making paper money, which Americans had an abundance of, useless and converting them to gold and silver which was very scarce there. The American sailors were also subject to hardships brought forth by the British. They were forced by impressment to join the Royal Navy to fight against their own brothers. By placing duties on all imported goods, this raised the prices so much that all the colonists could afford were smuggled goods. The smugglers were also hard to get things from because the British had the right to search all ships without warrants. How could a loyal hard-working American colonists pledge their allegiance to a country where the sovereign does not recognize their rights, their presence in Parliament, and their importance to Great Britain's survival. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\The Articles of Confederation.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ AP American History Essay- Articles of Confederation 9/30/96 It would have been very difficult to run an effective government under the Articles of Confederation. Many of the great minds politically active after the American Revolution realized this; thus arrived the birth of one of the greatest political documents of all time: The Constitution. With the implement of the Constitution, the United States government became effective. The product of some of the greatest minds to ever exist in this world, the Articles did have some positive effects on society. It successfully put an end to the Revolutionary War, it negotiated a favorable end to the war in the Treaty of Paris, and created a model for the admission of new territories courtesy of the Northwest Ordinance. Nonetheless, it was much too weak to give the new nation the necessary foundation on which the growth of society could be started from. For one thing, any amendment of the Articles required a unanimous vote throughout the colonies. Since this was almost impossible, there always being two sides to everything [a pro and a con], changing the Articles to eliminate the ideas that did not function properly was near impossible. Another factor of the Articles' ineffectiveness was that Congress was in essence tied in its authority. After the war, the colonists trusted no ultimate authority; not even one they designed. It could not regulate commerce, so what resulted was thirteen colonies with different taxations and tariff laws. This only added to the already present feelings of dislike and distrust which had existed between the colonies since they were first established. After this period of eight years, the "Critical Period", the light at the end of the tunnel arrived with Thomas Jefferson writing the Constitution. It delegated the power, at the discretion of the people. It was designed to be amended; the great minds who designed it realized that they themselves were not infallible, and could make mistakes. The beauty of the Constitution was that it allowed for these mistakes. Instead of the outrageous unanimous vote of states to change it, two-thirds of Congress and then three-fourths of the states must approve. It ensured that no one section of government could grow so powerful to the point that it could be considered a Parliament through the Checks and Balances. It promoted unity in that Congress would now regulate all interstate and foreign commerce; this eliminated many disputes since there was a simple majority rule to pass laws. The unification of the colonies was beginning. Thus, it is observed that the Articles of Confederation were without a doubt weak and ineffective. Nonetheless, they were a necessary step in laying the foundation for the construction of the Constitution. It showed the basic ideas of democracy, and the Constitution was used in the expansion and enforcing of those ideas. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\The Australian Life Style.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Life in the Bush The Australian life style was portrayed as one of the bushman although it was not . The life of a typical Australian was really the city life . The bushman was one with no classes and he treated every person as equal . A middle class person was the same as a working class man . The bushman was a very trust worthy and helpful character he would help a stranger as if it was his friend and if that friend needed anything he would be glade to ofer him every thing he has . The bushman lead gypsy like lifestyle with the constant moving and roaming round the country side . They would often walk or ride horse back from place to place with their tent and billy and camp out over night when they had no where to stay . The bushman where very much like aborigines they tracked and did not need a compass or a map they knew plants and trees . They called this bushcraft . A bushman would cook , clean , wash his cloths and patch his pants this made them very independent . If a bushman was ordered or commanded he would say " Are you talking to me or the dog ? " they treated everyone equal and wanted to be treated equal . They dressed in tweeds , flannel tops , with blue jumpers in the cold and yellow oilskin jackets in the rain . They wore hard wearing blucher boots and broad felt hats . The bushman would often have a drinkdown the pub . They often told stories to each other as their past time . The bushmans homes were made from slabs of bark , green hide . The houses were simple and didn't always show advantage . Nor dose it have to , the bushman's home (bellow) is there to shelter him . In the 1880's writers and painters portrayed the bush life as better then the city life . This bought on the image that all Australians lived in the bush . City Life The city life of Australia was not recognized as much as the bush life although most of the population of Australia were present in the cities . The cities in the mid 1880's were walking cities only the few wealthy were able to afford the private horse-drawn transport . The wealthy with their transport were therefore able to live out side of the city center . The working class worked and played short distances away from home . In the 1870's the population began to spread as factories and offices moved into the suburbs . The bringing of people out into the suburbs was also because of the advent of cheaper , faster transport by way of horse drawn trams . In the 1880's steam and cable trams ( Above ) joined the cities to the suburbs . Skilled workers could earn upto 8£ and laborers at least earned £2/10/. Cost of living was reasonable with bread 41/2d. for a pound of loaf : milk was 4d. a quart and meet about 5d. a pound . Middle class and wealthy people were able to afford a Newfangled phone . In 1860's land could be bought for 200£ the land price jumped in the 1870 to 2000£ the land continued to double every decade . The average rent was 50£in 1880 and in 1890 70£ . With the sorting of work hours a boom began in leisure began . Roller skating and cyclorama were popular past times . Horse racing , cricket and football were popular sporting activities this boom made football ( Australian Rules ) a very popular and recognized sport . The chart ( below ) shows the rapid growth of Melbourne . Melbourne enjoyed it's successes from the gold rush era and also the boom . Melbourne was more recognized and well know then Sydney and had a European feel about it which attracted people to it . f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\The Battle of the Spanish Armada.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The Battle of the Spanish Armada The great naval battle between Spain and England in 1588- one of the most important battles in the history of the world- is known as the Battle of the Invincible Armada. But in a sense, this is a misnomer. An invincible armada is one that cannot be defeated, yet the mighty fleet of warships that Spain sent to invade England, was defeated so badly that Spain could never again rule the oceans. How was it possible that this armada, which had awed all of Europe with its size and strength, was unable to stand up against the forces of a much smaller and less powerful enemy? The answer lies in the differences between these two countries and their rulers, Elizabeth I of England and Philip II of Spain. During the 16th century, Spain was at the height of her power. Newly discovered worlds and conquests of different peoples had yielded Spain an abundance of precious metals and gems, which made Spain the envy of all the other European nations. By 1580, King Philip II was ruling over an empire that covered three-fourths of the known world. Even the ancient Romans would have been envious of its size. (Walker 15-19) Religion was one of the compelling motives behind the actions and ambitions of Spain. Philip's father, Emperor Charles V, had established himself as the guardian of Christendom. He also had the dream of uniting all of the Christian European nations against the Turks and the Moors, who had been terrorizing Catholicism from one end of the Mediterranean to the other. However, his dreams were hindered with the coming of the Protestant Reformation, which split Christendom into two parts.(Marx 22-25) Philip II continued in his father's footsteps as the defender of Catholicism. After the Turks were defeated in a decisive sea battle in 1571, Philip turned his attention to another serious threat to Christendom: his Protestant neighbors. Devoutly religious and good friends with Pope Sixtus V, he was willing to use all of his resources, including his treasures from the New World, his large army, and his huge fleet of warships, just to unite Europe under a common Catholic faith. (Marx 28-33) He probably would have accomplished his goal too, if it weren't for the Protestant Queen Elizabeth I of England. England at this time, however, was not nearly as powerful or as wealthy as Spain. Her tax revenues were so small that monarchs were forced to sell their jewels and lands just to keep food on the table. As for a military power, England had a few men and arms, and a fleet of ships better equipped for trading goods than fighting. (McKee 45) England was also experiencing other problems during this time. The other parts of her kingdom- Scotland, Wales, and Ireland- were often in an open revolt against England over the matter of religion. Even the people of England herself were divided between Catholicism and Protestantism. Furthermore, a woman, who was thought to be a weak ruler, occupied the throne. There were a few major reasons why Philip II needed to conquer England, or at least befriend her. First, he was a leader in the Catholic movement to wipe out the heresy of Protestantism. The longer Elizabeth stayed on the throne, the more difficult this task became. She not only was the most important Protestant ruler but also provided the Protestants in northern Europe with support for their resistance against the Church of Rome. In addition, English Catholics were being persecuted more and more severely, mainly because Elizabeth feared that they were not loyal to her. For a long time, Philip was forced to endure this because Spain and the other main Catholic country, France, were fighting each other, and Philip needed to keep England neutral. But alliances were never permanent in Europe; countries that were bitter enemies one day became close allies the next. In 1572, the French decided to join Spain in a Cath-olic alliance against the Protestants. (Howarth 17-22) The second reason was more personal to Philip. He greatly wanted to seek retribution on Elizabeth for all of the anguish she had caused him and his kingdom. For over twenty years, her privateers had been sacking Spanish settlements in America and laying claims to these cities. Her Sea Dogs, like Sir Francis Drake, had stolen on the high seas many Spanish treasures taken from the New World. This took away from the wealth of Philip's kingdom directly. Furthermore, she had cleverly refused his marriage invitations for years, and had put down a rebellion, which he had tried to start among the people of England in 1579. (Howarth 23-25) While Philip II had all of these good reasons to invade England, he was still unable to bring himself to act until all of advisors had exhausted themselves with arguments and the English had brought their raids to Spanish seaports. He was reluctant to act not for fear of losing the battle, but for fear of losing all of his money. While his army had been the most powerful in all of Europe at this time, Philip II had gone almost bankrupt to keep his professional army. (Howarth 26) The real beginning of the fleet of Spanish warships that were needed for the invasion of England, the Spanish Armada, was begun in 1583 by the Spanish naval officer, Marquis of Santa Cruz. It was his defeat of a French Protestant fleet in June of that year which really demonstrated Spanish supremacy of the seas. Santa Cruz's main confidant was the Duke of Guise, who led the Catholic League in France. Their plan was as follows: The Duke of Guise was to cross the English Channel, under the pro-tection of Santa Cruz and his fleet, and land an army in Sussex in the southeast of England. They would help the English Catholics to rebel, set the Catholic Mary Queen of Scots free and crown her Queen of England after killing Elizabeth. (Graham 44-45) One of the main reasons Philip hesitated was due to the enormous cost of pre-paring the fleet. He was horrified by the figure named by Santa Cruz - four million ducats! The armada that finally sailed in 1588 was to cost Philip over ten million ducats, and a ducat today would be worth about $12.50, bringing the cost to about 125 million dollars. (Marx 28) Philip decided that, instead of using the land forces that the French Duke of Guise had offered, he would send his own army from the Nether-lands. All of his spies in England and on the continent agreed that the most Elizabeth would be able to raise in defense of her throne was an ill-equipped and undisciplined mess, nothing capable of repelling a power-ful, veteran army such as the one that was to be commanded by the Duke of Parma, the foremost military genius of the time. Thus, the conquest of England would be a matter of a few weeks at the most. Then Parma could quickly return to Holland and finish off the rebels without any interference from outside. The only weakness of the scheme lay in the difficulty of transporting Parma's army, as well as all of its supplies and war materials, across the Channel to England. Santa Cruz was placed in charge of planning all naval aspects of the invasion, including the preparation of an invincible armada to carry an in-vincible army. (Marx 30-32) However, in 1586, Santa Cruz died. Philip II was forced to pick a new commander of his fleet. He picked the Duke of Medina Sidonia. He was neither a soldier, nor a sailor, but was chosen because of his nobility. The execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, by order of Elizabeth in 1587 shocked all Catholic nations. Named by Mary, Queen of Scots, as her successor, Philip was ready now to establish himse1f as the rightful King of England. He ordered the Duke of Medina to prepare the great fleet to sail up the English Channel to link up with Parma's army from the Netherlands. Together they would invade England. (Mckee 53) The organization of the "Great Enterprise" (which this plan began to be called) was a huge task. Philip sent agents to Germany and Italy to buy cannons, armor, gunpowder, swords, and all other weapons of war. However, more than just weapons were needed. Enough food had to be supplied for six months. Eleven million pounds of biscuits, 600,000 pounds of salt pork, 40,000 gallons of olive oil, 14,000 barrels of wine were but a part of the necessities for a force of over 30,000 men. The transports, urcas, were to be filled with 5,000 extra pairs of shoes, 11,000 pairs of sandals, as well as equipment to repair ships, and axes, spades, and shovels for digging trenches and sieges. (Marx 38-39) With the fleet went six surgeons and six physicians, 180 priests as spiritual advisers, 19 justices and 50 administrators, carefully selected to set up government in England, and 146 young men who volunteered for the adventure, as well as 728 servants. (Marx 40) The main task of the Armada would be to transport soldiers to fight in England. Apart from the 22 great Portuguese and Spanish fighting ships, there were merchant ships converted for battle. Smaller panaches and zabras were used as messenger ships and guards. The Armada was divided into ten squadrons, led by the most famous and experienced commanders of the Spanish forces. In charge of the Biscay ships was Don Juan Martinez de Recalde. Don Pedro de Valdes led the Andalusian ships. Don Miguel de Oquendo, nicknamed the "Glory of the Fleet," was the heroic leader of the Guipuzcoan fleet. One of the most dashing commanders was the young Don Alonso de Leyva, whose task was to take over should Medina be killed or be disabled. (Marx 43-45) During the development of the Spanish fleet, England prepared for war as well. Defenses were improved around all cities, especially London. Since there was no standing army in England, the Earl of Leicester set up a militia to defend the Queen and London. John Hawkins had been working on the development of new ships, and Drake created new methods of fighting. Drake's new method got rid of the usual hand-to-hand combat aboard a boarded ship and relied on skilled sailors and heavy guns. He figured that if the Spanish would try to board the English ships, they could outmaneuver them and fire heavily upon them. (Mckee 68) By May 11, 1588, the Great Armada was complete and set sail from Lisbon, Portugal. One hundred thirty ships carrying 30,000 men sailed in an orderly procession behind the ship of Medina, which carried the Spanish standard. However, weather was not in the fleet's favor. Great winds forced the ships to dock along the mouth of the Tagus River. For over two weeks the ships waited to set sail. About three weeks after they had set sail again, they were forced to seek shelter in Corunna because of horrible sailing conditions that had scattered the Armada. (Lewis 88) Medina waited about a month to reassemble his fleet. During this time, he repaired ships that had been damaged and refreshed rotting supplies. The next time the ships set out, they were lucky; the wind that had carried them north had blown back the Plymoth fleet that came to stop them. (Lewis 92) On Friday, July 29, Captain Thomas Fleyming in the Golden Hind caught sight of the Spanish fleet, which was only 50 miles southwest of the southern tip of England. At the time that Sir Francis Drake was notified of the approaching Spanish ships, he was playing a game of bowls. It is here where he gave a rather famous comment. "There is plenty of time to finish the game and beat the Spaniards." He was right, in a sense, because it was low tide and it would take another 8 hours to take the fleet out of the harbor. When he did set sail with 54 ships, the rain made it almost impossible to determine the position of any other ship, either ally or enemy. (Lewis 101) Despite these conditions, the Armada sailed on, followed by the English fleet. Two Spanish ships had been wrecked by accident when The Rosario collided with other ships. At dawn on August 1, she was captured by Drake, along with the San Salvador, a ship that had blown up. From these two ships, the English acquired 2,000 cannon balls and 140 barrels of gunpowder. The next battle occurred off Portland Bill. It was rather unsuccessful, for the Spanish were unable to board the English ships, and the English ships were unable to damage any Spanish ship from long range firepower. This battle has been quoted by the English as the "waste of a terrible value of shot." (Marx 87) On August 4, as the Isle of Wright came into view, the Duke of Medina realized that he needed ammunition and troops from Parma, but was unable to reach them. The English fleet was determined to prevent the Spanish from entering a little inlet, known as the Solent. Howard ordered two ships, the Ark Royal and the Golden Lion to be towed into battle by rowboats. Three Spanish ships detached from the main fleet in order to engage the two English vessels. For a few hours, these ships bombarded each other. Just as the wind finally came to the Spanish ships' advantage, the more nimble English ships were able to get away. The Spanish fleet, however, continued northeast to the Strait of Dover with the hope of meeting up with Parma at Dunkirk to recharge his supplies. However, as he was sailing, Medina learned that there was no anchorage deep enough for the fleet on the Flemish shore. (Walker 48) When the English learned that the Great Fleet was forced to anchor off Calais, they felt it was their time to strike. They got ready to send in fireships. The Spanish knew that the Italian engineer, Giambelli, had made for the English fireships laden with explosives. These "Hellburners" were the most feared weapons for a fleet at anchor. These fireships were also used by the English to break up the crescent-shaped formation of the Armada. This arrangement of ships was used at close quarters to try and surround and then board the English ships. (Walker 49-50) The Spanish began to prepare. Pinnaces stood guard with long grapnels to tow the fireships away from the main fleet. Medina ordered the ships to be ready to weigh anchor for a quick getaway. As it was a lengthy business hauling up heavy sea anchors, the tactic was to attach them to buoys. If the fireships came, then the ships cut their cables and escaped, leaving their heavy anchors attatched to the buoys. When the danger was over, the ships could return to pick up the anchors. (Graham 233) The Dover Squadron, led by Lord Henry Seymour joined Lord Howard's squadrons. Now the Queen's navy almost equaled the Armada in number. The English recognized their advantage. They filled eight old ships with inflammable material and waited for the wind and tide. (Marx 120) After midnight, the waiting Spaniards saw the glow from the fireships approaching with the tide. As they came closer, their guns overheated and exploded, making a terrifying sight. The Spanish hastily cut their cables. In the pitch-blackness, they collided with each other in their effort to escape. The huge galleass, the San Lorenzo, was badly damaged, but no ship was set on fire. By daylight on August 8, Medina realized many of his ships were in danger of running on the shoals of the Flemish coast, providing an easy target for the pursuing English. With four great ships, he decided to stand and fight, desperately determined to hold off the English while the rest of the Armada collected and made ready for the coming assault. (Encarta) Drake, in the Revenge, led the attack. One by one, his squadron followed, opening fire at a hundred yards range. Frobisher's squadron followed Drake's. The Spaniards were outnumbered by about ten to one. The English had the wind behind them, and at close range, their cannons made huge holes in the Spanish hulls. Spanish sails, rigging and castles were shattered. The pumps of the San Martin worked desperately to keep her afloat. (Marx 144-145) In the noise, smoke, and confusion it was impossible to see what was happening. Other ships gathered, but the main battle was between Drake's ships and the big galleons of the Portuguese and Seville squadrons. Three great Spanish ships sank that day, a dozen more were badly damaged. Six hundred Spaniards were killed and at least 800 wounded. The decks ran with their blood. (Marx 150-152) Toward evening, after nine grueling hours, heavy rain and wind ended the battle. But worse was to come. Amid the wreckage and blood and the screams of wounded men, the winds blew the helpless Spanish ships toward the treacherous sandbanks. When dawn came, the English moved in and the exhausted Spaniards prepared themselves for death. But the English were almost out of ammunition. No attack came. Slowly, the Spaniards forged their way through the shallow waters. At any moment, they could feel the terrible lurch of a ship grounded on the sands. Then, in the afternoon, the wind changed and blew them away from the deadly sandbanks. The Duke of Medina wrote: "We were saved by the wind, by God's mercy, it shifted to the southwest." (McKee 181) It is rather strange that only 100 Englishmen had been killed since the first encounter. Why didn't the Spanish artillery do any damage to the English fleet? One answer may be that the Spanish cannon balls were badly cast and splintered when fired. Their gunpowder was finer ground than the English, and perhaps was unsuited to the heavy cannon. Their guns may even have exploded on their gun decks. The merchant ships were not built to take either the weight or the recoil of heavy cannon. Continual pounding from their own guns put an immense strain on the ships' timbers. Their carpenters had the never-ending task of caulking the leaks. Sometimes the guns were not properly lashed to the gun decks. When fired, the recoil sent the guns bounding across the decks, severely damaging the ships and wounding the men. (Graham 287) When the English fleet turned back, Medina and his captains held a council of war. Now their task was to get the Armada safely back to Spain. Medina wrote to the King that "the Armada was so crippled and scattered, it seemed my first duty to Your Majesty to save it, even at the risk of a very long voyage in high latitudes." The Armada was in no condition to turn back and fight its way through the Channel. Besides, the wind was still taking it north. They decided to sail around Scotland and southward in the Atlantic, keeping well away from Ireland, back to Spain. The English, having given up the chase, sent two pinnaces to trail the Armada as far as the Orkneys. Then they headed south. The veteran Captain Thomas Fenner of the Non Pareil wrote predicting the fate of the Armada. As he wrote, another terrible storm arose. Spanish accounts of this storm describe the scattering of the fleet. But the Armada held on course. On August 19, in a moderate wind, they sailed safely through the Fair Isle channel between Shetland and the Orkneys, where Scottish fishermen fish. Food was running out. Only a little slimy green water was left in the unseasoned wooden casks. Most of the biscuits, salt beef, and salt fish had gone bad. Medina had to ration food, giving each man a daily allowance of eight ounces of a biscuit, and a pint of half wine/half water. Horses and mules were thrown overboard. Of the 130 ships that had set sail from Lisbon, eight great ships had been sunk. Many pinnaces and small craft had been swept way. Half the remaining ships needed drastic repairs. (Howarth 234) Off the Orkneys, Medina sent a message to the King to say that the Armada was still together, and capable of getting back to Spain, although, besides the wounded, there were 3,000 sick on board. But soon the moderate weather changed and in the terrible seas off Cape Wrath, the Armada began to break up. In gale force winds, the fleet was swept backward and forward around the north of Scotland, facing a fiercer enemy than the English: the wild sea. The groaning, leaking ships were kept afloat by tired, hungry men working non-stop at the pumps. Scurvy, dysentery, and fever were rife. Many ships sought land, looking for food and water. Because they had abandoned their sea anchors at Calais and had only small anchors, they were often driven onto the rocks. As the weather worsened, ships were swept away from the main body of the fleet. Many sank with all hands. (Howarth 245) Four great ships were blown back toward Shetland. The Castello Negro was never seen again. On September 1, the Barca de Amburg fired a gun to signal she was sinking. The Grand Gonfon took off her crew, many of them wounded and dying, but was herself wrecked off Fair Isle a month later. All her 300 crew were saved, though many died afterward of hunger and fever. On September 17, the Trinidad Valencera struck a reef off northeast Ireland. Of the 450 men aboard, some of whom had been rescued from other ships, only 32 reached France. The rest had been slaughtered, or died of exposure or fever. (Marx 224-226) On about September 18, one of the worst storms hit the Atlantic. The Rata Santa Maria Encoronada and the Duquesa Santa Ana took refuge in Blacksod Bay, County Mayo, Ireland. Battles and the beatings of storms shook the Rata, but worst of all, she too had lost her sea anchors. In the rising wind and tide she dragged her remaining anchor and grounded on the shelving beach. Her commander, Don Alonso de Leyva, transferred his men to the Santa Ana. This was a tremendous feat, as the Santa Ana was anchored in another part of the bay and de Leyva had to march his men miles across a bleak headland through bogs and across rivers. The heavily laden ship set sail for Scotland, but was driven on the rocks at Loughros More in the county Donegal. With great courage de Leyva, who had broken his leg, got his crew ashore. They had news that three Spanish ships were sheltering in the harbor of Killybegs. So again, they set out across the mountains. At Killybegs they discovered that two of the ships were wrecked. Thirteen hundred men crammed onto the Girona and again set sail for Scotland. In the night the wind changed. The Girona hit a reef near the Giant's Causeway. Less than ten men survived; everyone else was drowned, including de Leyva who had led his men so bravely. (Walker 176) When Philip was told the dreadful news about his splendid ships, he said, "I sent them to fight against men, not storms." Regardless of cost, he set about building better ships and making arms that were more powerful to overcome the English. Elizabeth's treasury was almost empty, but, with money collected from the City of London and from her courtiers, she sent a fleet of 126 ships, commanded by Drake, to attack the remains of the Armada in Santander. But Drake and his captains wanted booty as well as naval victory and sailed to Corunna, hoping to attack Lisbon. Sickness broke out among the crews, and bad weather dispersed the ships. The dispirited fleet straggled back to Plymouth. The Queen was furious and Drake was in disgrace for several years. Five years later, Philip II sent 100 ships to invade England, but more than half of them were destroyed by a fierce gale in the Bay of Biscay. The following year another Spanish fleet almost reached the southern coast of England, but again the "winds of fate" blew them back to Spain. Overall, the defeat of the Spanish Armada by the hands of the English had almost been like the defeat of the great Philistine Goliath by David. This naval battle, however, did much more good for England, than just an increase in pride. After this battle, England took the role as the greatest power in Europe, and Spain, with a damaged army and damaged pride, could do nothing to prevent this from happening. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\The Bill Of Rights How many do we have .TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Bill of Rights How many rights do you have? You should check, because it might not be as many today as it was a few years ago, or even a few months ago. Some people I talk to are not concerned that police will execute a search warrant without knocking or that they set up roadblocks and stop and interrogate innocent citizens. They do not regard these as great infringements on their rights. But when you put current events together, there is information that may be surprising to people who have not yet been concerned: The amount of the Bill of Rights that is under attack is alarming. Let's take a look at the Bill of Rights and see which aspects are being pushed on or threatened. The point here is not the degree of each attack or its rightness or wrongness, but the sheer number of rights that are under attack. Amendment I Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. ESTABLISHING RELIGION: While campaigning for his first term, George Bush said "I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots." Bush has not retracted, commented on, or clarified this statement, in spite of requests to do so. According to Bush, this is one nation under God. And apparently if you are not within Bush's religious beliefs, you are not a citizen. Federal, state, and local governments also promote a particular religion (or, occasionally, religions) by spending public money on religious displays. FREE EXERCISE OF RELIGION: Robert Newmeyer and Glenn Braunstein were jailed in 1988 for refusing to stand in respect for a judge. Braunstein says the tradition of rising in court started decades ago when judges entered carrying Bibles. Since judges no longer carry Bibles, Braunstein says there is no reason to stand -- and his Bible tells him to honor no other God. For this religious practice, Newmeyer and Braunstein were jailed and are now suing. FREE SPEECH: We find that technology has given the government an excuse to interfere with free speech. Claiming that radio frequencies are a limited resource, the government tells broadcasters what to say (such as news and public and local service programming) and what not to say (obscenity, as defined by the Federal Communications Commission [FCC]). The FCC is investigating Boston PBS station WGBH-TV for broadcasting photographs from the Mapplethorpe exhibit. FREE SPEECH: There are also laws to limit political statements and contributions to political activities. In 1985, the Michigan Chamber of Commerce wanted to take out an advertisement supporting a candidate in the state house of representatives. But a 1976 Michigan law prohibits a corporation from using its general treasury funds to make independent expenditures in a political campaign. In March, the Supreme Court upheld that law. According to dissenting Justice Kennedy, it is now a felony in Michigan for the Sierra Club, the American Civil Liberties Union, or the Chamber of Commerce to advise the public how a candidate voted on issues of urgent concern to their members. FREE PRESS: As in speech, technology has provided another excuse for government intrusion in the press. If you distribute a magazine electronically and do not print copies, the government doesn't consider you a press and does not give you the same protections courts have extended to printed news. The equipment used to publish Phrack, a worldwide electronic magazine about phones and hacking, was confiscated after publishing a document copied from a Bell South computer entitled "A Bell South Standard Practice (BSP) 660-225-104SV Control Office Administration of Enhanced 911 Services for Special Services and Major Account Centers, March, 1988." All of the information in this document was publicly available from Bell South in other documents. The government has not alleged that the publisher of Phrack, Craig Neidorf, was involved with or participated in the copying of the document. Also, the person who copied this document from telephone company computers placed a copy on a bulletin board run by Rich Andrews. Andrews forwarded a copy to AT&T officials and cooperated with authorities fully. In return, the Secret Service (SS) confiscated Andrews' computer along with all the mail and data that were on it. Andrews was not charged with any crime. FREE PRESS: In another incident that would be comical if it were not true, on March 1 the SS ransacked the offices of Steve Jackson Games (SJG); irreparably damaged property; and confiscated three computers, two laser printers, several hard disks, and many boxes of paper and floppy disks. The target of the SS operation was to seize all copies of a game of fiction called GURPS Cyberpunk. The Cyberpunk game contains fictitious break-ins in a futuristic world, with no technical information of actual use with real computers, nor is it played on computers. The SS never filed any charges against SJG but still refused to return confiscated property. PEACEABLE ASSEMBLY: The right to assemble peaceably is no longer free -- you have to get a permit. Even that is not enough; some officials have to be sued before they realize their reasons for denying a permit are not Constitutional. PEACEABLE ASSEMBLY: In Alexandria, Virginia, there is a law that prohibits people from loitering for more than seven minutes and exchanging small objects. Punishment is two years in jail. Consider the scene in jail: "What'd you do?" "I was waiting at a bus stop and gave a guy a cigarette." This is not an impossible occurrence: In Pittsburgh, Eugene Tyler, 15, has been ordered away from bus stops by police officers. Sherman Jones, also 15, was accosted with a police officer's hands around his neck after putting the last bit of pizza crust into his mouth. The police suspected him of hiding drugs. PETITION FOR REDRESS OF GRIEVANCES: Rounding out the attacks on the first amendment, there is a sword hanging over the right to petition for redress of grievances. House Resolution 4079, the National Drug and Crime Emergency Act, tries to "modify" the right to habeas corpus. It sets time limits on the right of people in custody to petition for redress and also limits the courts in which such an appeal may be heard. Amendment II A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS: This amendment is so commonly challenged that the movement has its own name: gun control. Legislation banning various types of weapons is supported with the claim that the weapons are not for "legitimate" sporting purposes. This is a perversion of the right to bear arms for two reasons. First, the basis of freedom is not that permission to do legitimate things is granted to the people, but rather that the government is empowered to do a limited number of legitimate things -- everything else people are free to do; they do not need to justify their choices. Second, should the need for defense arise, it will not be hordes of deer that the security of a free state needs to be defended from. Defense would be needed against humans, whether external invaders or internal oppressors. It is an unfortunate fact of life that the guns that would be needed to defend the security of a state are guns to attack people, not guns for sporting purposes. Firearms regulations also empower local officials, such as police chiefs, to grant or deny permits. This results in towns where only friends of people in the right places are granted permits, or towns where women are generally denied the right to carry a weapon for self-defense. Amendment III No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law. QUARTERING SOLDIERS: This amendment is fairly clean so far, but it is not entirely safe. Recently, 200 troops in camouflage dress with M-16s and helicopters swept through Kings Ridge National Forest in Humboldt County, California. In the process of searching for marijuana plants for four days, soldiers assaulted people on private land with M-16s and barred them from their own property. This might not be a direct hit on the third amendment, but the disregard for private property is uncomfortably close. Amendment IV The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. RIGHT TO BE SECURE IN PERSONS, HOUSES, PAPERS AND EFFECTS AGAINST UNREASONABLE SEARCHES AND SEIZURES: The RICO law is making a mockery of the right to be secure from seizure. Entire stores of books or videotapes have been confiscated based upon the presence of some sexually explicit items. Bars, restaurants, or houses are taken from the owners because employees or tenants sold drugs. In Volusia County, Florida, Sheriff Robert Vogel and his officers stop automobiles for contrived violations. If large amounts of cash are found, the police confiscate it on the PRESUMPTION that it is drug money -- even if there is no other evidence and no charges are filed against the car's occupants. The victims can get their money back only if they prove the money was obtained legally. One couple got their money back by proving it was an insurance settlement. Two other men who tried to get their two thousand dollars back were denied by the Florida courts. RIGHT TO BE SECURE IN PERSONS, HOUSES, PAPERS AND EFFECTS AGAINST UNREASONABLE SEARCHES AND SEIZURES: A new law goes into effect in Oklahoma on January 1, 1991. All property, real and personal, is taxable, and citizens are required to list all their personal property for tax assessors, including household furniture, gold and silver plate, musical instruments, watches, jewelry, and personal, private, or professional libraries. If a citizen refuses to list their property or is suspected of not listing something, the law directs the assessor to visit and enter the premises, getting a search warrant if necessary. Being required to tell the state everything you own is not being secure in one's home and effects. NO WARRANTS SHALL ISSUE, BUT UPON PROBABLE CAUSE, SUPPORTED BY OATH OR AFFIRMATION: As a supporting oath or affirmation, reports of anonymous informants are accepted. This practice has been condoned by the Supreme Court. PARTICULARLY DESCRIBING THE PLACE TO BE SEARCHED AND PERSONS OR THINGS TO BE SEIZED: Today's warrants do not particularly describe the things to be seized -- they list things that might be present. For example, if police are making a drug raid, they will list weapons as things to be searched for and seized. This is done not because the police know of any weapons and can particularly describe them, but because they allege people with drugs often have weapons. Both of the above apply to the warrant the Hudson, New Hampshire, police used when they broke down Bruce Lavoie's door at 5 a.m. with guns drawn and shot and killed him. The warrant claimed information from an anonymous informant, and it said, among other things, that guns were to be seized. The mention of guns in the warrant was used as reason to enter with guns drawn. Bruce Lavoie had no guns. Bruce Lavoie was not secure from unreasonable search and seizure -- nor is anybody else. Other infringements on the fourth amendment include roadblocks and the Boston Police detention of people based on colors they are wearing (supposedly indicating gang membership). And in Pittsburgh again, Eugene Tyler was once searched because he was wearing sweat pants and a plaid shirt -- police told him they heard many drug dealers at that time were wearing sweat pants and plaid shirts. Amendment V No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject to the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation. INDICTMENT OF A GRAND JURY: Kevin Bjornson has been proprietor of Hydro-Tech for nearly a decade and is a leading authority on hydroponic technology and cultivation. On October 26, 1989, both locations of Hydro-Tech were raided by the Drug Enforcement Administration. National Drug Control Policy Director William Bennett has declared that some indoor lighting and hydroponic equipment is purchased by marijuana growers, so retailers and wholesalers of such equipment are drug profiteers and co-conspirators. Bjornson was not charged with any crime, nor subpoenaed, issued a warrant, or arrested. No illegal substances were found on his premises. Federal officials were unable to convince grand juries to indict Bjornson. By February, they had called scores of witnesses and recalled many two or three times, but none of the grand juries they convened decided there was reason to criminally prosecute Bjornson. In spite of that, as of March, his bank accounts were still frozen and none of the inventories or records had been returned. Grand juries refused to indict Bjornson, but the government is still penalizing him. TWICE PUT IN JEOPARDY OF LIFE OR LIMB: Members of the McMartin family in California have been tried two or three times for child abuse. Anthony Barnaby was tried for murder (without evidence linking him to the crime) three times before New Hampshire let him go. COMPELLED TO BE A WITNESS AGAINST HIMSELF: Oliver North was forced to testify against himself. Congress granted him immunity from having anything he said to them being used as evidence against him, and then they required him to talk. After he did so, what he said was used to find other evidence which was used against him. The courts also play games where you can be required to testify against yourself if you testify at all. COMPELLED TO BE A WITNESS AGAINST HIMSELF: In the New York Central Park assault case, three people were found guilty of assault. But there was no physical evidence linking them to the crime; semen did not match any of the defendants. The only evidence the state had was confessions. To obtain these confessions, the police questioned a 15-year old without a parent present -- which is illegal under New York state law. Police also refused to let the subject's Big Brother, an attorney for the Federal government, see him during questioning. Police screamed "You better tell us what we want to hear and cooperate or you are going to jail," at 14-year-old Antron McCray, according to Bobby McCray, his father. Antron McCray "confessed" after his father told him to, so that police would release him. These people were coerced into bearing witness against themselves, and those confessions were used to convict them. COMPELLED TO BE A WITNESS AGAINST HIMSELF: Your answers to Census questions are required by law, with a $100 penalty for each question not answered. But people have been evicted for giving honest Census answers. According to the General Accounting Office, one of the most frequent ways city governments use census information is to detect illegal two-family dwellings. This has happened in Montgomery County, Maryland; Pullman, Washington; and Long Island, New York. The August 8, 1989, Wall Street Journal reports this and other ways Census answers have been used against the answerers. COMPELLED TO BE A WITNESS AGAINST HIMSELF: Drug tests are being required from more and more people, even when there is no probable cause, no accident, and no suspicion of drug use. Requiring people to take drug tests compels them to provide evidence against themselves. DEPRIVED OF LIFE, LIBERTY, OR PROPERTY WITHOUT DUE PROCESS OF LAW: This clause is violated on each of the items life, liberty, and property. Incidents including such violations are described elsewhere in this article. Here are two more: On March 26, 1987, in Jeffersontown, Kentucky, Jeffrey Miles was killed by police officer John Rucker, who was looking for a suspected drug dealer. Rucker had been sent to the wrong house; Miles was not wanted by police. He received no due process. In Detroit, $4,834 was seized from a grocery store after dogs detected traces of cocaine on three one-dollar bills in a cash register. PRIVATE PROPERTY TAKEN FOR PUBLIC USE WITHOUT JUST COMPENSATION: RICO is shredding this aspect of the Bill of Rights. The money confiscated by Sheriff Vogel goes directly into Vogel's budget; it is not regulated by the legislature. Federal and local governments seize and auction boats, buildings, and other property. Under RICO, the government is seizing property without due process. The victims are required to prove not only that they are not guilty of a crime, but that they are entitled to their property. Otherwise, the government auctions off the property and keeps the proceeds. Amendment VI In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining Witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defence. THE RIGHT TO A SPEEDY AND PUBLIC TRIAL: Surprisingly, the right to a public trial is under attack. When Marion Barry was being tried, the prosecution attempted to bar Louis Farrakhan and George Stallings from the gallery. This request was based on an allegation that they would send silent and "impermissible messages" to the jurors. The judge initially granted this request. One might argue that the whole point of a public trial is to send a message to all the participants: The message is that the public is watching; the trial had better be fair. BY AN IMPARTIAL JURY: The government does not even honor the right to trial by an impartial jury. US District Judge Edward Rafeedie is investigating improper influence on jurors by US marshals in the Enrique Camarena case. US marshals apparently illegally communicated with jurors during deliberations. OF THE STATE AND DISTRICT WHEREIN THE CRIME SHALL HAVE BEEN COMMITTED: This is incredible, but Manuel Noriega is being tried so far away from the place where he is alleged to have committed crimes that the United States had to invade another country and overturn a government to get him. Nor is this a unique occurrence; in a matter separate from the Camarena case, Judge Rafeedie was asked to dismiss charges against Mexican gynecologist Dr. Humberto Alvarez Machain on the grounds that the doctor was illegally abducted from his Guadalajara office in April and turned over to US authorities. TO BE INFORMED OF THE NATURE AND CAUSE OF THE ACCUSATION: Steve Jackson Games, nearly put out of business by the raid described previously, has been stonewalled by the SS. "For the past month or so these guys have been insisting the book wasn't the target of the raid, but they don't say what the target was, or why they were critical of the book, or why they won't give it back," Steve Jackson says. "They have repeatedly denied we're targets but don't explain why we've been made victims." Attorneys for SJG tried to find out the basis for the search warrant that led to the raid on SJG. But the application for that warrant was sealed by order of the court and remained sealed at last report, in July. Not only has the SS taken property and nearly destroyed a publisher, it will not even explain the nature and cause of the accusations that led to the raid. TO BE CONFRONTED WITH THE WITNESSES AGAINST HIM: The courts are beginning to play fast and loose with the right to confront witnesses. Watch out for anonymous witnesses and videotaped testimony. TO HAVE COMPULSORY PROCESS FOR OBTAINING WITNESSES: Ronald Reagan resisted submitting to subpoena and answering questions about Irangate, claiming matters of national security and executive privilege. A judge had to dismiss some charges against Irangate participants because the government refused to provide information subpoenaed by the defendants. And one wonders if the government would go to the same lengths to obtain witnesses for Manuel Noriega as it did to capture him. TO HAVE THE ASSISTANCE OF COUNSEL: The right to assistance of counsel took a hit recently. Connecticut Judge Joseph Sylvester is refusing to assign public defenders to people ACCUSED of drug-related crimes, including drunk driving. TO HAVE THE ASSISTANCE OF COUNSEL: RICO is also affecting the right to have the assistance of counsel. The government confiscates the money of an accused person, which leaves them unable to hire attorneys. The IRS has served summonses nationwide to defense attorneys, demanding the names of clients who paid cash for fees exceeding $10,000. Amendment VII In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of common law. RIGHT OF TRIAL BY JURY IN SUITS AT COMMON LAW: This is a simple right; so far the government has not felt threatened by it and has not made attacks on it that I am aware of. This is our only remaining safe haven in the Bill of Rights. Amendment VIII Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted. EXCESSIVE BAIL AND FINES: Tallahatchie County in Mississippi charges ten dollars a day to each person who spends time in the jail, regardless of the length of stay or the outcome of their trial. This means innocent people are forced to pay. Marvin Willis was stuck in jail for 90 days trying to raise $2,500 bail on an assault charge. But after he made that bail, he was kept imprisoned because he could not pay the $900 rent Tallahatchie demanded. Nine former inmates are suing the county for this practice. CRUEL AND UNUSUAL PUNISHMENTS: House Resolution 4079 sticks its nose in here too: "... a Federal court shall not hold prison or jail crowding unconstitutional under the eighth amendment except to the extent that an individual plaintiff inmate proves that the crowding causes the infliction of cruel and unusual punishment of that inmate." CRUEL AND UNUSUAL PUNISHMENTS: A life sentence for selling a quarter of a gram of cocaine for $20 -- that is what Ricky Isom was sentenced to in February in Cobb County, Georgia. It was Isom's second conviction in two years, and state law imposes a mandatory sentence. Even the judge pronouncing the sentence thinks it is cruel; Judge Tom Cauthorn expressed grave reservations before sentencing Isom and Douglas Rucks (convicted of selling 3.5 grams of cocaine in a separate but similar case). Judge Cauthorn called the sentences "Draconian." Amendment IX The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. OTHER RIGHTS RETAINED BY THE PEOPLE: This amendment is so weak today that I will ask not what infringements there are on it but rather what exercise of it exists at all? What law can you appeal to a court to find you not guilty of violating because the law denies a right retained by you? Amendment X The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. POWERS RESERVED TO THE STATES OR THE PEOPLE: This amendment is also weak, although it is not so nonexistent as the ninth amendment. But few states set their own speed limits or drinking age limits. Today, we mostly think of this country as the -- singular -- United States, rather than a collection of states. This concentration of power detaches laws from the desires of people -- and even of states. House Resolution 4079 crops up again here -- it uses financial incentives to get states to set specific penalties for certain crimes. Making their own laws certainly must be considered a right of the states, and this right is being infringed upon. Out of ten amendments, nine are under attack, most of them under multiple attacks of different natures, and some of them under a barrage. If this much of the Bill of Rights is threatened, how can you be sure your rights are safe? A right has to be there when you need it. Like insurance, you cannot afford to wait until you need it and then set about procuring it or ensuring it is available. Assurance must be made in advance. The bottom line here is that your rights are not safe. You do not know when one of your rights will be violated. A number of rights protect accused persons, and you may think it is not important to protect the rights of criminals. But if a right is not there for people accused of crimes, it will not be there when you need it. With the Bill of Rights in the sad condition described above, nobody can be confident they will be able to exercise the rights to which they are justly entitled. To preserve our rights for ourselves in the future, we must defend them for everybody today. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\The Bipolar Expierence.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The phenomenon of bipolar affective disorder has been a mystery since the 16th century. History has shown that this affliction can appear in almost anyone. Even the great painter Vincent Van Gogh is believed to have had bipolar disorder. It is clear that in our society many people live with bipolar disorder; however, despite the abundance of people suffering from the it, we are still waiting for definate explanations for the causes and cure. The one fact of which we are pianfully aware4 is that bipolar disorder severely undermines its' victoms ability to obtain and maintain social and occupational success. Because bipolar disorder has such debilitating symptoms, it is imperitive that we remain vigilent in the quest for explanations of its causes and treatment. Affective disorders are characterized by a smorgasbord of symptoms that can be broken into manic and depressive episodes. The depressive episodes are characterized by intense feelings of sadness and despair that can become feelings of hopelessness and helplessness. Some of the symptoms of a depressive episode include anhedonia, disturbances in sleep and appetite, psycomoter retardation, loss of energy, feelings of guilt and worthlessness, guilt, difficulty thinking, indecision, and recurrent thoughts of death and suicide. The manic episodes are characterized by elevated or irritable mood, increased energy, decreased need for sleep, poor judgment and insight, and often reckless or irresponsible behavior (Hollandsworth, Jr. 1990 ). Bipolar affective disorder affects approximately one percent of the population (approximatly three million people) in the United States. It is presented by both males and females. Bipolar disorder involves episodes of mania and depression. These episodes may alternate with profound depressions characterized by a pervasive sadness, almost inability to move, hopelessness, and disturbances in appetite, sleep, in concentrations and driving. Bipolar disorder is diagnosed if an episode of mania occurs whether depression has been diagnosed or not (Goodwin, Guze, 1989, p 11). Most commonly, individuals with manic episodes experience a period of depression. Mood is either elated, expansive, or irritable, hyperactivity, pressure of speech, flight of ideas, inflated self esteem, decreased need for sleep, distractibility, and excessive involvement in activities with high potential for painful consequences. Rarest symptoms were periods of loss of all interest and retardation or agitation (Weisman, 1991). Effects As the National Depressive and Manic Depressive Association (MDMDA) has demonstrated, bipolar disorder can create substantial developmental delays, marital and family disruptions, occupational setbacks, and financial disasters. This devastating disease causes disruptions of families, loss of jobs and millions of dollars in cost to society. Many times bipolar patients report that the depressions are longer and increase in frequency as the individual ages. Many times bipolar states and psychotic states are misdiagnosed as schizophrenic. Speech patterns help distinguish between the two disorders (Lish, 1994). Prevalence and Age of Onset The onset of Bipolar disorder usually occurs between the ages of 20 and 30 years of age, with a second peak in the mid-forties for women. A typical bipolar patient may experience eight to ten episodes in their lifetime. However, those who have rapid cycling may experience more episodes of mania and depression that succeed each other without a period of remission (DSM III-R). The three stages of mania begin with hypomania, in which patients report that they are energetic, extroverted and assertive. The hypomania state has led observers to feel that bipolar patients are "addicted" to their mania. Hypomania progresses into mania and the transition is marked by loss of judgment. Often, euphoric grandiose characters are recognized as well as a paranoid or irritable character begins to manifest. The third stage of mania is evident when the patient experiences delusions with often paranoid themes. Speech is generally rapid and behavior manifests with hyperactivity and sometimes assaultiveness. When both manic and depressive symptoms occur at the same time it is called a mixed episode. These people are a special risk because of the combination of hopelessness, agitation and anxiety make them feel like they "could jump out of their skin"(Hirschfeld, 1995). Up to 50% of all patients with mania have a mixture of depressed moods. Patients report feeling very dysphoric, depressed and unhappy yet exhibit the energy associated with mania. Rapid cycling mania is yet another presentation of bipolar disorder. Mania may be present with four or more distinct episodes within a 12 month period. There is now evidence to suggest that sometimes rapid cycling may be a transient manifestation of the bipolar disorder. This form of the disease experiences more episodes of mania and depression than bipolar. Lithium has been the primary treatment of bipolar disorder since its introduction in the 1960's. It is main function is to stabilize the cycling characteristic of bipolar disorder. In four controlled studies by F. K. Goodwin and K. R. Jamison, the overall response rate for bipolar subjects treated with Lithium was 78% (1990). Lithium is also the primary drug used for long- term maintenance of bipolar disorder. In a majority of bipolar patients, it lessens the duration, frequency, and severity of the episodes of both mania and depression. Unfortunately, there are up to 40% of bipolar patients who are either unresponsive to lithium or who cannot tolerate the side effects. Some of the side effects include thirst, weight gain, nausea, diarrhea, and edema. Patients who are unresponsive to lithium treatment are often those who experience dysphoric mania, mixed states, or rapid cycling bipolar disorder (those patients who experience at least four distinct episodes within one month period). Among the problems associated with lithium includes the fact the long-term lithium treatment has been associated with decreased thyroid functioning in patients with bipolar disorder. Preliminary evidence also suggest that hypothyroidism may actually lead to rapid-cycling (Bauer et al., 1990). Another problem associated with the use of lithium is its use by pregnant women. Its use during pregnancy has been associated with birth defects, particularly Ebstein's anomaly. Based on current data, the risk of a child with Ebstein's anomaly being born to a mother who took lithium during her first trimester of pregnancy is approximately 1 in 8,000, or 2.5 times that of the general population (Jacobson et al., 1992). Anti-convulsants There are other effective treatments for bipolar disorder that are used in cases where the patients cannot tolerate lithium or can become unresponsive to it in the past. The American Psychiatric Association's guidelines suggest the next line of to be anticonvulsant such as valproate and carbamazepine. These drugs are useful as antimanic agents, especially in those patients with mixed states. Both of these medications can be used in combination with lithium or in combination with each other. Valproate is especially helpful for patients who are lithium noncompliant, experience rapid-cycling, or have comorbid alcohol or drug abuse. Neuropletics Neuroleptics such as haloperidol or chlorpromazine have also been used to help stabilize manic patients who are highly agitated or psychotic. Use of these drugs is often necessary because the response to them are rapid, but there are risks involved in their use. Because of the often severe side effects, benzodiazepines are often used in their place. Benzodiazepines can achieve the same results as Neuroleptics for most patients in terms of rapid control of agitation and excitement, without the severe side effects. Anti-depressants Antidepressants such as the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) fluovamine and amitriptyline have also been used by some doctors as treatment for bipolar disorder. A double-blind study by M. Gasperini, F. Gatti, L. Bellini, R.Anniverno, and E. Smeraldi showed that fluvoxamine and amitriptyline are highly effective treatments for bipolar patients experiencing depressive episodes. This study is controversial, however, because conflicting research shows that SSRIs and other antidepressants can actually precipitate manic episodes. Most doctors can see the usefulness of antidepressants when used in conjunction with mood stabilizing medications such as lithium. In addition to the mentioned medical treatments of bipolar disorder, there are several other options available to bipolar patients, most of which are used in conjunction with medicine. One such treatment is light therapy. One study compared the response to light therapy of bipolar patients with that of unipolar depresses patients. Patients are free of psychotropic and hypnotic medications for at least one month before treatment. Bipolar patients in this study showed an average of 90.3% improvement in their depressive symptoms, with no incidence of mania or hypomania. They all continued to use light therapy, and all showed a sustained positive response at a three month follow-up (Hopkins and Gelenberg, 1994). Another study involved a four week treatment of morning bright light treatment of patients with seasonal affective disorder, including bipolar patients. This study found a statistically significant decrement in depressive symptoms, with the maximum antidepressant effect of light not being reached until week four. Hypomanic symptoms were experienced by 36% of bipolar patients in this study. Predominant hypomanic symptoms included racing thoughts, deceased sleep and irritability. Surprisingly, one-third of controls also developed symptoms such as those mentioned above. Regardless of the explanation of the emergence of hypomanic symptoms in undiagnosed controls, it is evident from this study that light treatment may be associated with the observed symptoms. Based on the results, careful professional monitoring during light treatment is necessary, even for those without a history of major mood disorders. Another popular treatment for bipolar disorder is electro-convulsive shock therapy. ECT is the preferred treatment for severely manic pregnant patients and patients who are homicidal, psychotic, catatonic, medically compromised, or severely suicidal. In one study, researchers found marked improvement in 78% of patients treated with ECT, compared to 62% of patients treated only with lithium and 37% of patients who received neither, ECT or lithium (Black et al., 1987). A final type of therapy that I found is outpatient group psychotherapy. According to Dr. John Graves, spokesperson for The National Depressive and Manic Depressive Association have called attention to the value of support groups, challenging mental health professionals to take a more serious look at group therapy for the bipolar population. Research shows that group participation may help increase lithium compliance, decrease denial regarding the illness, and increase awareness of both external and internal stress factors leading to manic and depressive episodes. Group therapy for patients with bipolar disorders responds to the need for support and reinforcement of medicationmanagement, the need for education and support for the interpersonal difficulties that arise during the course of the disorder. References Bauer, M.S., Kurtz, J.W., Rubin, L.B., and Marcus, J.G. (1994). Mood and Behavioral effects of four-week light treatment in winter depressives and controls. Journal of Psychiatric Research. 28, 2: 135-145. Bauer, M.S., Whybrow, P.C. and Winokur, A. (1990). Rapid Cycling Bipolar Affective Disorder: I. Association with grade I hypothyroidism. Archives of General Psychiatry. 47: 427-432. Black, D.W., Winokur, G., and Nasrallah, A. (1987). Treatment of Mania: A naturalistic study of electroconvulsive therapy versus lithium in 438 patients. Journal of Clinical Psychiatry. 48: 132-139. Deltito, J.A., Moline, M., Pollak, C., Martin, L.Y. and Maremani, I. (1991). Effects of Phototherapy on nonseasonal unipolar and bipolar depressive spectrum disorders. Journal of Affective Disorders. 23: 231-237. Fawcett, Jan. (1994). Bipolar depression highlights of the first international conference on bipolar disorder. University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Forster, P.L. Videoconference program synopsis. Annenburg Center for Health Services at Eisenhower Rancho Mirage, C.A. (http://www.wpic.pitt.edu/research/ stanley/othnws/vidtel12.htm). Gasperini, M., Gatti, F., Bellini, L., Anniverno, R., Smeralsi, E., (1992). Perspectives in clinical psychopharmacology of amitriptyline and fluvoxamine. Pharmacopsychiatry. 26:186-192. Goodwin, F.K., and Jamison, K.R. (1990). Manic Depressive Illness. New York: Oxford University Press. Goodwin, Donald W. and Guze, Samuel B. (1989). Psychiatric Diagnosis. Fourth Ed. Oxford University. p.7. Hirschfeld, R.M. (1995). Recent Developments in Clinical Aspects of Bipolar Disorder. The Decade of the Brain. National Alliance for the Mentally Ill. Winter. Vol. VI. Issue II. Hollandsworth, James G. (1990). The Physiology of Psychological Disorders. Plenem Press. New York and London. P.111. Hopkins, H.S. and Gelenberg, A.J. (1994). Treatment of Bipolar Disorder: How Far Have We Come? Psychopharmacology Bulletin. 30 (1): 27-38. Jacobson, S.J., Jones, K., Ceolin, L., Kaur, P., Sahn, D., Donnerfeld, A.E., Rieder, M., Santelli, R., Smythe, J., Patuszuk, A., Einarson, T., and Koren, G., (1992). Prospective multicenter study of pregnancy outcome after lithium exposure during the first trimester. Laricet. 339: 530-533. Lish, J.D., Dime-Meenan, S., Whybrow, P.C., Price, R.A. and Hirschfeld, R.M. (1994). The National Depressive and Manic Depressive Association (DMDA) Survey of Bipolar Members. Affective Disorders. 31: pp.281-294. Weisman, M.M., Livingston, B.M., Leaf, P.J., Florio, L.P., Holzer, C. (1991). Psychiatric Disorders in America. Affective Disorders. Free Press. University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (1994). Bipolar depression highlights of the first international conference on bipolar disorder. (http://www.wpic.pitt.edu/research/ bipolar2.htm). The phenomenon of bipolar affective disorder has been a mystery since the 16th century. History has shown that this affliction can appear in almost anyone. Even the great painter Vincent Van Gogh is believed to have had bipolar disorder. It is clear that in our society many people live with bipolar disorder; however, despite the abundance of people suffering from the it, we are still waiting for definate explanations for the causes and cure. The one fact of which we are pianfully aware4 is that bipolar disorder severely undermines its' victoms ability to obtain and maintain social and occupational success. Because bipolar disorder has such debilitating symptoms, it is imperitive that we remain vigilent in the quest for explanations of its causes and treatment. Affective disorders are characterized by a smorgasbord of symptoms that can be broken into manic and depressive episodes. The depressive episodes are characterized by intense feelings of sadness and despair that can become feelings of hopelessness and helplessness. Some of the symptoms of a depressive episode include anhedonia, disturbances in sleep and appetite, psycomoter retardation, loss of energy, feelings of guilt and worthlessness, guilt, difficulty thinking, indecision, and recurrent thoughts of death and suicide. The manic episodes are characterized by elevated or irritable mood, increased energy, decreased need for sleep, poor judgment and insight, and often reckless or irresponsible behavior (Hollandsworth, Jr. 1990 ). Bipolar affective disorder affects approximately one percent of the population (approximatly three million people) in the United States. It is presented by both males and females. Bipolar disorder involves episodes of mania and depression. These episodes may alternate with profound depressions characterized by a pervasive sadness, almost inability to move, hopelessness, and disturbances in appetite, sleep, in concentrations and driving. Bipolar disorder is diagnosed if an episode of mania occurs whether depression has been diagnosed or not (Goodwin, Guze, 1989, p 11). Most commonly, individuals with manic episodes experience a period of depression. Mood is either elated, expansive, or irritable, hyperactivity, pressure of speech, flight of ideas, inflated self esteem, decreased need for sleep, distractibility, and excessive involvement in activities with high potential for painful consequences. Rarest symptoms were periods of loss of all interest and retardation or agitation (Weisman, 1991). Effects As the National Depressive and Manic Depressive Association (MDMDA) has demonstrated, bipolar disorder can create substantial developmental delays, marital and family disruptions, occupational setbacks, and financial disasters. This devastating disease causes disruptions of families, loss of jobs and millions of dollars in cost to society. Many times bipolar patients report that the depressions are longer and increase in frequency as the individual ages. Many times bipolar states and psychotic states are misdiagnosed as schizophrenic. Speech patterns help distinguish between the two disorders (Lish, 1994). Prevalence and Age of Onset The onset of Bipolar disorder usually occurs between the ages of 20 and 30 years of age, with a second peak in the mid-forties for women. A typical bipolar patient may experience eight to ten episodes in their lifetime. However, those who have rapid cycling may experience more episodes of mania and depression that succeed each other without a period of remission (DSM III-R). The three stages of mania begin with hypomania, in which patients report that they are energetic, extroverted and assertive. The hypomania state has led observers to feel that bipolar patients are "addicted" to their mania. Hypomania progresses into mania and the transition is marked by loss of judgment. Often, euphoric grandiose characters are recognized as well as a paranoid or irritable character begins to manifest. The third stage of mania is evident when the patient experiences delusions with often paranoid themes. Speech is generally rapid and behavior manifests with hyperactivity and sometimes assaultiveness. When both manic and depressive symptoms occur at the same time it is called a mixed episode. These people are a special risk because of the combination of hopelessness, agitation and anxiety make them feel like they "could jump out of their skin"(Hirschfeld, 1995). Up to 50% of all patients with mania have a mixture of depressed moods. Patients report feeling very dysphoric, depressed and unhappy yet exhibit the energy associated with mania. Rapid cycling mania is yet another presentation of bipolar disorder. Mania may be present with four or more distinct episodes within a 12 month period. There is now evidence to suggest that sometimes rapid cycling may be a transient manifestation of the bipolar disorder. This form of the disease experiences more episodes of mania and depression than bipolar. Lithium has been the primary treatment of bipolar disorder since its introduction in the 1960's. It is main function is to stabilize the cycling characteristic of bipolar disorder. In four controlled studies by F. K. Goodwin and K. R. Jamison, the overall response rate for bipolar subjects treated with Lithium was 78% (1990). Lithium is also the primary drug used for long- term maintenance of bipolar disorder. In a majority of bipolar patients, it lessens the duration, frequency, and severity of the episodes of both mania and depression. Unfortunately, there are up to 40% of bipolar patients who are either unresponsive to lithium or who cannot tolerate the side effects. Some of the side effects include thirst, weight gain, nausea, diarrhea, and edema. Patients who are unresponsive to lithium treatment are often those who experience dysphoric mania, mixed states, or rapid cycling bipolar disorder (those patients who experience at least four distinct episodes within one month period). Among the problems associated with lithium includes the fact the long-term lithium treatment has been associated with decreased thyroid functioning in patients with bipolar disorder. Preliminary evidence also suggest that hypothyroidism may actually lead to rapid-cycling (Bauer et al., 1990). Another problem associated with the use of lithium is its use by pregnant women. Its use during pregnancy has been associated with birth defects, particularly Ebstein's anomaly. Based on current data, the risk of a child with Ebstein's anomaly being born to a mother who took lithium during her first trimester of pregnancy is approximately 1 in 8,000, or 2.5 times that of the general population (Jacobson et al., 1992). Anti-convulsants There are other effective treatments for bipolar disorder that are used in cases where the patients cannot tolerate lithium or can become unresponsive to it in the past. The American Psychiatric Association's guidelines suggest the next line of to be anticonvulsant such as valproate and carbamazepine. These drugs are useful as antimanic agents, especially in those patients with mixed states. Both of these medications can be used in combination with lithium or in combination with each other. Valproate is especially helpful for patients who are lithium noncompliant, experience rapid-cycling, or have comorbid alcohol or drug abuse. Neuropletics Neuroleptics such as haloperidol or chlorpromazine have also been used to help stabilize manic patients who are highly agitated or psychotic. Use of these drugs is often necessary because the response to them are rapid, but there are risks involved in their use. Because of the often severe side effects, benzodiazepines are often used in their place. Benzodiazepines can achieve the same results as Neuroleptics for most patients in terms of rapid control of agitation and excitement, without the severe side effects. Anti-depressants Antidepressants such as the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) fluovamine and amitriptyline have also been used by some doctors as treatment for bipolar disorder. A double-blind study by M. Gasperini, F. Gatti, L. Bellini, R.Anniverno, and E. Smeraldi showed that fluvoxamine and amitriptyline are highly effective treatments for bipolar patients experiencing depressive episodes. This study is controversial, however, because conflicting research shows that SSRIs and other antidepressants can actually precipitate manic episodes. Most doctors can see the usefulness of antidepressants when used in conjunction with mood stabilizing medications such as lithium. In addition to the mentioned medical treatments of bipolar disorder, there are several other options available to bipolar patients, most of which are used in conjunction with medicine. One such treatment is light therapy. One study compared the response to light therapy of bipolar patients with that of unipolar depresses patients. Patients are free of psychotropic and hypnotic medications for at least one month before treatment. Bipolar patients in this study showed an average of 90.3% improvement in their depressive symptoms, with no incidence of mania or hypomania. They all continued to use light therapy, and all showed a sustained positive response at a three month follow-up (Hopkins and Gelenberg, 1994). Another study involved a four week treatment of morning bright light treatment of patients with seasonal affective disorder, including bipolar patients. This study found a statistically significant decrement in depressive symptoms, with the maximum antidepressant effect of light not being reached until week four. Hypomanic symptoms were experienced by 36% of bipolar patients in this study. Predominant hypomanic symptoms included racing thoughts, deceased sleep and irritability. Surprisingly, one-third of controls also developed symptoms such as those mentioned above. Regardless of the explanation of the emergence of hypomanic symptoms in undiagnosed controls, it is evident from this study that light treatment may be associated with the observed symptoms. Based on the results, careful professional monitoring during light treatment is necessary, even for those without a history of major mood disorders. Another popular treatment for bipolar disorder is electro-convulsive shock therapy. ECT is the preferred treatment for severely manic pregnant patients and patients who are homicidal, psychotic, catatonic, medically compromised, or severely suicidal. In one study, researchers found marked improvement in 78% of patients treated with ECT, compared to 62% of patients treated only with lithium and 37% of patients who received neither, ECT or lithium (Black et al., 1987). A final type of therapy that I found is outpatient group psychotherapy. According to Dr. John Graves, spokesperson for The National Depressive and Manic Depressive Association have called attention to the value of support groups, challenging mental health professionals to take a more serious look at group therapy for the bipolar population. Research shows that group participation may help increase lithium compliance, decrease denial regarding the illness, and increase awareness of both external and internal stress factors leading to manic and depressive episodes. Group therapy for patients with bipolar disorders responds to the need for support and reinforcement of medicationmanagement, the need for education and support for the interpersonal difficulties that arise during the course of the disorder. References Bauer, M.S., Kurtz, J.W., Rubin, L.B., and Marcus, J.G. (1994). Mood and Behavioral effects of four-week light treatment in winter depressives and controls. Journal of Psychiatric Research. 28, 2: 135-145. Bauer, M.S., Whybrow, P.C. and Winokur, A. (1990). Rapid Cycling Bipolar Affective Disorder: I. Association with grade I hypothyroidism. Archives of General Psychiatry. 47: 427-432. Black, D.W., Winokur, G., and Nasrallah, A. (1987). Treatment of Mania: A naturalistic study of electroconvulsive therapy versus lithium in 438 patients. Journal of Clinical Psychiatry. 48: 132-139. Deltito, J.A., Moline, M., Pollak, C., Martin, L.Y. and Maremani, I. (1991). Effects of Phototherapy on nonseasonal unipolar and bipolar depressive spectrum disorders. Journal of Affective Disorders. 23: 231-237. Fawcett, Jan. (1994). Bipolar depression highlights of the first international conference on bipolar disorder. University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Forster, P.L. Videoconference program synopsis. Annenburg Center for Health Services at Eisenhower Rancho Mirage, C.A. (http://www.wpic.pitt.edu/research/ stanley/othnws/vidtel12.htm). Gasperini, M., Gatti, F., Bellini, L., Anniverno, R., Smeralsi, E., (1992). Perspectives in clinical psychopharmacology of amitriptyline and fluvoxamine. Pharmacopsychiatry. 26:186-192. Goodwin, F.K., and Jamison, K.R. (1990). Manic Depressive Illness. New York: Oxford University Press. Goodwin, Donald W. and Guze, Samuel B. (1989). Psychiatric Diagnosis. Fourth Ed. Oxford University. p.7. Hirschfeld, R.M. (1995). Recent Developments in Clinical Aspects of Bipolar Disorder. The Decade of the Brain. National Alliance for the Mentally Ill. Winter. Vol. VI. Issue II. Hollandsworth, James G. (1990). The Physiology of Psychological Disorders. Plenem Press. New York and London. P.111. Hopkins, H.S. and Gelenberg, A.J. (1994). Treatment of Bipolar Disorder: How Far Have We Come? Psychopharmacology Bulletin. 30 (1): 27-38. Jacobson, S.J., Jones, K., Ceolin, L., Kaur, P., Sahn, D., Donnerfeld, A.E., Rieder, M., Santelli, R., Smythe, J., Patuszuk, A., Einarson, T., and Koren, G., (1992). Prospective multicenter study of pregnancy outcome after lithium exposure during the first trimester. Laricet. 339: 530-533. Lish, J.D., Dime-Meenan, S., Whybrow, P.C., Price, R.A. and Hirschfeld, R.M. (1994). The National Depressive and Manic Depressive Association (DMDA) Survey of Bipolar Members. Affective Disorders. 31: pp.281-294. Weisman, M.M., Livingston, B.M., Leaf, P.J., Florio, L.P., Holzer, C. (1991). Psychiatric Disorders in America. Affective Disorders. Free Press. University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (1994). Bipolar depression highlights of the first international conference on bipolar disorder. (http://www.wpic.pitt.edu/research/ bipolar2.htm). f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\The Canadian Identity.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ I believe that Canada lacks a real national identity. Canadians tend to identify with community and region rather than the nation. Because Canada has such a great cultural diversity the Canadian identity is shaped by our values and attitudes as they have emerged from our history and geography. Bilingualism and multiculturalism are very important to the Canadian identity. They both strengthen and challenge Canadian identity. Because Canada has so many cultural and regional groups, interaction between them influences one¹s identity. Differing views of Canada by Canadians and other countries prove that Canada does not have a true national identity. Because of these factors Canada lacks a national identity, one which everyone can recognize. When someone asks a Canadian what his nationality is, he does not reply, ³Canadian², instead, ³German², ³Scottish² or ³Ukrainian². This is because we as Canadians do not see ourselves as distinct Canadians. We need to have a common idea of what it is to be Canadian rather than always identifying with the place we came from. We identify with community or region over nation. To gain a Canadian identity we must learn to identify with a nation, Canada. This is one of the main reasons we lack a Canadian identity, because we as Canadians do not really think of ourselves as Canadians. We may be Canadians but we think of Canada as a place of refuge rather than a home. This ties in with our lack of patriotism. Many Canadians that I know, come Olympic time or another big world competition, rather that cheering for Canada, will cheer for their home country. A reason for this is because of our multicultural society. Because in Canada, Œanything goes¹, there is no push to be Canadian. So they can do what they want and carry on with their cultural traditions. Because there is really no Canadian identity to begin with, it makes it all the easier for them to carry on as they wish. This explains why people who are Canadian citizens tend to identify more with community or region than with Canada. Canadians all have different values and traditions, like any country, but in Canada there is a great diversity of values and traditions. This makes it harder for people to identify with each other. Alexander and Pearl eat the traditional cabbage rolls and perogies every other day. Franz and Augusta on the other hand would much rather have their traditional sauerkraut and strudel. It is because of differences like this that Canada can not have it¹s own identity. When different cultural groups each have their own way of getting things done because of the way they were brought up, it is almost impossible to have a true Canadian identity. Over time the traditions of the different groups will blend but until then, Canada can not have a real national identity. It can be argued that the differences in cultural values and traditions are an aspect of the Canadian identity, but I feel that a Canadian identity is one which everyone can relate to and see in their own life. To me, a Canadian identity needs to be shaped by different values, traditions and cultures that have emerged from history to create a truly Canadian identity. Bilingualism and multiculturalism can be good for, but also challenge the Canadian identity. These policies challenge the Canadian identity because they allow people to keep their culture. I feel a true identity is one which everyone can relate to, when everyone keeps their culture it is harder to have a true Canadian identity. It would be much easier to have a national identity if our country was unilingual and unicultural, because there would be one common way of getting things done. On the other hand, with these policies others see us as a country that does not force others into a certain culture, they can keep their culture if they want. Because of these policies we gain popularity with other countries. That is the view other countries would have of Canada, which again shows that there is really no national identity. The bilingual and multicultural policies are ones that play a significant role in the Canadian identity. Because Canada has so many different cultural groups, interaction between them can influence or change the Canadian identity. In Canada, although it is a multicultural society, there is a lot of integration, people sharing bits and pieces of their culture with each other. Sometimes it is sharing recipes or inviting friends over to help celebrate Ukrainian Christmas. All of this has an affect on the Canadian identity. Canadians from different parts of the country and people from different parts of the world have different ideas on what the Canadian identity is. This gives the idea that there really is no national identity. People from other countries tend to see Canada as one of the best places in the world to live. They say that Canadians are nice, mannerly, polite, and law abiding among many other things. The United Nations went as far as to say that Canada was the best country to live because we rank very high in life expectancy, average level of education and average per capita income. We have a great world reputation as being helpful and a very key component of UN operations. We have been said to be a world role model and a model for multiculturalism, something many Canadians are worried about and bicker over. Canadians tend to worry too much about the little things, when there are better things to worry about like trying to find an identity. Canadians in the West feel alienated by the East and think that they are not cared about, that they do not have an equal opportunity with those in the East. Those in the East think the Westerners are treated the same and that there is nothing for them to be upset about. Canadians as a whole do not see Canada the way the other countries do. Canadians don¹t think we are as great of a country as we really are. The country of Canada lacks a true national identity, partly because of all of the different views of Canada. Because of many factors, Canada lacks a real national identity. Canadians identify with community, region, but rarely a nation. Values, attitudes and cultures of different groups shape identity as they have emerged from our history and geography. Bilingual and multicultural polices which help people preserve their own cultures can also have an affect on Canadian identity. Interaction between groups and people that have different views on Canada can influence the Canadian identity. Even though people have their own idea of the Canadian identity, Canada lacks a true national identity, one that is clearly Canadian and can be recognized by anybody, anywhere. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\The Chicago Fire of 1871.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ THE CHICAGO FIRE of 1871 The summer of 1871 had been an unusually dry one in Chicago. Between July and October, only 5 inches of rain fell. In addition to twenty-seven fires in the first week of October, on Saturday night, October 7, a blaze broke out in a planning mill on the West Side and destroyed almost every building in a four block area before it was brought under control Sunday morning. They lost a hose and other fire-fighting equipment, including one of seventeen steam fire engines and a hose cart. Nearly half of Chicago's 185 firemen fought this fire and many were on duty all day, so they were already exhausted when the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 struck. Some people think that the fire was started by Mrs. O'leary's cow kicking over a lantern. Others have different theories, but one thing is for sure,on the Sunday evening of October 8, 1871 a blaze started in Mrs. O' leary's barn. Daniel sullivan sat on the wooden sidewalk when he saw a flame in Mrs. O'leary's barn. He managed to save a half grown calf. By now everyone in the neighborhood woke up, including the sleeping O'learys. The "America" hose cart was the first to reach the scene. They were soon joined by the "Little Giant" engine company. A neighbor ran to a drug store to turn on an alarm but the alarm failed to work. The court house watchman had given wrong directions but later tried to correct his mistake, but the alarm operator was eating dinner so she refused to correct the mistake. The fire engines went about 1 mile south of where the fire was. By the time the problem was resolved ,a number of hose carts and fire engines were fighting to keep this fire under control, but the wind had spread bits of buring debris. Several homes, one block north, had caught on fire. The flames were so intense that one fireman's hat was warped and his clothing was smoking. The fire spread swiftly through Chicago. Frantic householders and businessmen whose building were in the probable path of the fire, piled all their possessions in to the street. Both the west and south side were cover in a blanket of smoke. As Thomas Byrne of Hose Elevator No.2 said,"you couldn't see anything over you but fire....No clouds, no stars, nothing but fire." The north side started in flames on Monday. As people fled east to the lake, odd things were saved, such examples are: a rooster, a fire place mantle, a pack of playing cards, a stovepipe, an empty box, a feather duster, and a wooden Indian. Shortly before the court house burned down 100 prisoners were released. Most of the prisoners began looting. When the Water Works was hit by the fire, many of the firemen went home. Finally around 11P.M. the wind died down and showers began falling. The fire was over, even though many piles of wood remained smoldering. 90,000 people were left homeless and 300 people died. 2124 acres were destroyed in the raging inferno, a total of $200,000,000 in property loss. After a huge fire like this you would expect for it to take a long time to rebuild, but with in a month, 4,000 new buildings were put up. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\The Civil War.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ This paper is about the civil war and about how it ended slavery with the emancipation proclomation. I will also talk abou the physical loses of the war. The South, overwhelmingly agricultural, produced cash crops such ascotton, tobacco and sugarcane for export to the North or to Europe, but it depended on the North for manufactures and for the financial and commercial services essential to trade. Slaves were the largest single investment in the South, and the fear of slave unrest ensured the loyalty of nonslaveholders to the economic and social system. To maintain peace between the Southern and Northern supporters in the Democratic and Whig parties, political leaders tried to avoid the slavery question. But with growing opposition in the North to the extension of slavery into the new territories, evasion of the issue became increasingly difficult. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 temporarily settled the issue by establishing the 36° 30' parallel as the line separating free and slave territory in the Louisiana Purchase. Conflict resumed, however, when the United States boundaries were extended westward to the Pacific. The Compromise Measures of 1850 provided for the admission of California as a free state and the organization of two new territories-Utah and New Mexico-from the balance of the land acquired in the Mexican War. The principle of popular sovereignty would be applied there, permitting the territorial legislatures to decide the status of slavery when they applied for statehood. Despite the Compromise of 1850, conflict persisted. The South had become a minority section, and its leaders viewed the actions of the U.S. Congress, over which they had lost control, with growing concern. The Northeast demanded for its industrial growth a protective tariff, federal subsidies for shipping and internal improvements, and a sound banking and currency system. The Northwest looked to Congress for free homesteads and federal aid for its roads and waterways. The South, however, regarded such measures as discriminatory, favoring Northern commercial interests, and it found the rise of antislavery agitation in the North intolerable. Many free states, for example, passed personal liberty laws in an effort to frustrate enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act . The increasing frequency with which "free soilers," politicians who argued that no more slave states should be admitted to the Union, won elective office in the North also worried Southerners. The issue of slavery expansion erupted again in 1854, when Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois pushed through Congress a bill establishing two new territories -Kansas and Nebraska -and applying to both the principle of popular sovereignty. The Kansas-Nebraska Act, by voiding the Missouri Compromise, produced a wave of protest in the North, including the organization of the Republican party. Opposing any further expansion of slavery, the new party became so strong in the North by 1856 that it nearly elected its candidate, John C. Fremont, to the presidency. Meanwhile, in the contest for control of Kansas, Democratic President James Buchanan asked Congress to admit Kansas to the Union as a slave state, a proposal that outraged Northerners. Adding to their anger, the U.S. Supreme Court, on March 7, 1857, ruled in the Dred Scott case that the U.S. Constitution gave Congress no authority to prohibit slavery in the territories. Two years later, on October 16, 1859, John Brown, an uncompromising opponent of slavery, raided the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virgini , in an attempt to promote a general slave uprising. That raid, along with Northern condemnation of the Dred Scott decision, helped to convince Southerners of their growing insecurity within the Union. In the presidential election of 1860, a split in Democratic party ranks resulted in the nomination by the Southern wing of John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky and the nomination by the Northern wing of Stephen Douglas. The newly formed Constitutional Union party, reflecting the compromise sentiment still strong in the border states, nominated John Bell of Tennessee. The Republicans nominated Abraham Lincoln on a platform that opposed the further expansion of slavery and endorsed a protective tariff, federal subsidies for internal improvements, and a homestead act. The Democratic split virtually assured Lincoln's election, and this in turn convinced the South to make a bid for independence rather than face political encirclement. By March 1861, when Lincoln was inaugurated, seven states-South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas-had adopted ordinances of secession, and the Confederate States of America, with Jefferson Davis as president, had been formed. In his inaugural address, Lincoln held that secession was illegal and stated that he intended to maintain federal possessions in the South. On April 12, 1861, when an attempt was made to resupply Fort Sumter, a federal installation in the harbor at Charleston, South Carolina, Southern artillery opened fire. Three days later, Lincoln called for troops to put down the rebellion. In response, Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee also joined the Confederacy. Neither the North nor the South was prepared in 1861 to wage a war. With a population of 22 million, the North had a greater military potential. The South had a population of 9 million, but of that number, nearly 4 million were enslaved blacks whose loyalty to the Confederate cause was always in doubt. Although they initially relied on volunteers, necessity eventually forced both sides to resort to a military draft to raise an army. Before the war ended, the South had enlisted about 900,000 white males, and the Union had enrolled about 2 million men (including 186,000 blacks), nearly half of them toward the end of the war. In addition, the North possessed clear material advantages-in money and credit, factories, food production, mineral resources, and transport-that proved decisive. The South's ability to fight was hampered by chronic shortages of food, clothing, medicine, and heavy artillery, as well as by war weariness and the unpredictability of its black labor force. Even with its superior manpower and resources, however, the North did not achieve the quick victory it had expected. To raise, train, and equip a massive fighting force from inexperienced volunteers and to find efficient military leadership proved a formidable and time-consuming task. Only through trial and error did Lincoln find comparable military leaders, such as Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman. On August 30, in the Second Battle of Bull Run, the combined Confederate forces of Lee, Jackson, and General James Longstreet inflicted heavy casualties on Union troops and sent them reeling back to Washington, where Pope was relieved of his command. Following up on this victory, Lee in September 1862 startled the North by invading Maryland with some 50,000 troops. Not only did he expect this bold move to demoralize Northerners, he hoped a victory on Union soil would encourage foreign recognition of the Confederacy. McClellan, with 90,000 men, moved to check Lee's advance. On September 17, in the bloody Battle of Antietam, some 12,000 Northerners and 12,700 Southerners were killed or wounded. Lee was forced back to Virginia; Lincoln, angered that McClellan made no effort to cut off Lee's retreat, relieved the general of his command. In late 1862, the Army of the Potomac resumed its offensive toward Richmond, this time under the command of General Ambrose E. Burnside. On December 13, he unwisely chose to challenge Lee's nearly impregnable defenses around Fredericksburg, Virginia, on the Rappahannock River. In still another disaster, Union forces suffered more than 10,000 killed or wounded and were forced to retreat to Washington. Burnside too was relieved of his command. On May 1 Union troops under General Benjamin F. Butler moved into the largest city and principal port. During the last months of 1862, Grant consolidated his position along the Mississippi. Buell, ordered to move on Chattanooga, Tennessee, clashed indecisively with Confederate forces under General Braxton Bragg. In December, General William S. Rosecrans, who had replaced Buell, confronted Bragg's troops in a three-day battle on the Stones River near Murfreesboro, Tennessee, forcing them to retreat. Meanwhile, Grant prepared for an assault on Vicksburg, Mississippi, the last remaining Confederate stronghold in the West, high on the bluffs overlooking the Mississippi River. Considered by the Confederates an impregnable fortress, Vicksburg resisted Union attacks, and Grant's army bogged down in the rugged terrain guarding the north and east approaches to the city. Encouraged by the victory, Lee seized the initiative and moved his army into the North. Such an action, he hoped, would relieve the pressure on beleaguered Confederate forces in the West and induce a war-weary North to agree to a negotiated peace. In June, a Confederate army of 75,000 men marched through the Shenandoah Valley into southern Pennsylvania. The Army of the Potomac, numbering about 85,000 and now commanded by General George G. Meade, moved to check Lee's advance. These two massive armies converged on the small town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and on July 1 a battle began that many observers consider a turning point of the Civil War. In maneuvering for position, Union forces managed to occupy strategic high ground south of Gettysburg. Lee's army attacked the position at various points, only to be thrown back. On July 3, after an intensive artillery duel, Lee ordered General George E. Pickett to charge the center of the Union lines at Cemetery Ridge, Pennsylvania. The attack failed. With his army suffering heavy casualties, Lee retreated, only to be blocked by the flooded Potomac River. Much to Lincoln's dismay, however, Meade failed to exploit his advantage, and Lee's shattered army was eventually able to retreat into northern Virginia. Yet again, Lee had sacrificed an enormous portion of his army in the ill-fated attack. In late March, the Army of the Potomac, numbering 115,000 men, began its march. When it reached a desolate area near Chancellorsville, known as the Wilderness, the Union forces encountered Lee's army of f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\The cold war 2.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ [Error] - File could not be written... f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\The Cold War.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ?-nd the Ministry of State Security (MGB) both ruled by Lavrenti Beria. This man was undoubtedly the most powerful man in the Soviet Union with a vast empire of prison camps, and informants to crush any traces of dissent. Of considerable importance to Beria was the race for the atomic bomb. The Soviet Union and the United States both plundered the German V-2 rocket sites for materials and personnel. In 1946 the MVD was responsible for the rounding up of 6000 scientists from the Soviet zone of Germany and taking them and their dependents to the Soviet Union. The political conflicts of the 1930's and World War II left many educated people with the impression that only communism could combat economic depression and fascism. It was easy for Soviet agents to recruit men who would later rise to positions of power with access to sensitive information. 'Atom spies' were well positioned to keep the Soviets informed of every American development on the bomb. Of considerable importance was a man by the name of Klaus Fuchs, a German communist who fled Hitler's purge and whose ability as a nuclear physicist earned him a place on the Manhattan Project. Fuchs passed information to the Soviets beginning in 1941, and was not arrested until 1950. Also passing secrets to the Soviets were Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, executed in the United States in 1953. The latter two were probably among the first who believed in nuclear deterrence, whereby neither country would use nuclear weapons because the other would use his in response, therefore there would be no possible winner. It is generally believed that with such scientists as Andrei Sakharov, the Soviets were capable of working it out for themselves without the help of intelligence. (better transition) The National Security Act of 1947 gave birth to the CIA, and in 1949 the CIA Act was formally passed. "The act exempted the CIA from all Federal laws that required the disclosure of 'functions, names, official titles, and salaries or number of personnel employed by the agency'. The director was awarded staggering powers, including the right to 'spend money without regard to the provisions of law and regulations relating to the expenditure of government funds'. The act also allowed the director to bring in 100 aliens a year secretly." The 1949 charter is essentially the same one that the CIA uses to carry out covert operations today. The U-2 Incident In 1953, the CIA contracted Lockheed Aircraft Corporation of Burbank CA to build a plane that would go higher and farther than any yet produced. Kelly Johnson came up with the design for the U-2, a plane that would fly with a record high ceiling of 90,000 ft. and a range of 4,000 ft. The U-2 flights are possibly the greatest triumph achieved by the CIA since its founding. This is because of the planes success at evading detection for such a long time and the vast amounts of information gathered. "We'll never be able to match that one. Those flights were intelligence work on a mass production basis." On the fateful day of May 1, 1960, Gary Powers was sent up in his U-2 over the Soviet Union from the United States Air Force Base at Peshawar, Pakistan. His mission was to photograph areas of military and economic signifigance and record radio transmissions. The plane he flew was equipped with cameras, radio receivers and tape recorders to accomplish this mission. In addition to these devices, the plane was also equipped with self destruction capabilities to blow up the U-2 if it was forced to land, and a blasting mechanism fitted to the tape recorder to destroy any evidence of the CIA's monitoring of radio signals. As his plane flew over the Soviet Union, the cameras recorded ammunition depots, oil storage installations, the number and type of aircraft at military airports, and electric transmission lines. When the plane did not return to its base after a reasonable allowance of time, it was assumed it had crashed for some reason or another. The circumstances surrounding the crash of the plane Powers flew on this is a still a mystery today, depending on whether you believe the Soviets or the Americans. The Soviets claim that "in view of the fact that this was a case of the deliberate invasion of Soviet airspace with hostile aggressive intent, the Soviet Government gave orders to shoot down the plane", and that they shot it out of the air with an SA-2 missile at 8:53 A.M. at the altitude of 68,000 ft. The Americans declared that the U-2 was disabled by a flameout in its jet engine. Whatever the truth maybe, or combination of truths, the fact remains that Powers survived the encounter by parachute in the vicinity of Sverdlovsk. Upon landing, he was apprehended, disarmed, and escorted to the security police by four residents of the small town. The fault of the incident lay with the American administration's handling of the situation, not with the flight itself. It was assumed that Powers had died in the crash, and this was the mistake. The initial story released was not widely reported and only told of a missing pilot near the Soviet border who's oxygen equipment was out of order. "From an intelligence point of view, the original cover story seemed to be particularly inept... A cover story has certain requirements. It must be credible. It must be a story that can be maintained [no live pilots knocking about] and it should not have too much detail. Anything that's missing in a cover story can be taken care of by saying the matter is being investigated." The further lies the State Department released about the incident only strained U.S. and Soviet relations. These included reports of an unarmed weather research plane, piloted by a civilian, that had trouble with oxygen equipment going down over the Soviet Union. Under questioning by the press, Information Officer, Walt Bonney, admitted that the U-2 had cameras aboard, but they were not reconnaissance cameras. Rather, the cameras were "to take cloud cover". When it became publicly known that Khrushchev had known what had taken place all along and had known for some years, President Eisenhower justified the presence of a spy plane over the Soviet Union with it being "in the interest of the free world." Khrushchev saw through the ploy and revoked his invitation for Eisenhower to visit the Soviet Union for a summit. Bay of Pigs By 1959, Fidel Castro and his rebels were able to establish their own regime in Cuba. Americans soon became hostile to this new government when it became apparent that Castro endorsed the Soviets. He declared his intentions of supporting guerrilla movements against US backed dictatorships throughout Latin America and seized US assets in Cuba. He also established friendly relations with the Soviet Union although he was not communist. The US recognized this threat to their interests and proceeded to form a special CIA task force that was create an armed force of exiled Cubans, form a subversive organizations within Cuba, and if possible assassinate Castro. The initial plan was to discredit the charismatic man in front of his nation. Some ideas that were considered to accomplish the task were ludicrous in the least. The first was to spray Cuban TV studios with LSD prior to Castro broadcasting a speech in hopes of him making a complete fool of himself. The agency had been experimenting with the acid for some time. However, the idea was quickly abandoned because no one could guarantee with any certainty that the drug would have the desired effect. Further attempts were stabs at the look of Castro himself. One idea was to doctor his famous insignia, the cigars he is always seen with. This idea was discontinued because no one could figure out how to get the cigars to him. From an angle of more a chemical nature, the agency planned at one time to make his beard fall out. Scientists at the agency knew that when thallium salts contact skin, they act as a depilatory and make hair fall out. The idea goes further into reasoning that when Castro traveled he would leave his shoes outside of his hotel bedroom and the salts could be sprinkled in then. This idea became impossible when Castro announced that all forthcoming foreign trips were to be cancelled. With these failures, the US felt that it had no choice but to continue with the organization of partisans and help them usurp the dictatorship of Cuba. By the time John F. Kennedy was elected President in 1960, the development of the invasion was already in full force. Eisenhower had earmarked $13 million and a force of 1300 men had been assembled. Cuban pilots were being trained how to fly B-26 bombers by National Guardsmen. The operation was massive, enough so that the public took notice. Kennedy was extremely wary of any direct US involvement and set about a series of compromises for the Cuban exiles. The air cover was reduced and the landings were shifted from a more favorable site to the Bay of Pigs where it was determined that the landing force could get ashore with a minimum of naval and air force back up. Escorted by US naval vessels, the force landed in the Bay of Pigs on April 17, 1961. The six B-26s assigned to the operation were clearly inadequate and the support from within the country never fully materialized. Completely exposed to counterattacks of the Cuban air and land forces, the whole invasion force was either killed or taken prisoner. When Kennedy's statement that "the armed forces of this country would not intervene in any way" was an outright lie. The exiles uses American equipment. They were trained by American servicemen, and the planes flown were Americans. The ships that carried the men to the invasion were American, with American naval units for support. Americans were killed in operation. When caught in his lie, Kennedy was forced to cover the US by extending the Monroe Doctrine to cover communism. He declared that the US would remain free of all Central and Latin American affair as long as they were not communist. This fiasco undoubtedly led to Khrushchev's belief that he could deploy missiles to his newfound ally without any tangible reprisal from the Americans. Practices of Spies Some of the devices used seem to come straight from a James Bond movie. Hollow rings or talcum powder cans with false bottoms were some of the items used for hiding microfilm. An interesting method involves the use of a microdot whereby pages of information is reduced to the size of a colon and used in an appropriate place on a document. The process is reversed for the extraction of information and the dot is enlarged to display all the information. Hiding places for secret packages were imaginative to say the least and ranged from trees, to ruined walls, to mail boxes. Listening devices were not restricted to telephone bugs, and on one occasion there was a handcarved Great Seal of the United States presented to the US ambassador in Moscow by the Soviet Union. It turned out that hidden inside was a listening device. Microwave receivers exist all over the world for the interception of messages, the Soviet embassy in San Francisco has its own battery of dishes erected on top of its building. In 1978, a Bulgarian exile by the name Georgi Markov who was working for the Radio Free Europe was fatally poisoned with a pellet most likely hidden in an umbrella. Vladimir Kostov was killed under very similar circumstances in 1978, and it is believed that the toxin used was ricin. This is an extremely toxic substance derived from castor oil. Political and intelligence related assassinations have abounded in the twentieth century with the advent of the Cold War. The public will never know when one of murders takes place by reason of secrecy unless it is a public figure. Conclusion The agencies discussed above are integral to the peace that exists today. There is no other way in the age we live in today to monitor the enemy and ally alike so as to be able to understand their capabilities and shortcomings without intelligence agencies. The CIA and KGB by themselves cannot assure peace. With the knowledge supplied by each to its leaders, intelligent decisions can be made in the world's best interest. Moreover, the status quo and power base remains relatively stable with the East and West on opposing sides. There can never be true and utterly complete peace, these organizations will continue to exist contrary ignorant ideals of the public for peaceful coexistence. Encyclopedia Britannia index page 237 KGB/CIA, Jonathon Bloch page 12 KGB/CIA, Jonathon Bloch page 21 CIA: The Inside Story, Andrew Tully page 113 CIA: The Inside Story, Andrew Tully page 119 General Thomas R. Phillips, U.S. Army, retired. Bay of Pigs, Peter Wyden page 59  f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\The Congress of Vienna.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Global Studies 10 February 10, 1997 The Congress of Vienna This essay is about the effects of the French Revolution on Europe, the Congress of Vienna, and its goals. It will tell about the role of Nationalism, Liberalism, and conservatism in this time period. Also it will tell of the European's revolutions between 1830 and 1848. The Congress of Vienna's main goals were to bring an end to the Napoleonic wars and restore peace in Europe. There were two opposing political philosophies that greatly influenced events in the 1800's. They were Liberalism and conservatism. Leberalism is a philosophy that supports guarantees for individual freedom, political change, and social reform. At the time of the Congress of Vienna, Liberals supported the ideas of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. Conservatism is a philosophy that doesn't want change that would threaten that way of life. It supports the traditional political and social order. Conservatives didn't want nationalism because they thought that it would overthrow the traditional political order. The role of Nationalism is that during the Nineteenth century it had begun the urge to form a nation. Liberalism supported nationalism at that time because it united people in a common cause. On the other hand, Conservatives feared nationalism because of its threat to overthrow the traditional political order. The goals of the Congress of Vienna were the Balance of Power, which meant no nation would be too strong or too weak. Another goal was the Return of Monarchs. Louis XVIII issued a constitution to return. The Congress of Vienna wanted to redraw borders. The leaders payed little attention to the people when redrawing Europe. The Prince Metternich system was a system that made absolute rule return. Four nations agreed to act as the "Fire department" of Europe, this was known as the Quad Alliance. The Holy Alliance said that nations would let God guide their relations. In conclusion to this essay, there are and were many different types of people with different beliefs. Because everyone doesn't have the same beliefs, people disagree and fight. If everyone had the same thoughts on things, no one would fight or disagree with each other. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\The Crusades.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Overview and Analysis of the Crusades The Crusades were military expeditions planned and carried out by western European Christians. The crusades started around 1095. The purpose of these crusades was to overtake and gain control of the Holy Land from the Muslims. The Holy Land was Jerusalem and the Christians believed that gaining control of it was their fate. The pope would gather the people together and incite them. The origin of the crusades was a result of the expanding Turks in the middle east. These Turkish forces invaded Byzantium, a Christian empire. The crusaders were a militia, sent out to recover what they thought was theirs. The first crusade was essentially started by Pope Urban II. On November 27, 1095, he gathered his followers outside the French city of Clermont-Ferrand. He preached to these people and told them that action needed to be taken. In response, the people cheered and planned their attack. Urban II brought together all of the bishops and urged them to talk to their friends and fellow villagers and to encourage them to participate in the crusades. Small groups started to form and each group would be self- directing. All the groups planned their own ways to the Constantinople, where they would meet and regroup. They would attack the Turkish forces in Constantinople and hope to regain control of the city. The large Christian armies talked to Alexius I Comnenus, the Byzantium emperor, and agreed to return any of his old land that was recaptured. The armies were skeptical of this demand but agreed anyway. The first attack by the crusaders was on Anatolian, the Turkish capital. Meanwhile the Byzantians were also trying to recapture Anatolian, and later that year, the city surrendered to the Byzantians instead of the crusaders. The Byzantians were using the crusaders as pawns to achieve their own goals. The crusaders again met and crushed the Turkish army. The crusaders scored a great victory and boosted the troops' moral. The crusaders captured Antioch and also held off relief forces sent to help the Turks. The crusaders then moved on to their main goal-Jerusalem! The city was under Egyptian control and was heavily guarded. The crusaders set up siege machines and called for reinforcements, finally forcing the Egyptians to surrender. Everyone in the city was massacred in the belief that the blood of the former holders purified it. The crusaders kept control of the city for the next generation or so and brought in people to inhabit the Holy Land. Slowly the Muslim forces started to rebuild and soon came back to take the Holy Land. After the defeat of the Egyptians in Jerusalem, the crusaders started to colonize. The Latin colonists set up four states: Tripoli, which was on the Syrian coast, Antioch, centered near the Orontes Valley, Edessa, a far east state which held most of the Christians, and the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, the most powerful and centered between the other three states. The crusaders' strategy during the first crusade was to isolate the Muslims and Egyptians, and to cut off any supplies or reinforcements from strengthening their status. Once the original generation of crusaders died, their children were not as determined. They forgot about the Muslims that had escaped, and because of that, the Muslims had a new leader and were regaining power. Under their leader, Imad ad-Din, the Muslims regrouped and planned their attack against the colonies. After the passing of Imad ad-Din, a new radical leader emerged-Zangi. Zangi led his troops to a victory against the crusaders and their colonies by capturing the state of Edessa. The Muslims destroyed the Christians churches, buildings, and killed the crusaders. Back home, the Pope saw what was happening and declared a second crusade to recapture the territory that had been lost. King Louis VII, from France, set out to meet Conrad III army. The Holy Roman Emperor, Conrad III, set out from Germany and soon met up with Louis' men. With their armies, they left from their homeland to meet in Jerusalem. Conrad's army began their voyage, only to be ambushed. Afterwards, their supplies and cavalry were drastically depleted. The better half of the French army reached Jerusalem and met up with the small remains of the Germans and the old crusaders. Together they ventured to Damascus, but failed to take the city and were badly defeated. The French army and king had had enough and returned home. The small remnants of the Germans stayed with the colonies, along with the old crusaders. Slowly but surely, the states the crusaders had set up were systematically being destroyed. The failure of the second crusade brought on the third crusade. The Muslims had named a new leader, Nur ad-Din, who regrouped the Muslims and motivated them to take back what believed was theirs. Their leader died a few years later, and was succeeded by their military leader, Saladin. In 1187, Saladin took his now revived and recuperated army to recapture Jerusalem. In July, he crushed the crusaders front line army in Galilee. Saladin then led his troops throughout the area of Jerusalem and finally took Jerusalem in early October. This led to Pope Gregory VIII starting a third crusade. The people in the west knew that their time had come to defeat the Muslims once and for all. Included in the ranks of men going on the crusade were Fredick I, the Roman emperor; Philip II, the French king; and Richard I, of England. These forces were thought to be one of the most powerful armies assembled during the middle ages. Again, this crusade suffered misfortune. On his journey to Jerusalem, the Roman emperor died, and his army accompanied the body back home for burial. Even with the size of Richard's and Frederick's remaining armies, they were not able to recapture Jerusalem. When the armies left Jerusalem and its surrounding areas to return home, they accomplished none of their goals. Since none of the following crusades were successful or even important, not much is known about them. The later crusades also provided almost nothing for the Christians therefore much time and money was wasted on them. I have several thoughts on the crusades. The first crusade was the most memorable. It was the most successful one, with a minimal amount of casualties. Its execution reflected well on the leaders. The Muslims and Turks were taken by surprise. They did not expect the Christians to bring such a force or such to Jerusalem. Later crusades were anticipated by the Muslims and very predictable. After the Muslims won control, the Christians initiated a new crusade within 10 years or so, with the full force unable to reach Jerusalem. I think the people were more pleased with the first crusade not only because of the outcome but because it was a new idea to the Christian faith. Christian philosophy did not espouse, "if there is something you want, take it forcefully." The crusades also offered the Christians a chance to vent their anger towards Jerusalem's possessors. It established a routine and thereby structure for their lives. Towards the end of the second or the third crusade, the common folk were becoming angry with the Pope and kings for their lack of results. Monies went into the preparation of the crusades with minimal return. The first crusade set a great example for the others, yet the next crusades didn't follow the same path. The later crusades lacked organization. No one wanted to provide leadership due to the uncertain outcome. Leadership demonstrated in later years was from Stephen and Nicholas in the Children's Crusade, however unfortunately young children were used in combat. This was a reflection of the moral character or lack of it, in their leaders and subsequently contributed to their failure. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\The Cult of True Womanhood.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The Cult of True Womanhood The "Cult of True Womanhood" has greatly influenced society throughout all of America's history. This set of standards was first accepted and practiced by all of the European colonies. They were then passed through the generations and, in many cases, still exist. I'll describe the essay, "The Cult of True Womanhood," and discuss my views on it. I'll then illustrate how these standards are still present in today's society. First, I'll discuss the essay. It's easiest to describe this essay if I begin by defining "The Cult of True Womanhood." As I stated the introduction, it is a set of standards. These principles create and have created a strong division between the genders, and therefore, caused tension. Basically, it states that men are to work and make money for the family. A woman's goal was to find a husband and have children. Women were also expected to have four main cardinal virtues - piety, purity, submissiveness, and domestication. Piety is, basically, grace. Women were to expected to always be dainty and lovely. Purity speaks for itself. Women were expected to stay abstinent until marriage. Submissiveness means that the woman should, once married to a man, completely devote herself to him, carrying out his every wish within her power. One very powerful sentence in the essay well represents the woman's goals and values well according to "The Cult of True Womanhood." It states, "Marriage improves the female character, not only because it puts her in the best possible tuition, that of the affections, and affords scope to her active energies, but because it gives her higher aims, and a more dignified position." In my opinion, this means that marriage improves a woman's mindset, gives her direction, and gives her more motivation to do her daily chores. If you take this and attempt to apply it to the current society, you'll find that it is extremely wrong, but not quite completely. The last virtue, domesticity, means that a woman is to be a housewife, to stay at home. This is my explanation of the essay, "The Cult of True Womanhood." The Cult has effected today's society greatly. We are currently battling many gender issues that were initiated by these standards. The primary issue is gender discrimination. For instance, a woman may not be hired by a construction company because the owner believes that it's "man's work." Another issue concerning work is wages. Many women have avoided being rejected for a job position. However, some then notice that a man doing the same work for the same company is getting up to 35 percent more wages. One point I'd like to bring up also is politics. In the past, women have stayed out of office due to the Cult. Now, some women are accusing the government of sexism. However, I don't believe that this is why women aren't in office. Look how many women are running for president or governor this year. Most people base their votes on the potential of the candidates. I know I will. These are some effects the Cult has had on today's society. The "Cult of True Womanhood" has been a strong influence on America's history. We may not a agree with it, but it definitely exists, and we must deal with it. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\The Death Penalty A necessary Evil.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The Death Penalty: a Necessary Evil Life is the most wonderful gift that God gives us. He also gives us the power to do what we wish with that life. We can keep it and guard it, or we can take it away. It follows that murder is the worst crime anyone could ever commit. It is a crime that no one can ever make right because once you take a life away you can never give it back. Penalties exacted from criminals are made to fit the crimes committed. The worst crime possible should therefore receive the worst penalty possible. That penalty is the death penalty. Take, for example, the case of a man who is caught shoplifting. He does not deserve the same punishment as someone who is convicted of assault and battery. Most people would have no problem agreeing with this. Yet many of these same people believe that a cold blooded killer deserves the same life sentence as a convicted kidnapper who did not kill his prisoner. Granted these are both serious offenses, but our system of law works be degrees of seriousness. The mental damage done to that prisoner can be turned around, but the life taken away by the murderer can never be given back. They should therefore be given a harsher punishment than life in prison. In terms of justice, we should all get what we deserve. One argument against the death penalty is that the bible tells us not to murder. If this includes all people it should include the government. However, the death penalty is not quite the same as murder. It is an exacting of justice. Consequently, the Bible also says, Ran eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.S It could also say a life for a life as well. The government also has rights that we as citizens do not have. As Mayor Ed Koch says in his essay on the death penalty, Rthe execution of a lawfully condemned killer is no more an act of murder than is legal imprisonment an act of kidnapping.S(Koch, p.318) People who are convicted of murder more often than not have more crimes than just that one murder under their belt. Their mental state allows them to commit horrible acts and not feel guilty about them. There is not much proof than anyone can change this mind set. Say, for instance, that one of these said murderers is charged with life in prison. In jail they make the effort to have a good behavior. Within twelve years they are out on the streets only to kill again. Or maybe even worse, someone has been charged with multiple life sentences and there is no possible way to get out of prison. Because this is the worse punishment they can have they are in effect given a license to kill whomever they can get their hands on in prison. The death penalty needs to be around as an option for those cases in which the criminally is likely to kill again if ever given the chance. The death penalty also has the potential to become a very powerful deterrent against acts of murder. Life in prison is almost better than some of the lives that these criminals lead. At least they are fed and kept out of the rain. Death, however, is a real punishment no matter how you look at it. And even if someone wanted to die, there are easier ways of doing that than being put on death row. The problem is that not enough of these executions occur to be of any real use as a deterrent. In fact, there was one year in which more people were executed in Florida than in any other state and there homicide rate went up while in the rest of America it went down (Bruck, p.319). Obviously with the numbers of executions actually taking place (in Florida it was eight people), they can not do much to stop people from killing. The chance of them getting the death penalty is far too unlikely. There is finally the problem of innocent people getting executed. No one will say that this does not happen because it does. It does not occur very often, but even one innocent person who is executed is a terrible tragedy. However, there are most likely people serving a life sentence who are innocent as well. It is true that these people have more time to prove themselves innocent, but this does not always happen. Our system of law is an imperfect one. Bad judgements are made all the time, but they cannot be helped. It is better to run the risk of executing an innocent person then to abolish the death penalty and run the risk of so many more people being murdered by those who get out of jail or kill inside the prisons. Death in any form is a horrible thing. Executions are not in any way exempt from this statement. Anyone who witnesses an execution will tell you that it is horrible, but sometimes we are forced to choose between two evils. When these times occur we have to do our best to choose the lesser evil. The death penalty is such an evil. There is an obvious purpose for its existence and until we can find a better substitute, one that is an even lesser evil, we need to keep the death penalty alive. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\The Difference in Cultures.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Sociology The birthing ceremonies of the Indian culture has a lot of different aspects then the American culture does. I guess that is why they are different cultures. All cultures have different views on different things such as religion, but they also share the same as well for example every culture has some form of the family. This is what helps most cultures understand other cultures. In the Indian culture their view of bringing a child into the world is much different then the American culture's view. In the Indian culture there are a lot of preparations that go into getting the parents and the community ready for the new member. Their culture does more work with the child before they are even born. First of all plans are made for them so they know who is going to be there to witness the child being born into their society. They are usually the grandparents, the representatives, and the Godparents that were selected by the parents and the representatives. The mother is to keep on working as she did before the baby is born. They say that this shows the child the importance of work in their culture. During the pregnancy, around the seventh month, the mother introduces the baby to the natural world. She does this by taking walks in the fields and over the hills. They believe that the baby is consciously taking all of this in to prepare him/her for life within that culture. When the baby is born none of the mothers children should be around. The only people there are the ones that were chosen by the representatives and the parents. If someone can not make it then someone will have to fill in for them. The only people besides children who are not allowed to see are the single women. The only way that they can attend is if there is no one else to go. There has to be three couples at the birth of the child, the child doesn't just belong to the parents but to the community as well. It is considered to be a scandal if an Indian women goes to a hospital to have a baby. For the mothers other children there are not to know where or how the baby is born. Only the three couples know where the child is born. The children are told that a baby has arrived and they can not see their mother for eight days. After the baby is born the placenta has to be burned at a certain time. If the baby was born at night then it is burned at eight in the morning and if the baby is born in the afternoon then it will be burned at five in the afternoon. It is usually burnt on a log and the ashes are just left there. They will not bury it because they believe that the Earth is the mother and father to all children, and the Earth must not have it abused by burying it in the ground. During the pregnancy, seeing how the mother has no time to relax, they take these steam baths. In an adobe hut there is a stove, called a temascal , which is were the placenta can be burned also, which produces steam that is supposed to calm the women down. This stove is made of stone. The stones are heated up and then the door is shut and then cold water is poured on the rocks and this makes steam. This is said to prevent the mother from having a miscarriage. A lot of times they add Herb's and leaves to the bath which helps them relax as well as supply them with nutrients. The mother usually takes this after work so that she can sleep and get up and do it all over again tomorrow. The purity of the child is protected after birth for eight days. The newborn baby is alone with its mother for these eight days. None of the other children can see the child for this time frame. The mothers only visitors are the people who bring her food. This time frame is the baby integration into the family. When the child is born they kill a sheep and there is a little fiesta just for the family. The neighbors start coming to visit and bring gifts. the gifts they bring are usually food for the mother, or something for the baby. The mother has to taste all of the food that is brought to her, that is to show her appreciation for their kindness. After the eight days are over the family counts up how many visitors the mother had, and how many presents were received. The normal gifts are eggs, clothing, small animals, wood for the fire, and services like carrying water and chopping wood. If a lot of the community calls or visits, this shows how the child will grow up and have a lot of responsibility. After the eight days another animal is killed to show that the child's right to be alone with his mother is over. All of the clothes and sheets that she used during the birth are taken to the river to be washed, no matter how far away it is. After the baby is born they are given a small bag with a little garlic, lime, salt, and tobacco. This is to ward off all of the evil spirits. When the child reaches forty days old there are speeches and promises on his behalf, this is his baptism. At around ten years old the parents and the leaders talk to them again. They tell them that they must never abuse their dignity. They also remind them about the ancestors who were dishonored by the white man. They also make sure they remind them to respect their elders, and also pregnant women. There is a difference in ceremonies for the two different genders. For instance when a girl is born there aren't nearly as many celebrations as there are for a boy. They say this is because of all the hard work and responsibilities he will have as an adult. The girls ears are pierced at the same time they cut the umbilical cord. Also the male child is given an extra day with his mother. All of this doesn't mean girls aren't valued their work is hard to and there are certain things due to them as a mother. They place gender roles kind of like we used to with the women staying home and taking care of the kids and the man earning a living for his family. Our culture has many different characteristics then the Indian culture in the way of giving birth and raising children. In the Indian culture they consider the baby owned by the community as well as by the parents, and in ours they only belong to the parents. Unless they are proven to be unfit parents the child belongs to the state. Also in their culture they make sure there are three couples there to receive the child while it is being delivered. This is different then our custom where the only one allowed to watch is the father of the child. In their culture after the birth the mother and the child are hidden away and pretty much left alone for eight or nine days depending if its a boy or a girl. This is the time in our culture where the mother and child are being seen by family and friends. Also for their culture the mother is pushed on to continue to work as she was before where as for ours we encourage the mother to take it easy and in some cases to stay off her feet even. Another thing is that they don't allow women to give birth in a hospital because it is considered to be degrading. In our culture most women try to have their babies in a hospital, but some can't help but having them in different places like a car, plane, or a boat. The next story that I read had to deal with the initiation of a warrior. The way you are initiated is by through circumcision. This is done by using a sharp knife to cut the skin in the most sensitive part of your body. There are requirements that you must follow like you can't budge, move a muscle or even blink. You can only face one direction. The slightest movement on your part means you are a coward and unworthy to be a Maasia man. When they are circumcised they have entered adulthood. If you are not brave during the procedure then there are consequences like the families herd will be beaten until they stampede away, all of the slaughtered oxen and honey beer will go to waste, his food would be spit on and he would be expected to eat it or else he would get a severe beating. He will also be called the knife kicker which is an insult. When it becomes time for the ceremony they pour ice cold water over his head. After he is done shaking he is told to sit down. Then a large crowd of boys and men form a semi-circle in front of the him, women are not allowed to watch. Next the circumciser appears and grabs the knifes, which have been guarded by the boy. Next he spreads the boys legs and announces "One Cut" this is so the boy can not say he was caught off guard. Then a white paint is splashed in the boys face, and this is where it begins. After the cutting is over with he calls for milk so he can wash the knives. There is a lot of blood lost during this so it takes a while for them to recuperate from this. After they are able to walk and do stuff again they join other newly circumcised boys. During recuperation they are protected from the cold and the rain. They are not allowed to even touch their food because they are considered to be unclean instead they are given these special sticks to eat with. When they are healed their heads are shaved and the black cloaks are thrown away, this is when they are considered to be Maasia warriors. In our society most children are circumcised when they are born with some exceptions, but the parents are given the choice after they are born. In our society you wouldn't be considered to be any less of a man if this was done to you and you screamed in pain. in our culture we don't put that much into our ceremonies as they do and also tradition doesn't play that big of a role in our society. The next story is about the same operation but on a women. This is common in the middle east. The belief is that by removing parts of the girls genitals the sexual desire is minimized therefore preserving their virginity until they are married. This is a high risk procedure meaning there have been a few deaths related to this being done. Unlike the last story women are allowed to kick and scream as much as they want, or at least try because there are women holding down each limb which makes it hard to move. A lot of women who have had this done say they had the feelings before it was done but now they weren't as strong as they were before. This procedure can cause long term effects on a women psychological as well as physical. This almost never happens in our society unless it is absolutely necessary , but I guess that is because virginity is taken lightly and not considered sacred in our society. I would hope that after a while these societies will stop this procedure but until then they will continue to do it. This culture believes that virginity is more important for a woman then a man. This is like our society where your manliness is ranked by how many women you sleep with, but for women they are called sluts if they sleep with more men then someone else did. In our society I believe we want to treat everyone the same but to me it doesn't seem like we are doing a very good job of it. My next story is about another initiation but this is into a tribe of headhunters. The test began when they had him lay down in a pit of carnivorous ants. He had to lay there until they gave him a signal to get up because it was over. The test doesn't stop there next was he had to go into the woods without any weapons or food and survive for three days and nights while three headhunters are hunting you down. If you fail this part of the test then they do a ritual using your head, but if you pass you are finally allowed to join them as headhunters. They apply gender roles kind of like we did. The male has to be strong and not a coward whereas the female is dependent on the male. In our society we have a lot of initiations that go on like for clubs, sorority, fraternity, but none of them are usually this much based on courage most of them are based on embarrassing you. I think that these four stories show you how your society is not the only one and also it is not the best but just different from all of the others. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\The Downfall of the Middle Ages.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ There were many reasons for the downfall for the Middle Ages, but the most crucial ones were the decline of the feudal system, and the declination of the Church's power over the nation-states. In feudal society, everyone had a definite place and a definite role, with the power resting in the hands of the local lords (instead of a central government). The lords, or nobles, lost power after the Crusades, when the Europeans came into contact with the more advanced civilizations of the Byzantine Empire and the Muslims. That spurred the growth of trade, which in turn gave rise to a money system. The money system in turn caused the birth of a middle class, which didn't fit anywhere into the feudal system. It was made up of the serfs and peasants that left the feudal system in search of making money in trade. For the middle class, the king granted Charters, made a uniform law, started banking, offered protection, and expanded territory. In return, the middle class payed taxes to the king. While this money economy grew, the feudal lords were put into an economic squeeze. As one may see, that didn't leave much of a place for the nobles, who were rapidly losing power. Another thing that contributed to their loss of power was the enforcement of Common Law, which applied throughout the kingdom. The effects of the Hundred Years' War hastened the decline of the feudal system. The use of the longbow and firearms made the feudal methods of fighting obsolete. Monarchs replaced feudal soldiers with national armies made up of hired soldiers. Finally, threats to the monarchy decreased as a result of the large number of nobles killed in the war. Another major factor that contributed to the end of the Middle Ages was the declination of the Church's power over the nation-states. Conflicts between the papacy and the monarchy over political matters resulted people losing faith in the Church. Events like the Babylonian Captivity and the Great Schism further weakened the Church's influence over the peole. Aside from that, people were disgusted at the actions of the corrupt church officials. They would charge the people money for all church services, and they also allowed church positions to be bought. The princely lifestyle of the clergy further eroded regard for the church. While some still believed that religion held all the answers, others were beginning to put faith into reason and science. The uncertainty of the existance of God made people question the Church. Perhaps one of the most vital blows to the Church was the printing of the Bible in the vernacular language. That was a revolutionary act because only the clergy was permitted to interpret God's words in the Bible. People angrily criticized the Church for that. A religious reformer, Jan Hus, led the Czechs who produced religious pamphlets and copies of the Bible in Czech and criticized the corruption of the leading Church officials. When Hus and his works were condemned, riots broke out across Bohemia. Hus' ideas were spread throughout Europe after his death, and that left the Church with even more resistors. These reasons resulted in the inevitable end of the Middle Ages, giving rise to a new age full of new and wonderful things in art and society. Although the Middle Ages are sometimes labeled as the Dark Ages, there were some really important things accomplished in that time that have a crucial effect on society today as we know it; for instance, the Magna Carta, which in the Middle Ages placed clear limits on royal power, and today, is the basis of our Constitution. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\The Essential Nile.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The Essential Nile Many features of civilization have evolved over time to become what one commonly thinks of as "civilized society." The development of government and writing in the classical civilization of Egypt can be credited to the reliability of the Nile River. The Nile was a source of unification and centralization in the Egyptian society, helping in the development of government and writing with the growth of surpluses. The Nile River, because of its predictable cycles, "unified and centered" the Egyptian society. Because of its predictability , the Nile "created a stable agriculture." All the Egyptians needed to do was to "put seeds in the mud, have pigs trample the seeds down into the ground, and when the time came, harvest the crop." Essentially, the river was important to the well-being of the cities, and was a vital source for irrigation. Not only did the river provide a steady flow of water, its flooding also provided fertile silt. Planted in this fertile soil, crops grew abundantly and allowed for the facilitation and development of surpluses. Beginning about 5000 B.C.E., farming had already been instituted along the banks of the Nile. But it wasn't until later (3200 B.C.E.) that real agricultural advances occurred. Encouraged by the stability of their farming, the Egyptians were able to develop surpluses in the area. This abundance (which allowed for the evolution and advancement of culture because it encouraged more people to specialize in crafts other than farming) led to a division of labor, and then to social stratification. The improvement of agricultural methods also led to the enlargement of cities. This enlargement then led to the need for bureaucracy and administration, and eventually toward the advent of writing. Writing, a "very important" aspect of daily life, was a pre-condition for a more formal government. In brief, the flooding of the Nile river made agriculture easy for the Egyptians who came to depend on its unfailing waters. Many of the great features of civilization, primarily the development of more formal government and the beginnings of writing, can be traced back to the surpluses brought about by the Nile. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\The Evolution of the First Amendment.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ - The Evolution of the First Amendment The first amendment states, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.(encyclopedia) The inhabitants of the North American colonies did not have a legal right to express opposition to the British government that ruled them. Nonetheless, throughout the late 1700s, these early Americans did voice their discontent with the crown. For example they strongly denounced the British parliament's enactment of a series of tax levies to pay off a large national debt that England incurred in its Seven Years War with France. In newspaper articles, pamphlets and through boycotts, the colonists raised what would become their battle cry: "No taxation without representation!" And in 1773, the people of the Massachusetts Bay Colony demonstrated their outrage at the tax on tea in a dramatic act of civil disobedience, the Boston Tea Party.(Eldridge,15) The stage was set for the birth of the First Amendment, which formally recognized the natural and inalienable rights of Americans to think and speak freely. The first Amendments early years were not entirely auspicious. Although the early Americans enjoyed great freedom compared to citizens of other nations, even the Constitution's framer once in power, could resist the string temptation to circumvent the First Amendment's clear mandate. Before the 1930s, we had no legally protected rights of free speech in anything like the form we now know it. Critics of the government or government officials, called seditious libel, was oftenly made a crime. Every state had a seditious libel law when the Constitution was adopted. And within the decade of the adoption of the First Amendment, the founding fathers in congress initiated and passed the repressive Alien and Sedition act (1798). This act was used by the dominant Federalists party to prosecute a number of prominent Republican newspaper editors.(Kairys,3) When Thomas Jefferson was elected president in 1801 they also prosecuted their critics. More than 2,000 people were prosecuted, and many served substantial prison terms.(Kairys,4) Prior to the '30s, the court upheld seditious libel laws and suppression of speech or writing based on the weakest proof that it could leas to disorder or unlawful conduct sometime in the future, in however remote or indirect a fashion. Today the First Amendment protects many forms of expression including; "pure speech, expressed in demonstrations, rallies, picketing, leaflets, etc. The First Amendment also protects "symbolic speech" that is nonverbal expression whose main purpose is to communicate ideas.(McWhirter,18) In the 1969 case of Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District , the Supreme Court recognized the right of the students to protest the Vietnam War by wearing black armbands. In 1989 and again in 1990, the Court upheld the right of an individual to burn the American flag in public as an expression of disagreement with government policies.(Eldidge,19) Other examples of protected expression include images in works of art, slogans or statements on T-shirts, "fashion statements that incorporate symbols and/or written slogans or declarations, music lyrics and theatrical performances. Within the last two years I have seen most of these protected expressions banned in some situations. Some of the more focused issues were fashion and display of art. The right to freedom is being severely tested today, just as it has been throughout the 200 year history of the bill of Rights. Governments by nature are always seeking to expand their powers beyond proscribed boundaries, the government of the United States being no exception. And since the right to free expression is not absolute, it must be constantly protected against official depredations. Today, artistic expression is under attack, as some groups of citizens seek to impose their morality on the rest of society. Book censorship in the public schools, mandatory record labeling, as well as obscenity prosecutions of rappers, record distributors and museum directors, are all displays of suppression effort. Artists, performers and authors now occupy the same weak position that political radicals did in the late 1950s. TV networks and local stations as well as large newspapers owned by fewer and fewer large corporations with less and less concern for journalism or public discourse claim absolute protection not only from government censorship but also from any claims to access by the people. Although these media corporations monopolize the market place of ideas, the courts tend to protect them against demands for popular access, as if the major media were merely individuals handing out leaflets on a major street corner. In the past two hundred years of struggle to preserve freedom of expression have taught us anything, it is that the first target of government suppression is never the last. Whenever government gains the power to decide who can speak and what they can say, the first Amendment rights of all of us are in danger of being violated. But when all people are allowed to express their views and ideas, the principles of democracy and liberty are enhanced. American democracy should mean more than the right to picket when you are really upset or pissed at the system and to vote every four years in elections devoid of content or context. Change will require, as it has in the past, recognition that free speech and democracy are political, not narrowly legal, issues. And it will also require an enlargement of our understanding of such rights to include public access to the various mass media. Bibliography Eldridge, Larry D. A Distant Heritage: The Growth of Free Speech in Early America. New York: New York University Press, 1994. Kairys, David. The Politics of Law In These Times. New York. Patheon Press, 1991. McWhirter, Darien A. Freedom of Speech, Press, and Assembly, Phoenix AZ: Oryx Press, 1994. The World Book Encyclopedia.1995. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\The Future or Work.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Technology and the Future of Work Every society creates an idealised image of the future - a vision that serves as a beacon to direct the imagination and energy of its people. The Ancient Jewish nation prayed for deliverance to a promised land of milk and honey. Later, Christian clerics held out the promise of eternal salvation in the heavenly kingdom. In the modern age, the idea of a future technological utopia has served as the guiding light of industrial society. For more than a century utopian dreamers and men and women of science and letters have looked for a future world where machines would replace human labour, creating a near workerless society of abundance and leisure. (J Rifkin 1995 p.42) This paper will consider developments in technology, robotics, electronic miniaturisation, digitisation and information technology with its social implications for human values and the future of work. It will argue that we have entered post modernity or post Fordism, a new age technological revolution, which profoundly effects social structure and values. Some issues that will be addressed are: elimination of work in the traditional sense, longevity, early retirement, the elimination of cash, the restructuring of education, industry and a movement to global politics, economics and world government. In particular this paper will suggest that the Christian Judao work ethic with society's goals of full employment in the traditional sense is no longer appropriate, necessary or even possible in the near future, and that the definition of work needs to be far more liberal. It argues that as a post market era approaches, that both government and society will need to recognise the effects of new technology on social structure and re-distribute resources, there will need to be rapid development of policies to assist appropriate social adjustments if extreme social unrest, inequity, trauma and possible civil disruption is to be avoided. . Yonedji Masuda (1983) suggests we are moving from an industrial society to an information society and maintains that a social revolution is taking place. He suggests that we have two choices 'Computopia' or an 'Automated State', a controlled society. He believes that if we choose the former, the door to a society filled with boundless possibilities will open; but if the latter, our future society will become a forbidding and a horrible age. He optimistically predicts our new future society will be 'computopia' which he describes as exhibiting information values where individuals will develop their cognitive creative abilities and citizens and communities will participate voluntarily in shared goals and ideas. Barry Jones (1990) says we are passing through a post-service revolution into a post- service society - which could be a golden age of leisure and personal development based on the cooperative use of resources. Jeremy Rifkin (1995) uses the term 'The Third Industrial Revolution' which he believes is now beginning to have a significant impact on the way society organises its economic activity. He describes it as the third and final stage of a great shift in economic paradigm, and a transition to a near workless information society, marked by the transition from renewable to non-renewable sources of energy and from biological to mechanical sources of power. In contrast to Masuda, Jones and Rifkin, Rosenbrock et al. (1981) delved into the history of the British Industrial Revolution, and they concluded firmly that we are not witnessing a social revolution of equivalent magnitude, because the new information technology is not bringing about new ways of living. They predicted that we are not entering an era when work becomes largely unnecessary, there will be no break with the past, but will be seeing the effect of new technology in the next 20 years as an intensification of existing tendencies, and their extension to new areas. I suggest that Rosenbrock may come to a different conclusion with the benefit of hindsight of changing lifestyles, 15 years later, such as the persistent rise in unemployment and an aging society. Population is aging especially in developed countries and will add significantly to a possible future lifestyle of leisure. Most nations will experience a further rapid increase in the proportion of their population 65 years and older by 2025. This is due to a combination of the post war baby boom and the advances in medicine, health and hygiene technology with the availability and spread of this information. Governments are encouraging delayed retirement whereas businesses are seeking to reduce the size of their older workforce. The participation rates of older men has declined rapidly over the past forty years with the development of national retirement programmes. In many developed countries the number of men 65 and older who remain in the workforce has fallen below ten percent. Due in part to technological advances there are more older people and they are leaving the workforce earlier. Thus this body of people will contribute to the growing numbers of people with more leisure time. (Clerk 1993) Professor Nickolas Negroponte (1996) of the MIT Media Lab, points out that in percentage per capita it is those people under seventeen years of age and over fifty five who are the greatest users of the Internet, and that the Internet and other information technologies encourage democracy and global egalitarianism. Furthermore he envisions a new generation of computers so human and intelligent that they are thought of more as companions and colleagues rather than mechanical aids. Jones (1990) points out a number of elements relating to the adoption of new technology that have no precedent in economic history and suggests that there is a compelling case for the rapid development of policies to assist appropriate social adjustments. He points out that manufacturing has declined as the dominant employer and that there has been a transition to a 'service' or post industrial economy in which far more workers are employed in producing tangible and intangible services than in manufacturing goods. The cost of technology has fallen dramatically relative to the cost of human labour. Miniaturisation has destroyed the historic relationship between the cost of labour and the cost of technology, allowing exponential growth with insignificant labour input, which is leading to the reduction of labour in all high volume process work. Sargent (1994) points out that in Australia during the last decade, the rich have become richer and the poor poorer: the top 20 per cent of households received 44 per cent of national incomes in 1982, and by 1990 this had risen to 47 per cent. But the top 1 per cent received 11 per cent of incomes in 1982, and this rose to 21 per cent in 1990. Meanwhile unemployment continued to increase. Jones (1990) further points out that the new technology has far greater reliability, capacity and range than any which proceeded it. Microprocessors can be directed to do almost anything from planning a school syllabus and conducting psychotherapy to stamping out metal and cutting cloth. It is cheaper to replace electronic modules than to repair them and the new technology is performing many functions at once and generating little heat or waste and will work twenty four hours a day. The making and servicing of much precision equipment which required a large skilled labour force has been replaced by electronic systems that require fewer workers. The relationship between telecommunications and computers multiplies the power of both, the power for instant, universal communications is unprecedented, consequently the influence of any individual economy to control its own destiny is reduced. All advanced capitalist nations and many third world and communist blocks are now largely interdependent, this has led to an international division of labour and the growth of the multinational corporations. The global economy is rapidly taking over from individual nations. The adoption of each new generation of technology is increasing and is rapidly becoming cheaper than its predecessor. Technologies developed in the 1960s have seen rapid rates of development, adoption and dissemination. Less developed countries can now acquire the new technologies due to the rapid decrease in cost, and the combination of their low wages and the latest technology make them formidable competitors in the global market. Almost every area of information based employment, tangible services and manufacturing is being profoundly influenced by new technology. Jones (1990) notes that few economists have addressed the many social implications that stem from the development of science and technology. Most economists' thinking is shaped by the Industrial Revolution and they are unable to consider the possibility of a radical change from the past, they give no hint that Australia has passed a massive transition from a goods based economy to a service base. Attempts to apply old remedies to new situations are simply futile. Jenkins (1985) disagrees with Jones and argues on behalf of the traditional economic model suggesting that it will continue to work well in the new era and the facts do not support any causal relationship between automation, higher productivity, and unemployment. He claims that it cannot be emphasised too strongly that unemployment does not stem from the installation of new technology. He says it is the failure to automate that risks jobs and the introduction of new technology will increase the total number of jobs. Further, he suggests that the primary reason for introducing new technology such as computer controlled robots is to reduce costs and to improve product quality and that lower costs mean lower prices. This results in increased demands for goods and services, which in turn generates higher output and employment and profits. He suggests that higher profits induce higher investment and research and development expenditure whilst the domestic producers of robotics and microelectronic based equipment increase output and employment. He sees the greatest problem simply in the need for occupational restructure of employment, as the need for software experts, computer programmers, technicians and engineers are likely to sharply rise. Rifkin (1995) like Jones believes that the old economic models are inappropriate in the 'Third Industrial Revolution' and describes views similar to Jenkin's as "... century old conventional economic wisdom" and " ... a logic leading to unprecedented levels of technical unemployment, a precipitous decline in purchasing power, and the spectre of a worldwide depression." It is questioned whether Jenkins' solution of re-training will be able to replace all displaced workers. Educator Jonathon Kazol (1985) points out that education for all but a few domestic jobs starts at the ninth grade level. And for those, the hope of being retrained or schooled for a new job in the elite knowledge sector is without doubt out of reach. Even if re-training and re-education on a mass scale were undertaken, the vast numbers of dislocated workers could not be absorbed as there will not be enough high-tech jobs available in the automated economy of the twenty-first century. A British Government backed study by Brady and Liff (1983) clearly supported this view. They concluded that jobs may be created through new technology, but it will be a very long time before the gains could offset the losses from traditional industries. Even the neo-classical economists continue to subscribe to traditional economic solutions, yet they have been met with stiff opposition over the years. In Das Kapital, Marx (McLelland 1977) predicted in 1867 that increasing the automation of production would eliminate the worker altogether, and believed the capitalists were digging their own graves as there would be fewer and fewer consumers with the purchasing power to buy the products. Many orthodox economists agreed with Marx's view in many respects, but unlike Marx, supported the notion of 'trickle down economics' and said that by 'releasing' workers, the capitalists were providing a cheap labour pool that could be taken up by new industries that in turn would use the surplus labour to increase their profits that would in turn be invested in new labour saving technology which would once again displace labour, creating an upward cycle of prosperity and economic growth. Such a viewpoint may have some validity in the short-term but one must consider the longer term effects of such a cycle, it is questionable whether it could be sustained. Another important question is whether consumerism will continue unabated, whether it is a normal human condition to see happiness and salvation in the acquisition of goods and services. The word "consumption" until the present century was steeped in violence. In its original form the term, which has both French and English roots, meant to subdue, to destroy, to pillage. Compared with the mid 1940s the average American is consuming twice as much now. The mass consumption phenomena was not the inevitable result of an insatiable human nature or a phenomenon that occurred spontaneously, quite the contrary. Business leaders realised quite early that they needed to create the 'dissatisfied customer', and to make people 'want' things that they had not previously desired (Rifkin 1996). Nations throughout the world are starting to understand the ill effects that production has on the 'natural' environment, and the acquisition of goods and services on the psyche. With more people with less money, and a trend towards a lifestyle that emphasises quality rather than quantity, it is questionable whether consumerism will, or is desirable, to continue. Science and technology's profile grew to such an extent in the early part of this century in the United States that the supporters and proponents of technocracy were prepared to abandon democracy, and favoured 'rule by science' rather than 'rule by humans' and advocated the establishment of a national body, a technate, that would be given the power to assemble the nation's resources and make decisions governing production and distribution of goods and services. The image of technology as the complete and invincible answer, has somewhat tarnished in recent years with the number of technological accidents such as those which occurred in nuclear power stations at Chernobl and Three Mile Island, and threats of nuclear war and environmental degradation increasing and coming to the fore. Yet the dream that science and technology will free humanity from a life of drudgery continues to remains alive and vibrant, especially among the younger generation. During the 1930s, government officials, trade unionists, economists and business leaders were concerned that the result of labour saving devices, rising productivity and efficiency, was worsening the economic plight of every industrial nation. Organised labour wished to share the gains by business, such as increased profits and fewer workers required. They joined together, to combat unemployment by fighting to reducing the working week and improve wages, thus sharing the work and profits amongst the workers and providing more leisure time. By employing more people at fewer hours, labour leaders hoped to reduce unemployment brought on by labor-saving technology, stimulate purchasing power and revive the economy. Clearly unions saw the problems resulting from technological change to lie partly, in increased leisure time (Rifkin 1996). . Unemployment is steadily rising, global unemployment has now reached its highest level since the great depression of the 1930s. More than 800 million people are now underemployed or are unemployed in the world, while the rich are becoming richer and the poor getting poorer. Unemployment rates among school leavers in South Australia is as high as twenty five per cent and nine per cent for the rest of the community, which leads one to question whether the traditional economic model is working. Trade unions have pursued their response to unemployment throughout the years with wages and salaries growing and the working week reduced, for example in the UK the working week has reduced from eighty four hours in 1820 down to thirty eight hours in 1996 (Jones 1990). Typical government response to unemployment has been to instigate public works programmes and to manipulate purchasing power by tax policies that stimulate the economy and lower tax on consumption. It can been seen in Australia that governments no longer see this as the answer, in fact there is an opposite approach with a strong movement for a goods and services tax, to redistribute wealth, as proposed by the defeated Liberal Party of Andrew Peacock in 1992, and now being re-introduced. Many job creation schemes and retraining programmes are being abandoned by the new Australian Liberal Government of John Howard. However the power of the workers and unions in 1996 is severely restricted. The unions have lost the support of workers as reflected in their falling membership, and no longer can use the threat of direct action with jobs disappearing fast. The Liberal Government passed legislation to limit collective bargaining, with unions power of direct action becoming even more eroded and ineffective because of global competition and division of labour, and automation gave companies many alternatives. Unions have been left with no option but to support re-training, whether they believe it is the answer to unemployment or not. Today, it seems far less likely that the public sector, the unions or the marketplace will once again be able to rescue the economy from increasing technological unemployment. The technological optimists continue to suggest that new services and products resulting from the technological revolution will generate additional employment. While this is true, the new products and services require less workers to produce and operate, and certainly will not counteract those made redundant through obsolete trades and professions. Direct global marketing by way of the 'Superhighway' the 'Internet' and other forms of instant telecommunications is making thousands of middle marketing employees obsolete. For example the SA bank introduced phone banking some while ago, they now are the first bank in South Australia to trade on the Internet (http://www.banksa.com.au), and many rural banks are closing. Also, it has just been announced by the electoral commission that voting by telephone will be trialed next year, with enormous potential job loss. The widely publicised information superhighway brings a range of products, information and services direct to the consumer, bypassing traditional channels of distribution and transportation. The numbers of new technical jobs created will not compare with the millions whose jobs will become irrelevant and redundant in the retail sectors. Jones (1990) notes that there is a coy reticence from those who believe that social structure and economics will continue as in the past, to identify the mysterious new labour absorbing industry that will arise in the future to prevent massive unemployment. Jones believes that industry 'X' if it does appear, will not be based on conventional economic wisdom but is likely to be in areas where technology will have little application, he suggests it may be in service based areas such as education, home based industry, leisure and tourism. Despite Barry Jones predictions, most service industries are very much affected by new technology. Education is fast becoming resource based with students in primary, secondary, technical and tertiary levels expected to do their own research and projects independent of class teachers with schools being networked and teaching through video conferencing. The conventional teacher is fast becoming obsolete, with the number of permanent teachers reducing, There are numerous examples of workers in service industries being displaced by technology. Shop fronts such as banking, real estate, travel and many more, are disappearing. Small retail food outlets continue to collapse, with the growth of supermarkets and food chains organised around computer technology, and on-line shopping from home. Designers of all types are being superseded by CAD computer design software. Even completely automated home computerised services such as a hardware and software package called "Jeeves" is now available. Business management and company directors are finding voice activated lap top computer secretaries far more reliable and efficient than the human form. The New Zealand Minister for Information and Technology, Hon. Maurice Williamson MP, wrote the foreword for the paper 'How Information Technology will change New Zealand': On the threshold of the twenty first century we are entering a period of change as far reaching as any we have ever seen. Since the industrial revolution people have had to locate themselves in large centres where they could work with others, but now new technologies are rendering distance unimportant. The skills that are needed in tomorrow's society will be those associated with information and knowledge rather than the industrial skills of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Changing technology will affect almost every aspect of our lives: how we do our jobs; how we educate our children; how we communicate with each other and how we are entertained. Maurice Williamson (ITAC 1 March 1996) As Williamson points out, with the explosion of technologies , it is easy to lose sight of the larger patterns that underlie them. If we look at the fundamental ways people live, learn and work, we may gain insights about everyday life. These insights are the basis for new technologies and new products that are making an enormous difference in people's lives. Stepping back from the day-to-day research for new electronic devices, life can be seen as being fundamentally transformed. There is development of a networked society; a pattern of digital connections that is global, unprecedented, vital, and exciting in the way that it propels the opportunities for entirely new markets and leisure. As people make digital technology an integral part of the way they live, learn, work and play, they are joining a global electronic network that has the potential for reshaping many of our lives in the coming decade. In the future, technologies will play an even greater role in changing the way people live, learn, work and play, creating a global society where we live more comfortably; with cellular phones and other appliances that obey voice commands; energy-efficient, economical and safe home environments monitored by digital sensors. There will be "Smart" appliances and vehicles that anticipate our needs and deliver service instantly. We are seeing portable communications devices that work without wires; software intelligent agents that sort and synthesise information in a personally tailored format; new technologies that provide increased safety and protect our freedom, ranging from infra-red devices that illuminate the night to microwave devices that improve radar and communications. People are also learning more efficiently, with interactive video classrooms that enable one-on-one attention and learning systems that remember each student's strengths and tailor lesson plans accordingly. There are lap-top computers and desktop video clips that bring in-depth background on current events with instant access to worldwide libraries and reference books with full motion pictures. People are working more productively, with "virtual offices" made possible by portable communications technologies and software that allows enterprise-wide business solutions at a fraction of the usual cost and in a shorter length of time with massive memory available at the desktop and lap-top levels. There are "Intelligent" photocopiers that duplicate a document and route it to a file and simultaneous desktop video-conferencing from multiple locations, sending voice and data simultaneously over the same communications channel. With the explosion of leisure activities available, people play more expansively. There are hundreds of movies available on demand at home, virtual-reality games, a growth in the number of channels delivered by direct satellite television, videophones that link faces with voices, interactive television for audience participation, instant access to worldwide entertainment and travel information and interactive telegaming with international partners (Texas Instruments 1996). This paper has considered developments in electronic miniaturisation, robotics, digitisation and information technology with its social implications for human values and the future of work. It has argued that we have entering a post-modern period and are entering a post-market era in which life will no longer be structured around work in the traditional sense, there will be greater freedom and independent living, paid employment will be de-emphasised and our lifestyle will be leisure orientated. I have argued that the social goal of full employment in the traditional sense is no longer appropriate, necessary or even possible, that both government and society will need to recognise the effects of technology on social structure and re-organise resources to be distributed more equally if extreme social unrest, inequity, trauma and possible civil disruption is to be avoided. I foresee a scenario of a sustainable integrated global community in which there will be some form of barter but cash will be largely eliminated, money will be 'virtual'. A minimal amount of people will be involved and enjoy some forms of high tech activity, while the vast majority will have a vocation that is essentially creative and enjoyable perhaps involving the arts and music with a spirituality that involves deep respect and care for the natural world with new forms of individual and group interaction. There will be minimal forms of world central democratic government. Vast forms of infrastructure will no longer be required as citizens will largely be technologically independent. Most communication and interaction will be instant and conducted from home, office or public terminal. There will be new forms and ways of living, new family structures that may consist of larger and smaller groups. A comfortable, pleasurable and leisure based lifestyle in which all the essentials and wants will be automatically provided through the processes of the largely self-sustaining and self evolving technology. Rifkin (1995) has a similar view, and concludes that he believes the road to a near-workerless economy is within sight and that road could head for a safe haven or a terrible abyss, it all depends on how well civilisation prepares for the post-market era. He too is optimistic and suggests that the end of work could signal the beginning of a great social transformation, a rebirth in the human spirit. References Brady, T. and Liff, S. 1983 Monitoring New Technology and Employment Manpower Services Commission Sheffield England. Jones, B. 1995 Sleepers Awake Oxford University Press Melbourne Australia. Masuda, Y. 1983 The Information Society as Post - Industrial Society World Future Society Bethesda Maryland. Rifkin, J. 1995 The End of Work G P Putnam and Sons New York. Jenkin, P. 1985 Automation is Good for Us Editor: Forester, T. The Information Technology Revolution Basil Blackwell Ltd Oxford UK. Kozol, J. 1985 Illiterate America Anchor Press/Doubleday New York. McLelland, D. 1977 Marx's Grundrisse der Kritik der Politischen Okonnomie Harpers Press New York. Mitchell, O. 1993 As the Workforce Ages ILR Press New York. Negroponte, N. 1996 Digital Nostradamus - A Bits Future Lateline ABC Television 3 March 1996 Australia. Rosenbrock, H. et al. 1981 New Technology: Society, Employment and Skill Council for Science and Society London. Sargent, M. 1994 The New Sociology for Australians Longman Cheshire Melbourne Australia. Texas Instruments 1996 Core Competencies and the Digital Revolution - A Steady Stream of Innovations. http://www.ti.com/docs/home.html Viewed Nov 10 1996. Williamson, M. 1996 How Information Technology will change New Zealand Information Technology Information Group Wellington New Zealand. http://www.netlink.co.nz Viewed 11 Nov 1996. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\The Ganges River.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Dear Paul, About 2 weeks ago I went on an exciting trip along the Ganges River. In this letter I'll tell you all about it. It turns out that the Ganges has its beginning in an ice cave 10,300 feet above sea level in the snow-covered Himalayan Mountains of northern India. From there, the river flows towards the southeast and goes through East Pakistan, for about 1,557 miles. Ganges River then empties into the Bay of Bengal. Several tributary rivers, including the Jumna, Rmganga, Gumti, Gogra, Son, and Kusi also add to the waters of the Ganges. As I was going past the Bay of Bengal I noticed some people with severe sicknesses and crippled bathing in the Ganges River. My guide told me that to Indians, Ganges River is sacred and people believe that the touch of its water will cure some diseases. I was shocked to find out that people even go to that river to die in hope that they will go to paradise. I should point out that the river is only sacred to Hindus. It was interesting to find out that each year, thousands of Hindu pilgrims visit such holy cities as Benares and Allahabad along the banks of the Ganges. They go there just to bathe in the river and to take home some of its water. The Ganges River is so important to the Indians that they call it "Ganga Mata" or Mother Ganges. It is also the greatest waterway in India and one of the largest in the world. Temples line the riverbank, and stairways, called ghats, lead down to the water. I am enclosing one of the pictures I took of the Ganges River. The river is an important trade place. Its valley is fertile and densely populated. Some of India's largest cities like Calcutta, Howrah, Patna, Benares, Allahabad, and Cawnpore are located on the river. India's capital, New Delhi, is on one of its tributaries, the Jumna. The Ganges River however, isn't as important commercially as it once was. By the way, when we stopped in Calcutta for the night, I was amazed by the city's low standard of living. While traveling near Calcutta, my guide and I were attacked by crocodiles!! Some of them live along the banks of the Ganges River. The Brahmaputra River is a mighty river as well. It joins some of the branches of the Ganges near its mouth, and together the two rivers from a large delta of jungle and swampland. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\The Graffiti Exposure in Wynnum My Suberb.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The Graffiti Exposure in Wynnum Is it a work of art; or a piece of scrawl sprayed across some bare surface? Ladies and Gentlemen, should Wynnum be exposed to Graffiti? Firstly, I would like to ask you. What is the cost to the government to 'cover up' this unwanted advertisement? One recent attack placed a school approximately $4000 out of pocket. Further more, over the last twelve months, my school has experienced nine attempts at destroying the asthetic appeal of the buildings within. I could also safely say that most of the other schools in the Wynnum Manly district, both public and private, received similar encounters of degradation. It's not just the cost, it's also the time. What about the cleaners? What about the painters? What about the police? I am sure there are more constructive projects to cover than cleaning up after some graffiti vandal. It is not just our schools who experience the attacks. Scout dens, parks, businesses, trains, just to name a few, all lie in the mercy of the local crew, or graffiti gang. Is there a reason for such an act? Criminologists suggest that there are many motives for graffiti. These motives all point to one main factor. Targeting the higher authority: Revenge towards the authority; Anger towards the authority; Boredom from lack of authority; To convince of self-existence, and To explore prohibited areas placed by authority. The pattern of locations the police established, is that all the tags, or the writer's signature, are placed in exposed, publicised areas so the public can witness the graffiti vandal's attempt to 'make his point.' The targets are not necessarily towards formal authority, such as the police, but also informal authorities such as social morals; for example, the principle of a school. If we removed authority from our society, the social control would be lost, making it impractical and impossible for our or any society to operate successfully. So what can be done? It is sad to hear that after several graffiti attacks in the Bayside area, the shock value of the concept is lost. The attitude of the police is pesermistical - 'the problem can not be eliminated.' However, what if the problem could be prevented. At Wynnum North High, in 1993, our school Chaplain, Mr. Kappa, began to run afternoon 'legal street art' projects. The Wynnum/Redlands Youth and Community Combined Action Project are also holding Legal Street Art Workshops and both have gained high success rates of reducing the level of illegal graffiti artists in the Bayside area. These projects encouraged youths to be involved in organised, supervised activities and helped them develop an appreciation and respect for community property and the environment. The project also encourages and provides mechanisms for youths to leease with local authority groups and the community in a positive manner. The workshops catered to mainly benefit the individuals. It offers an environment where the participants can build trust and non-threatening relationships with the supervisors. The supervisors also provide support to the artists, as they usually carry their emotional baggage to the workshops. The programme gives the artists a sense of belonging and acceptance to the community, removing the motives mentions earlier. And improving the participants' self-esteem with achievements, such as a final mural painted by the group, accomplished in the workshops. As a result of the project's aims to shift the emphasis from illegal to legal street art, the style became more acceptable for the public eye, and portrayed positive attitudes, giving legal street art a more acceptable place in society. The workshops have seen many of the illegal graffiti artists become successful after attending, and have gone to further their careers in sign writing, designing and advertising. In addition to these local projects, a recent issue in the 'Queensland Education Views' gazette reported the decreasing school damage insurance claims. The article quotes that in 1992, there were 5601 insurance claims by state schools. In late 1992, an injection of almost one million dollars into school security seen a 20% decrease in school insurance claims on vandalism. The claim in 1994 fell to 4485 claims. The article states that the decline is from establishing a School Watch programme, which increases the level of security of the school, following the same objectives as the Neighbourhood Watch programme. Joining the two enterprises, we will see the level of graffiti drop dramatically in our community as well as our schools. I believe that such projects as the Legal Street Art programme can convert the offenders from resisting to joining the community. Thus giving them a chance to wipe their slate clear, and start off new with a more positive, and prosperous aspect towards life. As the old saying goes, 'prevention is better than the cure' so if these organisations receive appropriate funding and support, we will see a substantial reduction of vandalism in the Bayside area. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\The Graying of America.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The Graying of America Of the total federal expenditures in 1995, Social Security together with Medicare(federally founded health program aimed at helping the elderly, founded in 1965) was the largest, accounting for about 34 percent. In 2005 this figure is predicted to be as high as 39 percent. This is caused by the "graying" of America and the increased number of elderly who will collect benefits for a longer portion of their lives, coupled with a reduction of the number of workers available to pay for their benefits. Increasing costs of living and higher standards of living (as reflected in higher wages) also are consequences. In short, if no action is taken in the interim, by approximately 2013 the federal government will have to raise taxes, increase the debt, print more money, reduce Social Security benefits immediately, or do some combination of those things to rectify the Social Security cash-flow imbalance. The surplus will be gone. The amounts needed by the Social Security system, even in the early years, are not insignificant. In 2015 experts believe that the government will have to find approximately $57 billion to meet its obligations. By 2020 the number will have grown to $232 billion. The demographic makeup of America is changing. The share of the population over the age of 65 will continue to grow well into the next century. Today, approximately 13 percent of the population of the United States is over age 65. By 2030 that percentage will increase to more than 20 percent. Even more surprising, in less than 50 years, there will be as many Americans aged 80 and older as there are now people over 65. People are also living longer; In 1900 life expectancy was 47 at birth, and if you lived to be 65, your life expectancy was suddenly 77. In 1993 it was 76 at birth and 82 if you turned 65. At the same time, retirement ages have sunken. So suddenly there were people living longer, on the government's payroll. Some people would then draw the conclusion: "If people live longer, they should work longer," but many elderly people are too tired, and to weak too work after a life span of just working. As the "baby-boom" generation begins retiring, around 2010, America will have a greater proportion of elderly citizens than it ever has. Approximately 24 million people over the age of 70 live in the United States today. By the year 2030, twice as many - 48 million - will be alive. And spending on the elderly now accounts for one-third of the federal budget (34%) and more than one-half of all federal domestic spending other than interest. As the group makes up more and more of the population, its visibility and political influence will probably intensify. The situation is caused by an increasing number of retiring Americans, the fact is that we are now living a great deal longer than did our grandparents. The makers of the Social Security system designed it with their present life spans in mind. When they created the program in 1935 and chose 65 as the retirement age, the average life expectancy of a child born in that year was only 61. Today, the average life expectancy is 76 years, and by 2030 it is expected to approach 80 years of age. As increasing numbers of Americans claim Social Security benefits and do so for a much longer period of time than was originally planned, and as fewer workers are available to support those transfer payments, the strain on the Social Security system threatens to rip the program apart. This dramatic rise in the number of elderly American citizens will stress the Social Security System as well as other organisations designed to assist the elderly. Experts project that soon after the year 2000, the federal government will have to take serious steps to insure the continuation of the Social Security program: reduction of payments, taxation of benefits, an increase in the age at which people become eligible, or some combination of these strategies. If steps are not taken, not only are there increasing numbers of elderly people in the United States, but their life expectancies are increasing as well. Life expectancy at birth and at age 65 is increasing for both sexes. This means that Americans will be living longer in their elderly stage and will require a larger amount of money to support themselves after retirement. This can be seen by theses figures. In the 1950s there were approximately eight working-age Americans for every person over 65 years old. By 2030, there will be just two working-age Americans for every person older than 65. Also, fewer workers will be available to support the increasing number of retirees. The primary causes of the growth in Social Security that is projected to occur over the next several decades are not factors that can be controlled. The program's growth will be driven by the "graying" of America, an increasing cost of living, and a higher standard of living (as reflected in higher wages). Until serious reforms are undertaken, the American people will rightly lack confidence in the financial stability of Social Security. As social welfare takes a larger and larger portion of the "American Pie", there will also have to be cuts in other areas. And I think that the defence expenses will be cut in the near future. I also think there will have to come new social welfare programmes, such as the one President Clinton has suggested. A harsher welfare system than before, where you only get welfare (not Medicare) for five years, then you need to get money from somewhere else. As Clinton puts it: "Welfare should not be a way of life, but a second chance.." An institution which will grow significantly is "The Assisted Living Industry", those who are to take care of the elderly in the future. This will happen particularly because of the ageing of the American population, the dramatic increase in number of persons age 85 or older, and continued increase in the number of people who live alone due to the longer life expectancy for woman. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\The Hidden Evils.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Some of the most fathomless evils in the world go unknown to people. These evils present themselves disguised as good, and may do much good, but simultaneously do evil. Ideas, things, and people may all advance evil, even if this is not what they intended. How people see the aforementioned, and the way said people's minds work, combine together to work much harm. It is assuredly not their fault, and they may not even be aware of it. For instance Mother Theresa's intentions are completely honorable and she does much good, but she also cause evil. Mother Theresa is, for all practical purposes, guaranteed sainthood. Much of what she does, and who she is, may indirectly cause things she does not intend. Some of this is the people she helps. Mother Theresa gives food needed to survive to her beneficiaries. This is unquestionably a good thing, yet it also harms the people. While their lives shall continue, they no longer know how to live. Those rescued shall become dependent on the food given them, and soon will not know how to take care of themselves. It would be far more practical to also teach them how they may help themselves, but one person cannot do all. One overwhelming influence on those that wish to help is Mother Theresa. These individuals doubtless wish to help, but for various reasons do not. When questioned, there is one response that is entirely too common, which is "I can't make a difference." Mother Theresa is a contributing factor to this response. Everyone sees this woman doing so much, they then believe they can never do the same on such a large scale. People become overwhelmed with all of the good she does, then, because they acquired the impression that they cannot come near to the legend she has become, they do nothing at all. There is at least one other place where Mother Theresa does something detrimental, that she may not be aware of. People constantly see her on news reports, movies, commercials. Mother Theresa is also written about in books, magazines, and newspapers. She allows this, for it lets her message reach many people, but this too has a corrupting effect. Until now sainthood had been a mystical and unattainable level, now it is not. It is certain that Mother Theresa shall become a saint. Such publicity becomes devoted to her that many begin to feel like they know her. Mother Theresa currently drifts somewhere between your neighbor and a favorite movie star. This is not the place she should occupy. Such a status erodes what it means to be a saint, making it somehow less holy in the eyes of many people. Mother Theresa does cause evil and harm, though it is extremely unlikely she is aware of it. She is incapable of doing anything about it, even if she is aware. One must remember everyone causes good and evil, though maybe not in equal measures. It may seem, at first, that she is possibly responsible for more than most, or that hers excessively wide spread. Remember, she does far more good works than most -- maybe more than anyone else. The good she does, and the many lives she constantly saves, more than make up for the harm that may subsequently occur. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\The History of WhiteTailed Deer In Kentucky.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The History of White-Tailed Deer in Kentucky When our ancestors first reached Kentucky they found a great abundance of game, including deer. Early settlers utilized deer for food and clothing. Due to all the killing of the white-tail deer, around 1925 they were virtually eliminated in Kentucky. A few survived in areas such as, between the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers in western Kentucky, and a few survived in eastern Kentucky. In most places, though deer simply no longer occurred. When the deer was on the verge of extension in Kentucky, the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources stepped in. They tried to save the deer in Kentucky and they succeeded. They regulated the hunting seasons and the amount of game allowed to kill. Today we have an abundance of deer in Kentucky, we have about 450,000 deer. The white-tailed deer breeding season in Kentucky runs from October through mid January, reaching its peak in November. Most fawns are born in June, following a seven month gestation period. Newborn fawns will weigh about four pounds at birth. Deer offspring are cared for and may remain with the mother until the next spring. Fawns retain their spots until mid September and nurse until mid October. About 40 percent of female fawns breed during their first autumn, but usually bear only one fawn. Does breeding at age 1 1/2 or older generally have twins, and sometimes triplets. By November, Kentucky's deer population typical increases slightly more than one fawn per doe. Although many more fawns are born than one per doe, some will die before the hunting season arrives. A deer's home range averages about 500 acres. In mountains, the home range may exceed 1,000 acres. Even though this size area can support about 40 deer, these animals will not always stay just within their home range. Many will travel on and off that amount of land different times of the year looking for the best food and cover available. One important key in improving deer numbers is helping provide ample amounts of the right foods. Healthier deer produce more offspring. White-tails eat a variety of vegetation, depending on what is available during different seasons. In late winter, deer live mainly on woody twig ends and buds called browse. They will also eat acorns, corn and winter wheat if available. Spring foods include tender grasses, clovers and leaves of woody plants such as ragweed, native and cultivated grasses and clovers. During the fall, deer will use fruits and nuts such as acorns, persimmons, dogwood berries, corn and browse for a food supply. Protection from severe weather, predators and illegal hunting is essential for deer. For this, white-tails must have stands of forests, thick brushy areas and over grown fields in which to hide and bed. Deer will not stay in areas that are too open or that offer them no shelter and refuge. Age is one of the most critical factors in managing for trophy deer. White-tailed deer must be at least three and one half years old before their antlers approach trophy size. Peak antler development usually occurs between age six and one half and seven and one half. In Kentucky, however, only 30 percent of bucks reach two and one half years old, and only nine percent live and additional year or longer. Harvest practices that allow bucks to reach older ages can easily be designed to maximize the potential for trophy size antlers. The best ways are through taking fewer bucks and regulating harvest selection. If trophy deer are desired, hunters must be willing to take antlerless deer. They must also learn to recognize trophy potential in young bucks and not harvest these animals before that potential is reached. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\The Importance of Romantic Relationships.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Why get involved in a romantic relationship? What benefits do they have? People commonly ask these questions when faced with the decision of getting involved with someone. Romantic relationships provide comradery, courtship, and love. All of these contribute to building a lasting bond between two people. Friendship is the foundation, courtship preserves the romance, and love makes it last. Friendship is often the basis of romantic relationships. The comradery brings two people closer together. A romantic partner is someone in whom to confide, and with whom to share great problems. He is there to console and comfort in hours of need. He gives his friendship unconditionally as a foundation in the relationship. Friendship takes love and kindness, as do romantic relationships. When a couple starts out as friends, they build a stronger alliance. This is why romance usually starts with friendship. Courtship is very important in romantic relationships. Amorous companions need to feel wanted and appreciated. Courtship keeps the romance in a relationship. It helps one lover show the other how he feels. "Show your love with flowers " is frequently used in the flower industry to get people to buy flowers. Buying flowers shows one's affection. Holidays such as Valentine's Day emphasize the need to show that special someone how admired they really are. Courtship allows people to continuously grow closer and learn new things about each other. Whether it is giving a sweetheart a dozen roses, or an "I love you" now and then, courtship is what keeps the flame alive between romantic partners. Love binds all romantic relationships. Without love they would not exist. George Hebert shows the benefits of love in relationships in this quotation that states "Love makes all hard hearts gentle." This quote expresses how a cold person coming into a relationship can be softened by love. Having a romantic partner gives a person a sense of reassurance, self-esteem, and love for himself. Love enhances the lives of both partners in the relationship. For example, when two people are in love, their emotions are at an ultimate high. It creates a bond that is not easily broken. Ultimately, love is what makes a relationship last. Romantic relationships enrich life with friendship, courtship and love. Successful relationships are able to incorporate all of these and build upon them. Tommy Page emphasizes the importance of these three things involved in working relationships with his words "I'll be your lover, and I'll be your best friend . . . I'll be your everything." This brings together all three aspects of comradery, courtship and love in relationships. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\The Importance of the Supreme Court in A federal type governm.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The United States Supreme Court has interpreted the constitutional guarantees contained in amendments to the constitution. Among these Guaranteed rights are the freedoms of religion, speech, and press, along with the right of protection against illegal search and seizure, equal protection under the law, and the right to counsel. These rights all contained in the first amendment to the constitution are arguably the most important rights guaranteed to citizens of the United States. However these rights are not absolute. Throughout the course of time many controversies have occurred concerning the limitation of rights. Many of these controversies have called upon the Supreme Court to evaluate the constitutionality of laws or individual actions. Many cases in the history of the supreme court have led to a significant change in the interpretation of rights in the united states. One important case involving the freedom of religion was Reynolds v. United States in 1879. Reynolds, a Mormon living in Utah had two wives. Polygamy was allowed in the teachings of the church, but prohibited by a federal lab banning the practice in the United States. Reynolds when convicted argued that the federal law violated his constitutional right to the free exercise of his religious beliefs. The Supreme Court did not agree with Reynolds claiming that congress was not without the power to punish violations of social duties or subversive of good order. The court said that to place religious belief superior to the law of the land, would in affect permit every citizen to become a law unto himself. Government would exist only in name under such circumstances. The ruling in this case has upheld that ones religious beliefs do not permit him/her to break the law to suit his religion, and that that governmental law presides over all religious beliefs. This is an example of the limitation of the Guaranteed rights of the constitution. The right to practice religion freely allows people to believe what they want however they must abide by the laws of government in order to prevent a lawless society. Because of this case it is now established that governmental law precedes religious law. Another important case recently involved the right of protection against illegal search and seizure. In T.L.O. v. New Jersey two girls were caught smoking cigarettes in the bathroom of a New jersey high school. Being searched revealed cigarettes, marijuana, large amounts of cash, and records indicating the sale of marijuana on one of the girls. The girl was convicted of drug charges but her lawyer argued she was searched illegally. This case was another example of the limitation of rights. The issue in this case was the right of protection against illegal search and seizure versus the need of the school system to create and maintain a safe learning environment. According to law a law official must establish "probable cause" before a search can take place. However in a public school setting school officials operate under "reasonable suspicion" this was established because of the school's responsibility to provide a safe learning environment. This case upheld the schools right to search under the cause of reasonable suspicion. Schools now currently operate under reasonable suspicion. Finally the case of Schenck v. United States is considered one of the most important cases in United States history. This case dealt with the Guarantee of free speech and how it is limited. In 1919 Schenck, the general secretary of the Socialist party, had been convicted of sending some 15,000 strongly worded leaflets to men who had been called to military service, urging them to resist the draft. The issue in this case was the individual rights of expression and speech against the needs of society. In this case a very important precedent was set the idea of "clear and present danger" which states that when words are in such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that congress has a right to prevent. That words can be outlawed and those who utter them can be punished when their use creates an immediate danger that criminal acts will follow. This case has set a precedent that has existed for almost eighty years regarding free speech. Today the statement has been revised to read "immediate clear and present danger" to expand the rights of the individual. Under the constitution the citizens are Guaranteed certain rights and freedoms, however these rights are not absolute they are relative to the rights of others. The Supreme Court will continue to attempt to balance the rights of the individual with the needs of society at large. Because of this the Supreme Court is an extremely essential part of the United States government. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\The Jewish Question.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ In World War I Germany thought they were going to win the war, but they didn't. Germany didn't have the right military support and weapons to win. After the war Hitler was mad because Germany didn't win the war and he blamed it on the Jews. Hitler then decided he would try to take control of Germany by getting the support from all the Germans so he could exterminate all the Jews and anyone that disagreed with his ideas. After a while Hitler got the support from many Germans on his ideas and then began to rise in power just like he wanted. He then started by making a group called the Nazis. The Nazis exterminated thousands of Jews and burned down their homes and businesses. Hitler then began to kill off more Jews by sending them to death camps, also known as concentration camps, where they would be sent to die. The concentration camps were terrible places to be. They had filthy conditions and many of the Jews were forced to starve and die. Others were sent to gas chambers that first had carbon monoxide and then were changed to hydrogen cyanide, a better and more efficient way to kill off the Jews Hitler thought. The Nazis and SS, another Anti-Jew German group, referred to killing Jews and exterminating their race and making Germany a dominate race of just Germans the "special treatment" and the answer to the "Jewish Question." After about a year or two 1.4 million Jews were killed by the Nazis or in death camps. Hitler's ideas also spread across Eastern Europe. Germany's army spread into the Soviet Union and the Netherlands. More Jews were killed there. During the whole time period of the Holocaust as many as 5.8 million Jews died. Just because the fact they were Jewish. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\The Language of Hawaii.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Pidgin is a dialect of English spoken in the Hawaiian Islands. It consists of the shortening of many words commonly used in everyday English speech. Some examples include, da (the), odda (other), Tre (meaning tree and three), bra (anyone you know), da kine (anything you don't know), cus (any friend), and many others. Pidgin has it's social barriers as well. It is primarily spoken in the lower class neighborhoods consisting of the Hawaiians and the Filipinos. The dialect has been associated with the members of these neighborhoods and their problems, such as, alcoholism, illiteracy, and a poor standard of living. I come from a diverse family background, my mother is Scottish, English, Italian, French, and much more. My father is part Hawaiian and part Scottish. Being such I have to choose which lifestyle is right for me. There is a tug-a-war between the Hawaiian part of me and the Haole part of me. The two cultures that I consider myself, Scottish and Hawaiian, are both proud, interesting, and contain their own prescriptions toward behavior. The pidgin dialect is a major part of life in the lower class Hawaiian neighborhoods. For most children in these neighborhoods it is the language spoken at home. The other people of the islands look at this dialect as a sign of a poor education and up-bringing. My mother did not want her son associated with such a group of individuals. When I started school at Maunawili School and began to pick up Pidgin and start to speak it at home she took it upon herself to change me. At this time she was teaching sixth grade at Keolu Elementary. She saw how her kids could not speak proper English, only Pidgin. Many of them also wrote in Pidgin, something I had begun to do. My mother saw this behavior and forced me to change. My parents put me in Punahou School, one of the best private schools in the nation, to facilitate this change. It may seem that she did not want me to grow up proud of my Hawaiian heritage, but that is far from the truth. She taught me to respect the culture for its beautiful aspects, the hula, and the Hawaiian Language. My father taught me about the ain'a (land). He showed me how the Hawaiians of yesterdays believed the ain'a to be the physical representation of their beliefs in their gods. He showed me Pele's (the fire goddess) home in Kilauea volcano, then her wrath when the lava from her vents destroyed many homes in Pu'u O'o and many other exciting aspects of the culture. I was told to keep with the traditions that make me unique, both Hawaiian and Haole. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\The Lord of the Flies.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Lord of the Flies By: Wiliam Golding Main Character Description Piggy: A large kid, one of the older ones. He was made fun of and teased about his weight and it drove him crazy. He met Ralph first. Piggy wore glasses, which later proved vital for fire making. The best way to get to Piggy was to take away his "specs" because without them, he couldn't see a foot away from anything. He is later killed in the book. He falls fourty feet onto solid rock and his head splits open. Ralph: Ralph is chief of the group on the very first day. He was voted above Jack and his small band of kids. Ralph is one of the oldest. He first meets Piggy and was the original founder of the Conch Horn. Ralph comes up with many useful ideas during the novel, like the shelters on the beach. He is hunted right before they are rescued. Jack: Has his own band of kids that he later names, his "hunters." In the group, they are responsible for the hunting of the pigs of the island; to bring in meat. Otherwise, the only thing they had to eat was the fruit of the island. Later on in the novel, Jack leaves the group of kids to be on his own. Simon: Quiet, out-spoken by everyone, Simon is one of the hardest-working of them all. He helps Ralph with the shelters and the little ones with fruit. He is later killed in the novel. Sam 'n Eric: Sam and Eric are twins. They help in various problems during the novel and survive until the end of the novel. Neither of them play a vital role in the novel. Chapter Summary Chapter 1- In the first chapter, the time is right after the plane has wrecked and they all wake up from the crash. Ralph and Piggy meet each other, walk around and soon look for other people on the plane. Ralph soon finds the Conch shell and uses it like a horn to beacon the others. The survivors eventualy find themselves together in a group; Ralph, Piggy, Jack and his hunters, Sam 'n Eric and Simon included. They vote Ralph the chief of the group, make a few rules (like, whoever has the Conch Shell has the right to speak) and designate Jack and his band as the group's "hunters." Ralph, Simon and Jack explore the island and climb it's pink mountain to see if the place they were at is trully an island. They find it is. Chapter 2- An idea is formed for the group. They decide to designate a place on the top of the mountain and make a fire-pit for a signal to ships or planes that may be passing by. The whole group colects tons and tons of wood and dead leaves and heaves them alll into a pile. They use Piggy's specs to start the fire by placing them between the sun and the pile. Soon, the fire consumes all of the materials they had collected and very little smoke had been created. Piggy is made upset and he starts a much bigger fire. They all get in an argument. Then meet back down at the meeting place. Chapter 3- In this chapter, the group attempt to make huts on the beach. It turns out that Ralph and Simon end up doing all the work. The shelters are not very good ones and the progress is slow. Jack is upset that he cant get any meat for the group to eat, and that his band of hunters spend all their time in the bathing pool. Chapter 4- In this chapter, a few of the kids find out about camoflauge and such. Some of them paint their faces for hunting. Jack included. He decides white and red to plit his face then a black line from his right eye to his left jaw. A ship came within sight of the island, but Jack and his group of kids went hunting so the fire was left and went out. Chapter 5- Three shelters have been built by this time in the novel and a restroom was about to be built by the bathing pool. They were going to build the restroom by the bathing pool so the tide can clean everything out. (their camping area was getting a little dirty) Chief Ralph also made a new rule that no fire ever be made unless it's on the mountain. And that if they didn't keep that fire going, they'll die. A rumor was spread sayingthat a gigantic squid was seen, bigger than a whale. Towards the end of the chapter, Jack riles up an assembly and they all go running after the "beast." Chapter 6- The beast-hunting party makes their way up the pink rock mount. There was only one place on the island that Jack had not visited. It was a large pile of rocks near the fire-site. It turned out to be monster-free, and an ideal fort area. Jack realy liked that fort. They name the place "Stone Castle." Using a mean tone of voice and loud voice, Ralph convinces Jack that the priority right then was to keep the mountain-top firing burning...at all times. And he emphasised that. Chapter 7- The beast / pig-run party finds what they think may the infamous "beast" that so frightens the little ones. The creature is actually a boar. While sneaking upon it and striking at the thing with their spears, Jack is injured in his arm. (he sucks it and it's all better) They follow the beast's tracks somewhat and eventually find it. Chapter 8- In this chapter, Jack leaves the group of kids after a big argument with Ralph. (one of the many many they've had) Jack attempted to mutiny Ralph's authority and accused him of being a coward while hunting the beast. He said he did all thw work while Ralph hung back and did all the work. He puts it to a vote, should he be impeached as chief and Jack take his place or should he stay. Not one child voted for impeachment. This gave Jack a mixed feeling of embarassment and rage and he stormed off, saying he didn't want to be any part of "Ralph's lot." Chapter 9- In this chapter, Jack calls his own sort of assembly after leaving Ralph's lot. Everybody attended, even Piggy and Ralph. Jack announces that he is starting his own tribe and Ralph objects to the idea. Jack ignores his rejections and asks who will join his tribe. Many of the kids do join and the assembly is dismissed. Chapter 10- In this chapter, the group of kids had finally broken up and Ralph's lot was pondering just what that meant. When Jack went to recruit people for his lot, he mentioned how much fun they would have and that they wouldn't have much work to do. So, naturally, most people joined Jack's lot and only a few stayed with Ralph and Piggy. Jack's fort, Castle Rock, was his group's sanctuary. Later that, following the dismissal of Jack's assembly, Jack's hunters and he attacked Ralph's shelters and the two group's got in a fight. They were fought back and retreated, but managed to complete their objective...which was to steal Piggy's glasses. Chapter 11- Ralph's lot are in shock because Piggy's specs were taken and they immediately decide how to get them back. After an assembly is called, they get each other so riled up that they just storm the castle rock. The two twins, Sam'n Eric get tied up and are threatened to be hanged If they do not join Jack's lot. In the struggle, Piggy is pushed off a cliff and falls forty feet to his death after getting his smashed by a rock. Chapter 12- Ralph goes back to the shelters (or whats left of them) and eventually Jack's lot finds it necessary to hunt Ralph down and kill him. Ralph escapes the oncoming group of killers and is chased throughout the forest. A naval ship, notices the smoke, and comes by. A naval officer greets Jack from the beach and the kids cry. My Opinions on the Book This bomk was easily the best book I've read in a long time. It was my favorite on the list so far. I really likedthe idea of kids surviving on their own in an isolated environment. And I think this bok really did what it was supposed to do, well. That is, it was a great way to express theopinion that humans are not generally good creatures corrupted by society, but generally rotten creatures that are civilized by society. And that's how I feel. Awesome book. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\The Mexican U S Connection.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The Mexican U.S. Connection Mexico and the United States have been close together, at the same time being so far apart. Mexico and the U.S. have maintained a healthy neighbor to neighbor relationship over the centuries. There have been disputes of course, but for the most part we are working together. When striving to maintain a healthy relationship between neighboring countries, certain problems arise. When the countries don't have the same standard of living, people might try and migrate illegally to the better country. When one country has more illegal drugs than the other, people might try smuggling the drugs. Also, trade between the countries is always a factor in keeping a healthy connection. The first issue to deal with is illegal immigration. Doris Meissner, Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner, announced the INS would pump 185 more agents and an array of equipment, including two new helicopters, seven more infrared scopes, eight miles of fencing and 172 additional sensors to detect and deter illegal immigration traffic along a 16-mile stretch between Otay Mountain and the Tecate Port of Entry. The area has been inundated by immigrant smugglers who have been forced east because of increased Border Patrol activity along the 14-mile corridor from the Pacific Ocean and Imperial Beach to Otay Mesa. The effort, known as Operation Gatekeeper, was launched in October 1994. Meissner said the latest effort, an extension of Operation Gatekeeper, would add five Border Patrol agents on horseback to patrol the back country and three dog teams to be assigned to checkpoints along rural roads. Meissner also announced that the Federal Bureau of Investigation would join the operation to break up illegal smuggling rings at the border. She said the Border Patrol would step up the use of checkpoints in the Temecula area, where smugglers usually end up trying to evade the Border Patrol checkpoint. In March, a van carrying illegal immigrants overturned near there as its driver tried to avoid agents; eight illegal immigrants were killed and 18 others injured. In Los Angeles, an alleged smuggler of illegal immigrants who police say was at the wheel of a pickup truck during a chase in April which ended with the televised police beatings of two undocumented aliens from Mexico, pleaded not guilty to federal charges of transporting illegal immigrants. Rigoberto Sosa-Padilla, 37, was arrested on May 3 while allegedly transporting 19 illegal immigrants. The beating and chase occurred April 1 when a truck allegedly driven by Sosa-Padillo and carrying more than 20 aliens led police on a 80-mile chase from Temecula to Los Angeles. Helicopter news footage showed sheriff's deputies beating two of the aliens, including a woman, with nightsticks. The deputies have been suspended and the two Mexican citizens have filed multi-million dollar lawsuits against the authorities Involved. Next, when there is a definite powerhouse between the two, everything that happens within the powerhouse, and to the powerhouse, the sick dog on the floor is affected. "The US election may yet have an effect on Mexico: the better the protectionist Ross Perot does in the campaign the greater the danger that Mexico will become an issue. The best solution for Mexico would, clearly, be a victory for President Clinton. His policies have become pragmatic rather than doctrinaire: this attitude was demonstrated by the Helms-Burton Act: the President pulled back from implementing it though he keeps hinting that he might implement the Act's strongest provisions after the elections." The second is the expected rise in US interest rates. Most economists are factoring in a half point rise in US interest rates either before, or more likely, immediately after the US elections on November 5th. It is not yet clear whether the Mexican stockmarket has discounted an increase in US rates. Higher US rates are likely to lead to diminished flows of cash to the Mexican market. Also, drug trafficking is a drastic problem that is battled daily. Juan Garcia Abrego, recently added to the FBI's top 10 most wanted list, who according to FBI reports, is charged with 131 counts of drug trafficking and related crimes, is also wanted in connection with more than 70 murders. The drug kingpin's wealth is estimated between 200-million and 13-billion dollars in property and investments. Mr. Abrego is accused of heading up a huge drug trafficking operation out of northeastern Mexico, and spending millions of dollars to bribe Mexican officials under former president Carlos Salinas de Gortari. The cartel smuggles an estimated 20 tons of Colombian cocaine into the United States each month. As was mentioned before, trade between the two countries can become a huge link-as well as a huge barrier. The ratification of the NAFTA produced varied responses in the Mexican political sector. Felipe Calderon Hinojosa, Secretary General of the National Action Party (PAN), believes that the NAFTA will bring foreign investment and certainty to the Mexican economy but was careful to mention that the benefits would be long term (10-12 years). However, despite his optimism he questioned the manner in which the ratification occurred and explained that it was unfortunate that the Mexican government had turned a potentially good negotiation into a political battle that they wanted to win at whatever cost. He also demanded that the Mexican government explain the last minute deals that were made to obtain votes in the U.S. Senate, request that was rejected by the PRI majority in the senate. Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, presidential candidate for the National Democratic Alliance (ADN), said that it would be necessary to evaluate the impact of the NAFTA during a six month period, after which point, if found problematic, Mexico will either have to re-negotiate or withdraw from the agreement. Cardenas proposed that a commission be formed to undertake the said investigation. He emphasized his belief that the terms of the NAFTA are not the best possible deal for Mexico as they fail to address key issues such as the transfer of resources, labor mobility, social impacts, and a long-term industrial strategy. Senate leader Emilio M. Gonzalez announced that the dictum to approve the NAFTA and its parallel accords would be presented to the Mexican senate for ratification on Friday and expressed both satisfaction and relief that the NAFTA will indeed take effect in January 1994. President Salinas made a declaration about an hour after learning the results of the vote in the U.S. Congress in which he affirmed that the ratification of the NAFTA symbolized a rejection of protectionist visions promoted by fear of competition. He said that the ratification of the NAFTA was one more step towards the creation of the largest free trade block among sovereign countries in the world. Trade Secretary Jaime Serra Puche gave a televised interview after Salinas' declaration in which he assured the Mexican public that the text of the NAFTA had not been re-opened at any point during the debate in the U.S. Congress. He also reiterated that none of the final text will be subject to re-negotiation now that the NAFTA has been passed. Mexican Workers Confederation (CTM) representative Juan S. Millan said that though in the short term the NAFTA will not create solutions for all Mexican problems, in the long term, the country can have high expectations of the benefits that the NAFTA will bring. Roberto Castellanos, a Revolutionary Confederation of Workers and Peasants representative, was not quite as optimistic saying that though he believes that the NAFTA will benefit the working class by increasing employment and salaries, the debate in the U.S. Congress demonstrated the wide gap that still exists between the two countries. Barely half an hour after the U.S. Congress approved the NAFTA, the principal organizations of the Mexican private sector announced their "wholehearted approval" of what they considered to be "one of the culminating points of Mexican history in terms of its economic relations with the rest of the world." El Financiero interviewed several prominent businessmen who agreed that the first impacts of the approval of the NAFTA will be an increase in foreign investment in Mexico, the stability of monetary markets, job creation, and the recuperation of the population's buying power. They expressed their readiness to confront the challenge of the predicted economic opening through "clear and permanent rules which will regulate trade in a climate of confidence, certainty and respect between the three signatory nations." However, several of the country's business leaders added that the challenges that the Mexican economy faces have not changed with the passage of the NAFTA and that its effects will not be immediate. The Mexican Action Network on Free Trade (RMALC) asked the government to open spaces for public consultation and participation to deal with the repercussions of the NAFTA. RMALC representatives announced that if the NAFTA is ratified by the Mexican Senate, they will mobilize to obtain a profound re-negotiation of the NAFTA which benefits the majority of the population. According to RMALC members, the re-negotiation should include the recognition of asymmetries between the participating countries' economies and aspects of the social agenda which have been left out of the agreement. Said RMALC Director Bertha Lujan, "We still don't know the popular vote on the NAFTA." Thus, all the factors in keeping good connections between neighboring countries have been discussed. Some out there might argue that there is more to it. This is my argument and I stand firm in the belief that Mexico and the U.S. have a steady connection and have many things that interact between them. That is what makes the Mexican-U.S. connection so beautiful. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\The Music of Generation X.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The Music of Generation X Since the beginning of time the human beings have adored the soothing sounds of music. Music has affected the way people have behaved and dressed throughout different periods of time. Different groups have been formed based upon their preference in music. Take for an example in the music of my generation, Generation X, there are several different groups oriented by music. In Generation X punks, gangs, alternative people, ravers, hippies, and pop rockers have all been labeled into groups by their preference of music. Music has also affected people mentally, causing problems in society like suicide, depression, hate/racism, violence, and drug addiction. I am about to examine five different song lyrics of my generation to demonstrate the different tones and concerns they convey onto society and my generation. The first song I would like to analyze is "Jane Says" by Jane's Addiction. The main theme in "Jane Says" is escaping drug use and addiction. This song is basically set in a low class area. Jane is a girl who has had a heroine addiction. Her personal boundaries have been invaded and she wants out of the habit, "I'm gonna kick tomorrow...". She goes through depression and withdrawal, "She gets mad/And she starts to cry." Then the songs continues by talking about loneliness. Drug addiction is often the background for much of the music in today's society. People tend to idolize famous people and when they see or hear of their idols using drugs or drinking they follow the actions of the famous people. Another song in which I am going to discuss is written by The Smashing Pumpkins. "Tonight, tonight" is a song about growing up. The song stresses the importance of time and how precious it is, "time is never time at all/you can never ever leave without leaving a piece of youth/ and our lives are forever changed/ we will never be the same." This song brings an opening light to society and makes them feel good and at the same time depressed. The music in our generation is real deep in it's tone, the feelings music can generate is amazing. Say you are listening to a happy song your mood will genuinely be happy, then say you heard a slow deep meaningful song your attitude will change somewhat. However there is different music for different moods. "Tonight, tonight," brings in the mood of peacefulness. This song as well as "Jane Says" attracts the people in society who are considered to be alternative in their behavior and lifestyle. Next, I am going to examine a song by a band that reels in the social group of the hippies. Phish is a band that has followers, just like the recently fallen Grateful Dead had. Phish is mainly a band that sings happy thoughts and tells stories through their music, like folk music with a twist. "Fee" is a story about life, love, jealousy, and adventure. This song discusses a life of a weasel named Fee, a gospel singer named Milly Grace and Floyd the chimpanzee. Fee falls in love with Milly and Floyd is jealous, so Floyd knocks Fee out and gets Milly who then kills Floyd and rescues Fee. In the terms of socialization the behavior of Fee and Milly induces that of true love. In the song Fee is also taking chances and he needs to sit back and analyze his life: Oh, Fee, you're trying to live a life That's completely free. You're racing with the wind You're flirting with death So have a cup of coffee And catch your breath. This relates to society by showing that the life we lead is fast paced and we never stop and take time to "catch your breath." We don't take time to think. "What I Got" by Sublime is a song that was just recently released and hit the charts at number one. This song describes the life I would say of an average stereotypical Generation X life. The song shows how our generation is like a roller coaster. The lives we lead our unpredictable. Socialism comes into effect in this song by the way the song tells us to lead our lives. First it says that everyone still has fun in times of trouble, "the moneys all gone, but I got a dalmation and I can still get high, I can play the guitar like mofo riot." The song then leads into companionship to not caring about values/norms that society has set like, drugs, alcohol, and money problems. The last song was just released last Wednesday. "Hope in a Hopeless World," by Widespread Panic is a song that geniunely conveys the problems in today's society. The title itself explains the behaviors of depression and loss of reality. The song looks at the downfalls in our society and how things went wrong. The line, "What ever happened to the Golden Rule?" says enough to explain my thoughts. The Golden Rule in my opinion is a major norm in our society, and with that out of the way everything is really unfriendly and depressing. "Looking for hope in a hopeless world" explains that people are trying to come out and have a life, but there are so many drawbacks that they are often stuck. The song also says that you have to keep trying: You've got to listen to the voice inside Peace and love don't compromise Time is passing by Can't be standing still. Music in Generation X has had more affect on society than any other generation has had. More social groups have been formed and many more feelings have been expressed through our music. Society is overall effected by music and always will be. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\The Power of Decision.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The Power of Decision Decisions shape our lives. In history , the decisions of leaders and generals have changed the course of mankind. In today's world , multi-billion dollar corporations rest on the decisions of a few select executives. On a smaller but no less important scale, acting on decisions can liberate people from stagnation. In the story "The Revolt of Mother" the main character shows us the power of acting on decisions. Mother recognizes the wrongs of her situation and weighs the effect on her family. In the end she acts to free herself and her family from forty years of wrong. Mother lives forty years with a suppressed dream-a new house promised to her after her wedding. She lives with the everyday routine of cleaning the house and cooking pies for the family. This shows the stagnation of her everyday existence; an existence brought about by forty years of non-decision. Mother stays content with her shack. "She was a masterly keeper of her box of a house. Her one living room never seemed to have in it any of the dust which the friction of life with inanimate matter produces"(LACpg.284). This shows the lack of empowerment mother has at this time of the story. This state is partly due to the society-a time that was male dominated and discouraged the wife to speak out-and partly because mother just feel into a routine that included everything except her happiness. I felt that mother centered her life around providing for her family but forgot to look towards her own needs. She bakes pies, cooks dinner and it everything else except things that made her happy. Mother discovers disturbing news when she learns that her future house is giving way to Father's new barn. Mother would have probably let her dream die if it were not for a conversation with her daughter. Mother realizes that it's not just her happiness involved. This breach of contract now involved the happiness of the family. Mother does something that changes her state: she decides and acts on it. Many times our personal happiness takes a back seat in a busy world. I forget my own need sometimes just trying to please loved ones-mom, dad, mom, dad. Sometimes when someone else's happiness is in jeopardy I'm more inclined to act. Mother is ashamed that her daughter is going to be married in such a small, drafty house. "I want you to look at the stairs that go up to them unfinished chambers that are all the places that our son an' daughter have to sleep in all their lives. There ain't a prettier girl in town nor a more ladylike than Nanny, an' that's the place she has to sleep in"(LAC pg. 286). Mother does something remarkable. Though she vehemently denies to doing so, Mother decides to complain. She complains to father and break the monotonous silence and complains. As far as we know Mrs. Penn has failed to do this for forty years. Though she gets a less than favorable response from her husband-"I ain't got nothin' to say"-it is the first response about the subject in years. It's a very important event because Mrs. Penn gets the answer to her forty year question-no. The house is not going to be built. Mrs. Penn's dream dies for now. Then a new opportunity shows the power of acting on decision. There is an old saying that says: When God closes a door he opens a window and a back door and a manhole and a secret entrance. There are always different solutions or second chances to resolve problems. Mrs. Penn acted on her first decision to confront her husband's neglect of the family's comfort. She tried and failed to change her husband's mind. Opportunity presents Mrs. Penn another chance to set things right. Father leaves the family and newly built barn to take a buy a horse in Vermont. Earlier, Nanny, with gentle pettishness, suggested to have the wedding in the barn. This helps fuel a bold decision by Mrs. Penn. "S'posin' I had wrote to Hiram, she had muttered once, when she was in the pantry-"s'psoin I had wrote him , an' asked if he knew of any horse? But I didn't an father's goin' an it ain't none of my doin'. It looks live a providence"(LAC pg.289). Mrs. Penn decides a divine opportunity has been presented to her. Again the power of acting on decision motivates her to do something radical-a move into the barn during the absence of Father. Mrs. Sarah Penn has no second thoughts as she orders her children to move the furniture into the barn. This act has the local population in a state of awe and confusion. How could this woman go against the standards and the norms of the time? Mrs. Penn simply decides to act towards the happiness a herself and her family. Sarah Penn decides she is sick of watching the death of dreams. This act empowers Mrs. Sarah Penn in the end. As Father enters the barns she makes it clear that the family intends to stay. " I ain't crazy. There ain't nothin' to be upset over. But we've come here to live , an' we're goin to live here. We've just as good a right as the horses and cows. The house wa'n't fit for us to live any longer, an' I made up my I wa'n't goin' to stay there"(LAC pg.292). Sarah Penn has acted on a decisions. Mother forces Father to do something that has been put off for forty years-a choice between his personal needs and the needs of his family. Sarah Penn has created a situation where father can't escape change. Father can either loose his family or meet their needs. Either way, Sarah forces a change in the forty year stalemate. Ultimately Father decides to meet the needs of the family. Sarah Penn stood up and produced the most important thing-results. I believe the author gave Mrs. Penn a name-Sarah-in the end because she claims the god given right to be noticed and heard. Sarah Penn reminds me of another historical figure that forced a change-Mrs. Rosa Parks. Mrs. Rosa Parks decided that she was tired so she sat in the white section of the bus. Her decision to sit and her act of defiance forced us to re-evaluate Civil Rights. We were forced to know her name and realize her wrong. The power of acting out a decision gave Mrs. Rosa Parks a name and a voice that others rallied around to right a breach of contract. A decision that is made and acted upon has no other outcome but results. It forces a change to happen and sets us free from a circular trap of inaction and indecision. I decide tonight to break a cycle of indecision by calling someone. For an entire week I was thinking up reasons to call this person. For an entire week I was caught in indecision. In the middle of writing this paper, I decide to bite the bullet and call. Sure enough, I broke the cycle and received some results. The results raised some new problems-a decision of where to bring her for lunch. I will take this kind of decision over a week or wondering any day. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\The Power Of One.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Dave Brown W. History per. 7 4/17/96 The Power Of One I believe very firmly that one person can change the world. That one person may not be able to do a whole lot physically to change the world, but one person has the power to inspire others to help that person change the world. I also believe very firmly that one person can set an example for others that may affect the outcome of any situation. Just like in a baseball game where one person can hit the winning grand slam homerun, in life, one person can make the difference. The problem is that when the odds seem insurmountable, it seems impossible to overcome them and most people will give up. The true heroes in this world are those who don't give up in these times when things seem impossible to do. The other thing I think is very important to note about the power of one person is that we need to look at what that one person is doing that is making a difference. One person can make a difference in someone else's life. I have had, in my life, many people that have made a huge difference. If someone changes your entire life or your outlook on it, your can definitely testify to the power of one. I think someone that can reach out to just one person's life is just as important as someone who can change the lives of millions. One last thing I think is important to note is that, in recognizing the power of one person to make a difference, we must also note the contributions of others to help put that person where they are. A further explanation of this would be to go back to our other scenario. When, in the last inning, someone hits a game-winning grand slam homerun, that person is very important. However it is also important to give credit to those on base or to his coaches who taught him how to hit. We need to give credit to those that made a difference in his life. The last thing I would like to say is that I really hope that I can change the life of at least one person. If so, then my existence here on the Earth is justified. I hope everyone can have the knowledge of "the power of one." f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\The Power of the Situation.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 The Power of the Situation A week of urban mayhem was ignited by the April 29, 1992 jury acquittal of four white police officers who were captured on videotape beating black motorist Rodney King. The angry response in South Central produced its own brutal footage, most dramatically the live broadcast from a hovering TV news helicopter of two black men striking unconscious with a brick, kicking, and then dancing over the body of, white truck driver Reginald Denny. The final three-day toll of what many community activists took to defiantly calling an uprising, revolt, or rebellion, was put at 53 dead, some $1 billion in property damage, nearly 2,000 arrests, and countless businesses in ashes. These two men, Damian Williams and Henry Watson undoubtedly committed a heinous crime, but thousands more looted, burned, and destroyed property with the same disregard for life and property. Were all these people criminals who used the verdicts as an excuse to commit crimes, or was the nature of the social situation the primary determinant of this nefarious behavior? In the course of this paper, I plan to explore this question from a psychological perspective with an emphasize on conformity and social norms, bystander intervention, social perception and reality, and finally, prejudice. Generally looking at the Los Angeles riots, and specifically drawing upon the Reginald Denny beating and subsequent trial, the power of the situation becomes evident, as thousands of people living in an extremely poor and crime-ridden area of Los Angeles, lashed out against a perception of injustice through violence. The conditions that lead people to perceive themselves as victims of unjust actions are rather complex. In this case, the favorable verdicts towards the officers who beat Rodney King was the "unjust action", not only for Rodney King, but for the community he came from. The perceived damage to desired social identities and justice led to resentment on the part of a 2 historically poor and underprivileged class of citizens. The individual attempts to explain the event (the verdicts) by processes of attribution in which grievance may or may not be formed. (DeRidder, Schruijer, and Tripathi, 1992). The attribution of responsibility and blame is activated when confronted with unexpected behavior, unwanted consequences, or stressful, puzzling, and important events (Wong & Weiner, 1981). Thus the attribution process may be activated either when the individual experiences harm, or perceives an anti-normative action by another person or group. Contrary to popular belief, not everyone residing in south-central Los Angeles looted. Instead the majority stayed in their homes until the participants ceased their destructive activities. This does not take away from the validity of the attribution theory due to the individual differences in attribution. These differences correspond with discrepancies in how one copes with a perceived injustice towards them. In the case of the rioters, they overestimated the dispositional factors and underestimated the situational ones (the fundamental attribution error). They saw the verdicts less as an explainable, rational decision by a jury of their peers, under the laws of California (situational), and more as a direct consequence of "the white man's power over the black man" and the failure of the American legal system in general (dispositional). But although attribution process plays a significant role in the motivation and rationalization of the rioters, it is only one of many factors that eventually led to the infamous Los Angeles riots. It is safe to assume that for the most part, the individuals participating in the riots did not have a history of criminal activities. Yet why did they act upon their grievances in a matter totally unacceptable in their society and step beyond their social roles? The answer can best be illustrated by considering at an experiment preformed 20 years ago in Stanford, California. 3 "The Stanford Prison Experiment (Haney & Zimbardo, 1977) created a new "social reality" in which the norms of good behavior were overwhelmed by the dynamics of the situation." (Zimbardo 586). In the same sense, the outcome of the verdicts, which was totally unexpected by those who most identified with Rodney King, created a new social reality, a society which does not deliver justice to blacks and minorities in their minds. Just as the Stanford students radically altered their mind-set to adapt to the situation, the rioters disregarded the norms of society because they were overwhelmed with the new social reality created by the outcome of the Rodney King case. Once a few members of the community began committing crimes, those who identified with their view of social reality and shared the same attribution processes, joined them. Specifically now I draw on the case of Reginald Denny, a white truck driver who was savagely beaten by two black males as he slowed down to avoid hitting rioters on the street. The nature of the beating was particularly disturbing because the assailants were joking, laughing, and dancing while they smashed Denny's skull into nearly 100 pieces. As one of the witnesses [race not specified] explained to the New York Times, "They [the defendants] seemed just like anyone, just like you and I. I see them just as two human beings. They just got caught up in the riot. I guess maybe they were in the wrong place at the wrong time." Although the witness may not of realized it, he was applying an aspect of psychology to justify the actions of Damian Williams and Henry Watson. The objective of this paper is not to excuse the actions of the individuals involved in the riots, but to help explain their actions from a psychological perspective so that one can judge for themselves the rationale behind their actions on an individual and group basis. The Reginald Denny beating is particularly useful not only because it demonstrates the power of the 4 situation, but also because it reveals other aspects of situational forces acting on the observers as well as the participants. Reginald Denny was beaten by these men in broad daylight in front of many bystanders. True the context of the beating was that of a full fledged riot, but not a single person came to the aid of the helpless victim as helicopters overhead recorded the 47 minute beating for the nightly news. This phenomena of bystander intervention is explained in this case by the diffusion of responsibility theory (Darley & Latane, 1968). This result arises when more than one person can help in an emergency situation and people assume that someone else will or should help. Another factor which plays into this serious apathy is the situational cost of helping Denny. Perhaps bystanders felt that, yes the two men were going too far, but they did not do anything because they felt that the cost would be too high, in this case, their own safety. They simply did not feel responsible for the well-being of Denny in the new social reality they were absorbed in. Perhaps the best method to analyze the behaviors of the rioters is through the humanistic approach. Humanistic psychologists study behavior but unlike behaviorists, they "focus on the subjective world experienced by the individual, rather than on the objective world seen by external observers and researchers." (Zimbardo 18). In short, they believe that social and cultural forces are critical to true understanding of a person's inner self. With the Los Angeles riots, it would truly be a mistake to attempt to interpret the actions of the participants without considering the social and cultural forces within the community. This approach is particularly useful because it looks for personal values and social conditions that develops self-limiting, aggressive, and in this case, destructive perspectives. Looking at the riots from a humanistic perspective, the issue of prejudice must be explored to understand the reasoning behind this "blind ethnic retribution" 5 (Deviant Behavior, 1994, Feb, 1-32). Would Reginald Denny have been pulled out of his truck and nearly beaten to death if he were black by these black men? After the verdicts, people living in south-central Los Angeles and other minority neighborhoods began chanting, "No Justice, No Peace!" They saw the enemy as white, whether it be in the form of the white officers who beat Rodney King, or for the Denny's assailants, Denny himself. "Prejudice is the learned attitude toward a target object, involving negative feeling (dislike or fear), negative beliefs (stereotypes) that justify the attitude, and a behavioral intention to avoid, control, dominate, or eliminate those int he target group." (Zimbardo 615). The "us" versus "them" mentality results in social categorization in which people place themselves and others into groups. To say that prejudice had little or no role in the riots is simply wrong. Yet a thorough examination of racism and it's socio-economic implications in America cannot be explained within the context of this short paper. Instead, for the purpose of this study, it is important to realize that once formed, prejudices exert a powerful force on the way relevant experiences are processed. African and Hispanic Americans living in the inner cities harbored grievances against a perceived discriminatory system imposed by whiles, and when officers' Koon, Powell, Wind, and Briseno were acquitted of charges of brutality toward Rodney King, there ensued a riot in Los Angeles which lasted for three days and took the nation by utter surprise. This is a powerful case which empirically displays that human thought and action are deeply affected by situational influences. The participants constructed a social role that caused them to act contrary to their beliefs, values, and personalities in order to resolve their grievances. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\The rise and fall of Hitlers Reich.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The Rise and Fall of Hitlers Reich Feeling that all was lost, Hitler shot himself on April 30, 1945. By orders formally given by him before his death, SS officers immersed Hitler's body in gasoline and burned it in the garden of the Chancellery. Soon after the suicide of Hitler, the German forces surrendered. The war was officially over; however, the world was only beginning to realize the extent of its horror. The rise and sudden fall of Hitler had a sensational effect on people and nations around the world. On Easter Sunday April 20, 1889, at an inn called the Gasth of Zum Pommer, the wife of an Austrian Customs official gave birth to a son, Adolf Hitler. He was the fourth child to the parents of Alois and Klara Hitler of Austria. Hitler was a good student. He took singing lessons and sang in the church choir. When he hit an adolescent age, he began to rebel. When Hitler's dad acquired a top ranking job in the military, he wanted his son to work hard so that he might become a civil servant. Hitler wanted nothing of it. He wanted to become an artist like he always dreamed. One of the teachers in his high school classified young Hitler as "notorious, cantankerous, willful, arrogant, and irascible. He has an obvious difficulty in fitting in at school." He did well enough to get by in some of his courses but had no time for subjects that did not interest him. Years later, his former school mates would remember how Adolf would taunt his teachers and draw sketches of them in his school notebooks. Forty years later, in the sessions at his headquarters which produced the record of his table talk, Hitler recalled several times the teachers of his school days with contempt. "They had no sympathy with youth. Their one object was to stuff our brains and turn us into erudite apes themselves. If any pupil showed the slightest trace of originality, they persecuted him relentlessly". Adolf saw no real reason to stay in high school. He left school at age sixteen without a leaving certificate. In September 1907, Hitler left home taking with him all the money left to him by his father, who had died a few years earlier. The money would be enough for tuition and board at the art school in Vienna. The Vienna School of Fine Arts had strict entrance requirements. After taking the preliminary examination, the applicant was asked to submit drawings. Biblical drawings were most preferred. Hitler's drawings were returned saying they were "too wooden and too lifeless." He was rejected. He tried three months later and did not get past the preliminary exam. His artist career was over. His mother died two months later on December 21st 1907. Hitler moved into an apartment with his friend in Vienna. He pretended to be a student living off his relatives money. He read many books and sat in on the Austrian government sessions . Hitler speaks of his life in Vienna as "five years in which I had to earn my daily bread, first as a casual laborer, then as a painter of little trifles." He loitered about the streets and was hungry. He painted water postcards and peddled them on the streets. He drew several advertising posters for such things as soap, cigarettes, and deodorant. In 1913, Hitler moved to Munich. Life was not much better there until the First World War started in 1914. While many people were frightened and sad at the thought of a world war, Hitler was delighted. He held the rank of corporal, and in forty-seven battles he served on the Western Front as a dispatch runner, delivering messages back and forth between the front lines and the officers in the rear. His courage during one of these missions earned him the Iron Cross, a highly prized medal for bravery that was rarely awarded to a mere corporal . On October 13th 1918, a month before Germany surrendered to the Allies, his good luck ran out. When Hitler and his fellow dispatch runners were waiting in line for their food rations, British troops began lobbing high explosive shells nearby. Some of these shells contained chlorine gas, a deadly poison. Hitler and the others quickly put on their gas masks, but not before they had been exposed to the fumes. By the next morning some of the men were dead, and others, like Hitler, were suffering from breathing and vision problems. "My eyes," wrote Hitler, "had turned to glowing coals; it had grown dark around me". Hitler soon regained use of his eyes, but as he was about to rejoin his regiment, he got the terrible news of Germany's surrender. "Once again, everything went black before my eyes, and I tottered and groped my way back to the place where we slept and buried my burning head in the blankets and pillows". After the war Hitler was given a job guarding a post. It was very boring work, but provided shelter. He was then given an undercover agent job. As a special bonus, he was allowed to attend the University of Munich. He took many philosophical political classes. As part of Hitler's job, he investigated a party called "the German Workers' Party." He was disgusted how the group had no organization, although he was in favor of many of the party's ideas. To follow up with his job, he joined the group to make sure they were no threat to the government. He was member number fifty-five of the German Workers' Party. Hitler was made director of propaganda. The group was severely hurting by their lack of attendance. This was mainly due to the lack of communication with the group. Hitler took hold, and made a drastic change in the publicity the group got. Hitler finally found his talent as a great orator. He first became aware of his talent while teaching at the University of Munich. When he talked, he held his audiences spellbound. He would sometimes lose five pounds a night by getting so active in his speeches. The attendance of the German Workers' Party went from under one hundred to almost 1000. Hitler changed the name of the party to National Socialist German Workers' Party. It could be shortened to Nazi. He also designed the party's flag, a white background with a broken cross in the middle. Hitler took full leadership of the party. Violence was now the party's trademark. He persuaded the other party members to rent one of the largest halls in Munich-one that seated at least 2,000 people. There Hitler made of list of demands to the German government. Point twenty-five said, "For modern society, a colossus with feet of clay, we shall create an unprecedented centralization, through which we will unite all powers in the head of the government." The audience roared its approval. Ernst Rohm, a friend of Hitler's, organized a group of storm troopers for Hitler. The German name for storm troopers was Storm Abtcilung, or SA for short. They first beat and killed hecklers at Nazi speakings. When there were no hecklers, they found Jews to beat up. Synagogues were destroyed and Jews were beaten in the streets. By the summer of 1923, the Nazi party had grown to 150,000 members. With the Nazi movement growing so rapidly, Hitler knew it was time to make a move on Germany. November 11, 1923 seemed like a perfect time for Hitler to make the grab for power. It was the fifth anniversary of Germany's surrender to the allies. At the last minute he changed the date to November 8th. A large gathering was to be held on the outskirts of Munich. Three important government leaders would be there. On that evening, 600 storm troopers moved in. Hitler captured the government leaders and forced them to join him. His 3,000 men then marched to Berlin in an attempt to take it over. The German police were waiting. Shots were fired and sixteen nazis and two policemen lay dead. Hundreds more were wounded. Hitler was arrested and charged with High Treason. The trial was a "political circus". Hitler was allowed to speak for hours at a time. During one of his speeches he said, "It is the External Court of History ... That court will judge us ... as Germans who wanted the best for their people and their fatherland, who wished us to fight and die. You may pronounce us guilty ... but the Goddess who presides over the External Court of History ... acquits us". Hitler served only nine months of his five-year sentence. The guards gave him a suite of several adjoining rooms where guests could come or go as they pleased. He was sent many gifts and grew visibly fatter. He wrote a book called Mein Kampf, or My Struggle. It was a blueprint of what he would do in the next two decades. The government banned the Nazi party after the revolt. There were also many reasons for lack of Nazi activity. The Allies had loosened their grip on the German economy. The French had left the Ruhr leaving Germany's industries intact, and the United States pumped in millions of dollars to stabilize Germany's economy. Most Germans were happy. In 1925, the Nazis picked up where they left off. Ernst Rohn was given the order to reinstate his troops. Germany held elections, but the Nazis got only three percent of the voters support. The depression in America caused the economic system in Germany to plummet. Because of the harsh times, Nazis got two million more votes then the Communist party. The election put them just under the Democratic party and gave them 107 more seats in the House. Hitler was planning on running for President of Germany against Paul Von Hinderburg, a social democrat. Hitler campaigned frequently, going to every major city and town. He was the first to use the airplane in order to get from one campaign to the next. By 1932 the SA troops numbered 400,000. The SA's goal was to make people afraid, and they accomplished that with ease. One of the most popular chants of the SA troops is as follows: "Sharpen the knives on the sidewalk so that they can cut the enemy's body better. When the hour of revenge strikes, we shall be ready for mass murder". The SA troops were getting out of hand, and Hitler wanted an orderly group. He created the SS soldiers. They were dressed in black from head to foot with a little skull pin on their helmets. They had to swear total loyalty to Hitler. In the election of 1932, Hitler could not beat out the eighty-five year old President Hindenburg. However, 230 Nazi candidates held seats, and Hitler was made Chancellor of Germany. It was the second highest position in the German government. With only a week left till the new election, Hitler needed an incident that might put him ahead in the polls. Two nights later, the old courthouse, the Reichstag, began burning. The Nazis immediately began blaming it on the Communists. This was just what the Nazis needed to put them ahead in the race. Hitler still was not elected to the Presidency. Using force, Hitler got Hinderburg to pass a law that abolished freedom of speech, of the press, and of assembly. Hitler then brought before the court the Enabling Act. This law gave Hitler the power of a dictator for the next four years. With violent persuasion, he got the bill passed. Germany had become a dictatorship. After the bills were passed, the German military feared that when Hitler took full leadership of the country, they would lose control, and the SA would take over. Hitler assured the military that this was not true. To gain their trust, he gave them a list of 500 to 1000 SA leaders which they could dispose of. In a period of two days, all the men were brought before a firing range in a school basement and shot . In August of 1934 President Hindenburg died. Hitler's last obstacle in his quest for complete power was removed. Using his unlimited powers, he combined the offices of president and chancellor. To everyone in Germany he was now Der Fuhrer, the leader. The Reich had begun. Avoiding capture by the approaching forces, Hitler shot himself on April 30, 1945. The world was never the same again. Hitler's Reich was over, and millions of jews were dead. Quite rightly, the world asked questions: How could this have happened? Truthful answers cannot put the responsibility on Hitler alone. He led the Reich, but millions of people followed him eagerly-and many others chose to stand and watch him alone in frightened silence. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\The rise of violent crime in Canada.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Violent crime in Canada is on the rise in Canada as well as the types of violent crimes being committed against the public. It has been on the rise for many, many years. I believe and intend to prove in the following essay that it is societies responsibility for the rise of violent crime with their unwillingness and inability to effectively deal with the current trend in our society. In the last few years, a slight dip in violent crime has been noted, but we must view this with skepticism as no official statistics are available. As well as this could be an example of society realizing that the Criminal Justice System is not effectively dealing with the trend of violence in Canada. This would be true by way of the fact that people are not reporting these crimes to the police. Generally all the statistics that are gathered and used by the police are based upon reported crime and no conjecture on unreported crime is included in these official statistics. To fully understand what violent crime is, we must first define what violent crime is in actuality. All to often, people in Canadian society refer to general wrongdoing as being a crime. A simple example of this is when grocery stores all raise their prices for certain food products. People then refer very casually to this act as a crime or that these prices are criminal. Individuals in our Society often have a fear of being victimized by others, such as the government, friends and or strangers. This fear is often equated with crime since all crimes have a winner and a loser or victim as would be the legal term. This equation often makes involvement in these acts of "crime" a personal thing. Which results in stronger feelings and sometimes irrational thinking towards the whole subject of crime. Many times people are not reporting these crimes because it is their duty in a society to help uphold the laws of ones society. In actuality, they are reporting the crime for needed compensation whether it be for medical costs or lost wages. Another reason some people report crimes is because they are doing it as an avenging act to extract a revenge they could not otherwise get for themselves. This is a main reason in the fact that police officers need to investigate reported crimes and determine if a crime had actually been committed or not. The crimes which are considered to be violent crimes and which I am focusing on, I shall list next. Any form of an assault on the person, ranging from sexual assault to Aggravated assault. Robbery, Homicide, Attempted Homicide, and Manslaughter are all considered violent crimes. These crimes are committed for a variety of reasons that range from unbelievable to incredible. Some are done for fun, having no real reason at all. Anger is a major reason for assaults being committed as well as Homicides. Robbery of a store or mugging of an individual is another reason. As well as pure pre-meditated violence, whether it is a beating or a murder, people use violence to enforce other things that are considered to be valued reasons for violence. In fact many sub-cultures of Canadian culture, such as gangs have developed differing views on crime and see the act of assaulting another individual as a way of settling a dispute and/or argument. A more technical definition would be as follows; " a crime involves the violation of a norm. Norms are social rules ranging from the important and the binding to the less important and optional. From which society makes attempts and rules to regulate behaviour in society " The Importance of the laws are measured by the level of punishments imposed upon the offender and the sanctions in place against the law. An example of this is lying and skipping class are considered to be minor infractions, where as murder is considered to be one of the most atrocious acts that could be committed by a person. Since the beginning of Canada, that is to say its formation as a dominion, there has always been a crime rate for the population. Fluxations and statistics have been recorded about the happenings of crime in Canadian culture. These statistics have long been studied by Sociologists and other well known scholars. The crime rate of 1867 and 1987 are just as different as the cultures of the two different time periods are different. But an interesting correlation has been noted with the crime rates of 1939-1938 and 1980-1988. But the rates of violent crime that this paper is focusing on are in the recent years. In 1962 the crime rate in Canada was 221 incidents per 100,000 people which rose to 1099 per 100,000 people in 1991. The highest rate of violent crime in Canada in 1991 was in the North West Territory and was at a rate of 6,294 per 100,000 people and the lowest rate was in Prince Edward Island at a rate of 786 per 100,000 people. When the statistics are given, one must wonder as well as to who is making up the numbers. The factor of age shows that there is a sharp increase in criminal behaviour during adolescence and the early twenties of a man's life. The rate falls sharply after that and the following displays the rates; 12 - 24 : 20% of population -- Makeup 35% of violent crimes 45 and over : 32% of the population -- Makeup 10% of violent crime 20 - 34 : 25% of population -- Makeup 62% of inmates in correctional facilities for violent crimes. Another quality of these statistics is the factor of gender. The Canadian population is roughly half and half for a ratio of men and womyn. Yet 85% - 90% of arrests made by the law enforcement agencies are male and 97% of inmates in correctional facilities are male as well. It must be noted that in recent years the rate of womyn being arrested and convicted has also been rising. Social class is another major factor in these statistics, where the greater quantity of arrests and convictions for violent crime are individuals who fall in the lower class part of our society. Yet if these statistics were to include all crime, the greater quantity of arrests and convictions for crime would be of a much higher social standing in our society. Cultural statistics show that it is probably not a genetic or biological factor that causes individuals to commit violent crimes. It is shown that the rates of violent crime differ around the world. Bigger countries than Canada having lower robbery and rape rates than our country. If these acts were based upon biological factors than bigger countries would have higher rates since there would be more people within those biological zones that caused violent behaviour. Another factor is economical in nature, the following statistics show the correlation in a small way. " Decade Decade Average Decade High 1980-88 40% 44.2%(1986) 1970-79 38% 41.3%(1973) 1960-69 37% 38.7%(1964) 1950-59 34% 36.0%(1959) 1940-49 29% 33.1%(1940) 1930-39 35% 43.1%(1933) 1920-29 26% 29.6%(1922) 1910-19 24% 26.6%(1910) 1900-09 24% 26.9%(1900) 1890-99 26% 27.9%(1898) 1880-89 26% 28.5%(1880) 1870-79 22% 28.7%(1879) 1867-69 25% 28.1%(1867) If the years 1930-39 and 1980-88 are compared, it is found that there were momentous stock crashes in both of those decades. The stock crash of 1929 was far greater than that of 1988 but it proves that poor economic times result in higher rates of crime. With individuals being more desperate and angry at the world and society they live in. Perhaps even feeling let down by the society they work to build and create. Why should they respect a society that is not doing what it is supposed to do for the individual person in that society. The statistics shown prove that even thought there have been slight dips and rises in the overall rate of violence, it has been on a gradual increase and shows increases with poor economic times. In the opening paragraph, it was asserted that it was on the shoulders of society for the responsibility of these increases in violent crime. The following paragraphs are the reasons that will prove my arguments. The forces of social control affect every aspect of an individual in a society such as Canadian Society. That is, it is the attempt that society makes to regulate behaviour of its citizens within that society. Some examples of these society enforced roles are our status roles which place us into a hierarchy that is given to us by society. Their are both positive and negative structures and factors to enforce these laws rules created by the society. Positive being praise, wealth and power for abiding by the laws of a given society. Negative enforcers are disgrace, negative praise etc ... and other forms of deterrence that are created by society. These levels of punishment equal the importance of the laws that they enforce in the eyes of the society. Laws against criminal behaviour has the criminal justice system in place to enforce and act as a form of social control. "A formal system that responds to the alleged violations of laws using police, courts and punishments ..." Therefore although society as a whole sees crime as a personal failure and a choice of the individual to act upon. Society is the anvil on which ideas of good and evil are wrought and the individuals are hammered into conformity with applied force that is physical and personality shaping. This act is an integral part of becoming a social organisation which is defining of its own nature. Until recent years, there have been many sociological theories to try and explain the appearance of violent crime in society. In 1876, Caesre Lombross put forth the idea that stated that there were biological features that would allow to pick out individuals that would be more prone to commit these acts of violence. He stated that violent criminals have low foreheads, hairiness and long arms. He stated that criminals were not as advanced in evolution as the rest of society. Later on in his career he discarded his previous ideas of criminals having distinct physical features. He accepted and put forth the idea that social factors hold great importance in the formation of criminality. Even though he did this, for many years after his death sociologists tried to prove his theories of biological factors being a great factor in the development of criminal behaviour. Recently genetics have reinvoked these biological causes of criminality with the idea that men with the extra Y chromosome are more likely to be violent offenders than men without the extra chromosome. As of now, no evidence has been produced to support this extra chromosome corresponding with the increased likelihood of violent crime. Currently researchers have focused their attention on the influences of social conditions and customs. We have recently gone through a recession which has resulted in the government having to cut their over expenditures resulting in a poor economic situation. There have been major cuts on an already overwhelmed social safety system. This has caused greater levels of unemployment, homelessness, anger and disparity. This may be the cause for the rise in armed/robbery rates around Canada. It has been shown that in the past when there have great economic hardships, the rate of violent crime has increased as is with the present day. Many of the reasons for the increase in social protection and laws has been that it has been instituted to a higher degree in the Criminal Justice System. Tougher sentences are being given out as the state fails in controlling the populace. This has resulted in the system being overburdened resulting inadequate treatment of the alleged offenders. With services such as legal aid being inadequate and available to only the most dire cases. With these tougher sentences, people are in jail longer which has resulted in an overcrowded prison system. The treatment of the prisoners cannot be considered anything else but inhumane or putting rats into a confined cage. While these people are in prison, there is nothing special for them to do. There is no rehabilitation programs or set regiment for the prisoners to follow. Basically the prisoners just sit around and do nothing except eat, sleep and get angry at the fact that they have been imprisoned. They just put you into a confined space with a lot of other individuals who are full of anger. Socially, these people are made to feel alienated with all their personal rights being taken away from them. Including the right to go where you please, any basic freedom is taken. This causes them to feel like outcasts in their own societies who consider them to be failures. The state and atmosphere they are kept in is one filled with violence and mistrust, and all that comes from violence is more violence. Criminality is enforced in these institutions as each individual has to follow a new set of customs and laws that exists as a sub-culture of Canadian culture. The prisoners hate the outside society for forcing them to be locked up away from the mainstream of the society they used to exist in. This causes anti - social behaviour to arise from the prisoners as they assume the role society has given them which is the idea that they cannot exist in the main society around them. In the 1960's and 1970's, community based programs were being implemented and used to try and rehabilitate criminals. It was also the first step towards greater social control over the population. Yet the results were not satisfactory in the eyes of the society, so the leaders of the criminal justice system opted out to take the easy way and implement greater social protection methods. This was achieved by enforcing longer sentences upon the offenders. This was done even though the community based programs were working to some degree. No attempt was made to augment these programs and increase their efficiency. With all the pages of statistics gathered by the government, no attempt was made to find out why the main percentage of offenders were male. The statistics show that something is abnormal in the socialization of males that doesn't conform to the ideals and norms of the society. Instead of trying to help the population of prisoners and offenders, violence and cruelty towards prisoners has only increased. Even though capital punishment has been abolished, In the years 1980 to 1986, sixty-three prisoners were killed with legal intervention. That is, they were killed by police or prison guards in the course of their duties and by their actions which was deemed appropriate by the criminal justice system. Between 1979 and 1988 seventy-seven prisoners died per year on average, of which 33 per year were accepted as suicides. This shows that prison cannot be a helpful thing to the personal well being of the prisoner as there wouldn't be that many suicides if it was a helpful and rehabilitative course of action. With the increase in the prison population, there has also been an increase in the probationary population. When politicians speak of them as using probation as a community based program, all they are doing is increasing the amount of government repressive apparatus used to keep the society it leads down and controlled. For as long as history books and records have been kept, there has been a crime rate. The statistics show that the concept and utilization of prisons is not a viable solution to the violent crime problem in our society. It has done nothing except allow for the increase of the crime it is supposed to control and allow many deaths to arise from these systems in place. They continue to repeat themselves as they did with the two economic crashes of this century. Society has tried to lay the brunt of responsibility on other factors which have been proved to be wrong and/or inconclusive. This being the biological factor or the idea that it is a personal failure. If society would accept the responsibility for what it has created, then perhaps a solution could be found and implemented for the benefit of all in a society. Every few years, society comes out with a new improved solution to the problems of violent crime. Yet the question is never put forth with the idea of the inability to find a solution to a problem is actually the greater problem that we have. Since the solution cannot be properly found or instituted if the actual problem is not understood by the people trying to implement their uninformed solutions. Some areas that could be covered with a new study is how males are taught to deal with their emotions and problems. Social upheavals have occurred in recent times and gender roles have been obscured causing more problems with the continuity of society. Values and ideas are being taught to new members of a society which are old and out dated methods. This could be a causing factor into which violence is increasing. As frustration increases and a lack of understanding of how to interact among different people in a society is gone, the problems appear to be mounting and getting bigger everyday. The social methods of control are falling behind and chaos is coming out as a leader in our society. Bibliography Fleming, Thomas. The New Crimonolgies in Canada. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1985. Johnson, Holly. Violent Crime. Canadian Social Trends. Larsen,Nick. The Candian Criminal Justice System. Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press Inc., 1995. Macionis, John J.. Sociology. Scarborough, Ontario: Prentice-Hall Canada Inc., 1994 Roberts, Albert R.. Critical Issues in Crime and Justice. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications, 1994. Siverman, Robert A., Teevan, James J.. Crime in Canadian Society. Toronto, Canada: Butterworth and Co. Ltd., 1975. Sociology 3209 YA Social Change and Collective Behaviour Essay on The rise of violent crime in Canada Gavin R. Hemeon Student # 952 963 171 f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\The Role of the U S in the Third World in the Year 2000.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The Role of the U.S. in the Third World in the Year 2000 The United States budget will continue to tighten and we must better utilize our dollars spent on Third World aid. The questions of illegal immigration, the population explosion, and environmental issues will become vital to our future. With closer linkage of US aid to these issues we can get the most bang for our buck. The best way to stop illegal immigration into the United States is not to erect higher fences at our borders, but to invest in the third world, primarily Mexico. Providing jobs at home where they enjoy life without worry about the INS is the best solution. This solution will be cheaper than increasing funding for border patrols and INS personnel. If we were able to keep most illegal immigrates home, the more impoverished they would become and the greater the incentive for them to cross the border. By investing and improving their homeland, more people would stay home, rather than take the dangerous journey to an unknown country to provide food for their families. Slowing down population rates of third world countries must be another priority. Empowering women in third world countries, giving them independence from their husband and a choice in birth control is a start. Smaller grants similar to Foundation of the Philippine Environment can reward particular actions of foreign government, whether it be environmental, social or economic. Too many of current policies are aimed at creating markets for our commercial interests. We must also link aid with environmental issues, making the rain forest and jungles more profitable to locals without bulldozing them. This has been demonstrated in Uganda with the mountain gorillas. Eco-tourism is helping the local economies and the national governments. This was also working in Rwanda until Civil War tore this country apart. Fortunately the mountain gorillas have been left alone for the most part, since this was their third largest income provider and the number one and two sources, coffee and tea fields were destroyed during the war. Worldwide instant communication has improved human rights. The use of fax machines and cell telephones during the Tiananmen Square uprising informed the world of events and somewhat restrained the Chinese. Dan Rather doing the evening news from the Square while the protests were happening prevented the massacre from being ignored. The advent of CNN has put instant news into the hands of people all over the world. The World Wide Web is now letting people put their stories doing. This is starting at Universities and will exponentially expand as the equipment gets cheaper and students will move into the work force. This newest communication tool will help put pressure on authoritarian regimes that normally a free press would provide. We must not ignore the Third World countries for many parts of our inter-cities are becoming Third World. Their problems will become our problems. There is a growing isolationist movement in this country. This has never solved problems, only postponed and enlarged the problems. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\The Samurais The ultimate Stoics.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The Samurais, The Ultimate Stoics For seven centuries, the Samurai were Japan's warrior class. As a class of warriors and knights, they dominated society in feudal Japan. Their code or "Way of the warrior", bushido(History of the Samurai-www),called for a life of duty, discipline and self control, on and as well as off the battlefield (History of the World- Houghton Mifflin Company- Boston288). His loyalty and bravery to his lord was much more important than his loyalty to his friends, family and even their emperor. Their philosophy was one of freedom from fear(World Surfari-www), and for these reasons, The Samurai were the ultimate stoic warriors. The word samurai was derived from the Japanese word for service, saburau(Grolier Electronic Publishing, 1993), for they served their masters faithfully. They would die if necessary for them. The Daimyo or feudal landowners used the samurai to protect their land and to expand their rights to more land. The Samurai would transcend their fear of death, this made them the stoic warriors that they were. As experts in fighting on horseback as well as on the ground they wore two swords. This was called Daisho(World Surfari-www). The long sword was called the daito-katena(Ibid.). It was more than twenty four inches long. The shorter sword was called shoto wakizashi. It was between twelve to twenty four inches(Ibid.). Their swords were the "soul's" of the worship. A good sword was tougher and sharper. The swords were tested before they were used by the samurai. The sword tester used the new blades to cut through corpses and bodies of condemned criminals.(World Surfari-www) The test results were put on the nakago, the small metal piece on the sword blade or handle(Ibid.). Another weapon, the nagita, was used by a foot soldier on a horseman. The foot soldier would cut. the tendons of the horse and disembowel them. The samurai went from military retainers, to military aristocrats, to military rulers(Japan, Richard Storry18) The medieval samurai were often illiterate, rural, landowners who farmed in-between battles. They were assassins of the night and at the same time keepers of peace. The samurai would spend his life perfecting his military skills. Honor was one of the most important things to a samurai. If a samurai felt dishonored in any way he would commit seppuku. Seppuku means ritual suicide (Japan, Cultures of the World- Rex Shelley104). It is also called hara-kiri which means belly-slitting. This method of self-disembowelment was the only honorable form of death for a disgraced noble or a samurai. This method of self-disembowelment is still sometimes practiced in Japan. The Samurai were faithful to their masters. In fact they were more faithful to them than to their emperors and families. They had an unwritten code called Bushido, the way of the warrior. The Samurai could not ever be disgraced. If they were ever disgraced, they would commit ritual suicide, Seppuku. They lived plain lives and strived to improve their skills in fighting. Their philosophy was one of freedom from fear and for all of these reasons, The Samurai were the ultimate stoic warriors. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\The True Meaning Behind that Layer of Blue Nail Polish.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The True Meaning Behind that Layer of Blue Nail Polish When the red-based shades such as pink and orange were the only type of nail polish females dared to wear, I remember wondering if in the near future they'd dare switch to completely new shades such as blue or green. Now that day and age has come when all different shades of blue can be seen painted on teens' nails. Yet, this new choice of blue isn't just another craze of the moment. Rather, it symbolizes something slightly deeper. This latest trend of "blues" not only broke the barrier of "reds only", but broke the limits of society each girl felt she had when it came to choosing a simple shade of nail polish. Before, the "rebels" and the "freaks" were the only ones who had the guts to wear what it took to get attention and to shock the world. For them shades of nail polish whether they were blue, black, or glitter have never been an issue of inappropriateness. Those who were less eccentric when it came to expressing their exterior image stayed with the "acceptable" red tones. Now that blue nail polish is the latest manicurean craze, both the tamest and the wildest adolescents together are donning the shade. When asked why they choose to wear this latest cerulean shade of nail polish, many give back similar responses such as: "It looks cool"; "If I wore red I would just feel like another ordinary person, but if people see your blue nail polish, they do a double-take"; "It's a little new, something different". Unfortunately, many youths have been raised in a society where they have been conditioned to fear doing anything that will have them come across as a freak to others. In today's society, nail polish is one of the few things that come between the limits of someone who may be considered a "dull dresser" or a "freak-show". It is understandable why the more all-around fashion-conscious youths might be attracted to a new trend of accessory. A theory can evolve, however, from the other kind of youths who don't express their inner-selves fully through their apparel. It is possible that these girls may feel more at ease leaking out their wild streak through the most subtle way they know how - nail polish. You can dress normally and still wear wild nail polish, yet no one will consider you a freak because of your flashy nails. "My parents hate it." This factor alone may be an invitation for youths to wear blue nail polish. It is a fairly innocent approach of rebellion against the parents (and elders in general) for those who aren't looking for anything drastic that will get their parents totally worked up in a rage. Yeah, so to the older ones blue may seem like an odd choice for nails, but what can the parents do - strap their daughter's hands to the table and remove the damn polish with cotton swabs and polish The True Meaning Behind that Layer of Blue Nail Polish When the red-based shades such as pink and orange were the only type of nail polish females dared to wear, I remember wondering if in the near future they'd dare switch to completely new shades such as blue or green. Now that day and age has come when all different shades of blue can be seen painted on teens' nails. Yet, this new choice of blue isn't just another craze of the moment. Rather, it symbolizes something slightly deeper. This latest trend of "blues" not only broke the barrier of "reds only", but broke the limits of society each girl felt she had when it came to choosing a simple shade of nail polish. Before, the "rebels" and the "freaks" were the only ones who had the guts to wear what it took to get attention and to shock the world. For them shades of nail polish whether they were blue, black, or glitter have never been an issue of inappropriateness. Those who were less eccentric when it came to expressing their exterior image stayed with the "acceptable" red tones. Now that blue nail polish is the latest manicurean craze, both the tamest and the wildest adolescents together are donning the shade. When asked why they choose to wear this latest cerulean shade of nail polish, many give back similar responses such as: "It looks cool"; "If I wore red I would just feel like another ordinary person, but if people see your blue nail polish, they do a double-take"; "It's a little new, something different". Unfortunately, many youths have been raised in a society where they have been conditioned to fear doing anything that will have them come across as a freak to others. In today's society, nail polish is one of the few things that come between the limits of someone who may be considered a "dull dresser" or a "freak-show". It is understandable why the more all-around fashion-conscious youths might be attracted to a new trend of accessory. A theory can evolve, however, from the other kind of youths who don't express their inner-selves fully through their apparel. It is possible that these girls may feel more at ease leaking out their wild streak through the most subtle way they know how - nail polish. You can dress normally and still wear wild nail polish, yet no one will consider you a freak because of your flashy nails. "My parents hate it." This factor alone may be an invitation for youths to wear blue nail polish. It is a fairly innocent approach of rebellion against the parents (and elders in general) for those who aren't looking for anything drastic that will get their parents totally worked up in a rage. Yeah, so to the older ones blue may seem like an odd choice for nails, but what can the parents do - strap their daughter's hands to the table and remove the damn polish with cotton swabs and polish remover? As superficial as nail polish may seem, it's latest color of fashion has done a lot to relieve the wild streaks of rebellion and impulsiveness bottled up inside many adolescents. Otherwise, they would have had no way of expressing their inner selves. One could even go as far as to say that this latest shade of nail polish is a trendy - and subconscious - means of therapy.... As superficial as nail polish may seem, it's latest color of fashion has done a lot to relieve the wild streaks of rebellion and impulsiveness bottled up inside many adolescents. Otherwise, they would have had no way of expressing their inner selves. One could even go as far as to say that this latest shade of nail polish is a trendy - and subconscious - means of therapy.... f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\The Ute Indians.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The Ute Indians were a group of Indians that lived mostly around the mountainous area of Utah and Colorado near the Colorado River. But they sometimes lived in dessert areas also. The word Ute comes from the word eutaw or yuta which means dwellers on the top of mountains. Although it is not certain where they originated but it is assumed that they arrived to the Colorado and Utah area around 1000 A.D. The Ute Indians spoke a part of the Uto-Aztecan language called Numic. The Utes were divided into bands or a subdivision of a tribe. There were at one time eleven different bands of Ute Indians. The type of housing in each band depended on the material available. They lived in teepees, lodges, and domed shaped structures. The lodge shaped structure was the Ute's traditional mean of shelter. These home were temporary because the Utes moved every season to hunt. The dome shelters were built out of willow branches over a pole frame. They were eight feet high and fifteen feet in diameter. They usually built their homes on a river or stream valley and were scattered to take advantage of wood, shade and other resources. In the winter they moved into lower elevations for the milder weather there. Children were very important in the Ute Indian tribe. Every member was responsible for caring and the education of the youth. Babies were held in cradle boards that were either made of willow branches bundled together or a solid piece of wood. Willow bark was often used as diapers. Babies were cared for by girls nine and up. The babies were delivered in a special shelter that was set aside for giving birth. During the birth the mother is usually assisted by another female tribe member. The husband was expected to help the wife by keeping her warm by bringing lots of firewood. The umbilical cord was cut off with a stone knife. When the remaining part fell off the mother always saved it in a special pouch that was attached to the babies cradle board. When the baby learned to walk the mother placed the umbilical cord on a red ant hill. They thought that would help the ants industrious ways to rub off. The children were given many names and nicknames in their life. These names were given to them during various occasions during their life, like when they were born and when they learned how to walk. The children were educated by watching and helping their elders. Everything that the Ute needed could be found in their territory. The western part of the Ute territory ate more of plant life. The diet of the eastern part consisted mainly of meat. But the Ute only practiced agriculture for a brief period of time. A major plant resource was nuts that were found in the pinon pine tree's cone. The nuts were gathered by knocking them off the tree with long sticks. During the pinon harvesting season deer were also hunted for their venison. Besides those foods the Ute also ate wild potatoes, various roots, berries, and fruit. Food was prepared in many ways such as using them in stews or drying them for winter. Crickets and grasshoppers were sometimes used in stews for extra taste. They also grew tobacco for use in religious ceremonies or in tribal customs. Men also went hunting when not helping with the collection of berries and nuts. The Ute hunted and fished many things. Some of the things they hunted were buffalo, elk, whitetail deer, mule deer, antelope, mountain sheep, moose, jackrabbits, cottontail rabbits. They also hunted birds and various insects. The bow and arrow was their main tool for hunting. They had two types of bows, wooden and horn bows. The wooden bows were long, thin pieces of wood. The horn bows were made out of mountain sheeps horns. They were split and shaped, next sinew was wrapped around them to give them more strength. The arrows were about two feet long with a fire hardened end and a stone point. When hunting fish they either speared them or shot them with a special barbed arrow. In the winter shelters were built on frozen lakes and holes were cut into the ice for fishing. The Ute dressed simply but some of their clothing was decorated with beads and patterns. The men often dressed in a deerskin breechcloth or leggings. When colder they wore a deerskin shirt. They wore moccasins or sandals on their feet. The woman wore skirts or long dresses all made out of deerskin wove with bark or reeds. The Ute also liked to wear jewelry. They wore small polished bones in their noses. They wore necklaces made of materials like animal claws, bone beads, stones and sometimes seeds. On special occasions they would paint their faces with white, black, red, blue or green face paints. The Ute weren't just all work and no play. They took a lot of time to play games. They played such games as dice, where if someone rolled certain symbols they would win. They also played games that were similar to baseball and kickball. A favorite game among the men was a dart game where someone would roll a hoop out in front of a person with the darts and the person would try to throw the darts in the middle of the hoop. Today there are about seven thousand Utes still remaining. Many of them still remain in the Colorado, Utah area. There are a few reservations in that area. The remaining Utes today are troubled with unemployment and alcohol abuse is a serious problem for them. Most of this is caused by lack of education and skills training. The Ute reservation recently opened a casino which gave many Utes a job. It also gave them an opportunity to have a better life and a more hopeful future. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Theory and Reseach Methods .TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Theory and Research Introduction This paper will focus on the quantitative correlation study method used in survey based researches such as the attached article entitled "Horatio Alger lives". Social research is a collection of methods people use to systematically combine theories and ideas to produce knowledge. Because of it's complexity, researchers must be able to carefully select a method or methods that will best suit their study objectives. Quantitative research method consists of: experiment, content analysis, existing statistics (correlation), and survey. The correlation and survey will be the two main methods that will be emphasized. In a survey research, people are asked questions either through the use of questionnaires or during an interview. Unlike the experiment approach, the condition and situation in a survey requires no manipulation. All the subject have to do is to answer questions. Good quantitative research is determined by validity and reliability of the research method used (Teevan, 1995:161). Therefore, the straight correlation study method used in the survey research of "Horatio Alger lives" lack components of validity and reliability. News Article Summary This article entitled "Horatio Alger lives" is basically a survey correlation study done on two distinct social classes; sons of wealthy fathers and sons of lower income fathers. The goal in this research was to determine which sons of the two distinct social groups mentioned, were to likely make more money in the future. Therefore, they surveyed 400,000 males age 16 and 19 that was still living with their fathers. After the eleven year period the same groups of men were again surveyed, and their incomes was correlated with their fathers. The research revealed that overall sons of wealthy fathers was more likely to earn higher salaries than their dads. Based on this fact the researcher further generalized that sons of wealthy fathers was more than likely to obtain a higher income than those sons of lower income fathers. Despite the overall results a small percentage of sons of fathers in the lower income families made more money than their father. Class Discussion The class discussion evolved around two questions. The first question was; do you agree with the researcher's angle in which he derived a general assumption that, sons of wealthy fathers will make more money than sons of lower income fathers? Before allowing anyone to answer I quickly brought up the third variable which was attitude, in addition to the previous question. This question had two very interesting but opposing points of views brought to light by two very different opinionated classmates. One classmate (female) agreed with the researchers measures and assumptions, arguing on the bases that if your father had more money than you are more than likely to get a better education therefore, with this education one will be able to earn more money. She further added that wealtheir families had higher expectations on their children and as a result the child were likely to live up to that expectation. On the contrary, the other classmate (male) disagreed with the researcher's approach and generalization. His argument was that regardless of how rich one's father may be it is solely dependent upon the individual's attitude. He further argued that if that individual had a good attitude (ambitious and motivated) then the wealth and connection on his/her father's behalf will only enhance his/her success financially. However, given a hypothetical situation both the classmate including myself and others agreed that on a general basis, sons of wealthier fathers will be more likely to secure better jobs than those sons of fathers in lower income. We further discussed the importance of the third variable which was attitude and agreed on how important it is to be motivated. The question of validity was also brought up during discussions because the researcher measured wealth using only the income of the father. Further discussions of this suggested that to get a better measure the average of both mother and father's income should be taken. Finally, there was the last question; in the case of this article what is the independent and dependent variable? Independent variable is the cause and the dependent is the outcome resulting from the cause. The article suggested independent variable was the sons of either rich or poor dads and the dependent variable was did they make more than their fathers. Discussions of this topic concluded that the independent variable be the attitude of the son and the dependent was how much they made. Sociological Analysis of Article The research "Horatio Alger lives" uses a inductive reasoning logic. This means that the researcher begins with a specific result. In this case the results are based on 400,000 male subject (aged 16-19) taken from one area, and generalizes the results to the overall population. Due to the results of this research, the researcher concluded that overall, sons of wealthy fathers were making more money than those sons who's fathers were in less favorable financial status. This generalization yields questions of reliability because of the fact that the research was done on 400,000 males in one area. Reliability is defined as when a the method of conducting a study where the results can be replicated or duplicated by another researcher without a change in result. For example, measuring height with an elastic ruler may not be as reliable as measuring it with a stiff ruler because the elasticity would cause the results to vary from one time to the next (Gray, 1994:39). Several criticisms can be made about the reliability of this research due to the method used to derive a conclusion. First of all, if this same research was to be done in another area, the results may differ. Differentiation in results may be attributed to the different attitudes that the men have in the different areas-the group measured may have totally different attitudes than those not measured in other areas. Attitudes play a crucial role in determining how successful an individual will be financially. For example, if you are ambitious and motivated to be successful than you are more likely to be one step closer to that goal compared to those who are less motivated and ambitious. It is another way of saying "if you don't do your road-test how are you going to get your license". Secondly, the type of research method incorporated in the study is longitudinal. Longitudinal research is when the same individuals are studied at a different age, in this case it's over an eleven year period (Nueman, 1994:133-138). The problem here is that the only means of measure is correlation of the sons income over the eleven year period with the fathers. Also, researches could have included only fathers of wealthier families which poses a problem because the fathers of the wealthier family may not be the ones making the top dollars bringing the family as a whole to be classified as wealthier. Moreover, it may be the mothers that are making the higher salaries in the wealthier families. Which in turn means that no matter how many years have past it would yield the same result. Meaning that the only way this research would be reliable is providing that on the overall average, the so-called wealthier fathers made more money than poorer ones. Whereas, if this were to be the opposite (poorer fathers made more money on average than wealthier ones) then it would simply mean that this research is unreliable. On the other hand, the validity in this kind of research can also be questioned. A validity is the degree to which a measure actually measures what it claims to. In the case of this article, it claims to measure the financial future of the sons of both rich and poor fathers. Threats of validity stems from researches done on a survey or interview basis. First of all, the respondents may not answer the questions truthfully or lie by giving socially approved answers that reflect well on them and avoid responses that put them in unfavorable light (Teevan, 1995:174). Let's suppose that hypothetically, respondents of the wealthier fathers lied on the questionnaire that they made more than their fathers, putting themselves in a more favorable and socially approved status. If this was the case then the study would be considered invalid. Secondly, survey researchers must be careful of spurious relationships in these correlation's (Reaves 1992:130-131). A spurious relationship assumes that a relationship is causal, when in fact each is effected by a common third variable. For example, this article claims that the sons of wealthier fathers will make more money then those of poorer fathers, does this also mean that the richer the father the more money the son will make in the long-run? If so, then is the wealthier the father the independent variable and how much the son makes the dependent variable? The answer is no because the real relationship is between attitudes of sons of wealthy fathers and making more money and attitudes of sons of wealthier fathers and making even more money (Bower, 1990). This third common variable in the spurious relationship stems back to what was said earlier about attitudes, if you don't have a good attitude the chances of you being independently successful financially in the future are very slim despite the financial positions of your family. However, if you do have a good attitude and a wealthy father than you would have an edge of being more successful over the sons of poorer fathers. Summary and Conclusion In order to make a survey valid and reliable researchers must consider all factors involved. Survey's must include subjects from varying social and economic backgrounds. This survey could have been made more concise if random sampling (is a method in which subjects are randomly selected from various areas) was used (Teevan, 1995:162). This would ensure that there would not be any biases involved when choosing subjects. The researcher when initializing this survey overlooked the possibility of double-income households and therefore, documented the fathers as the only means of income in a family. As a result, the research is only accurate in measuring single income families, providing that the wealthier fathers made more on average compared to the poorer ones. In conclusion, straight correlation study methods used in survey research like "Horatio Alger lives" will lack components of validity and reliability due to these facts previously mentioned. Bibliography Bower, B. (1990b). Anxiety weighs down pregnancies and births. Science News, 138, 102. Gray, Peter 1994. Psychology Second Edition. United States of America: Worth Publishers, Inc. Teevan, James J. 1995. Introduction to Sociology a Canadian Focus Fifth Edition. Scaraborough, Ontario: Prentice-Hall Canada Inc. Reaves, Celia C. 1992. Quantitative Research for the Behavioral Sciences. Canada: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. W. Lawrence Neuman 1994. Social Research Methods: Qualitative and Quantitative approaches. Massachusesetts: Allyn and Bacon A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Thomas Jefferson.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Thomas Jefferson I really didn't have any problems finding information about Thomas Jefferson. On the Internet, I just did a search for Thomas Jefferson, and I got all kinds of information, from the Thomas Jefferson University to his autobiography. If I was the teacher, I would have allowed the students to print off of the web pages. It isn't illegal, and it would make it much easier and more efficient to hit command-p and hit return than copy down 5 pages of information longhand and not be able to write legibly for the rest of the day because of a numb hand. I also would have given a little more time than a week. All of the information I have came from the Internet. I didn't use one book to find information. I think that it is much smarter to try to find information electronically than it is to go to a library, do a search, hope they have it in stock, walk around trying to find the book, go check it out, drive home, stop at McDonald's, and finally site down and read it. By the time you get home and have time to read it, you're too tired to read the book, let alone do a report with it. Thomas Jefferson was born in Shadwell in Albemarle county, Virginia, on April 13, 1743. His dad, Peter Jefferson and his mom Jane Randolph were members of the most famous Virginia families. Besides being born rich, Thomas Jefferson, was well educated. He attended the College of William and Mary and read law (1762-1767) with George Wythe, the best law teacher of his time in Virginia. He went into to the bar in 1767 and practiced until 1774, when the courts were closed by the American Revolution. He had inherited a considerable landed estate from his father, and doubled it by a happy marriage on Jan. 1, 1772, to Martha Wayles Skelton. He was elected to the House of Burgesses, when he was 25, he served there from 1769 to 1774, proving himself to be an effective committeeman and skillful draftsman, though not good at speaking From the beginning of the struggle with the mother country, Jefferson stood with the more advanced Patriots, grounding his position on a wide knowledge of English history and political philosophy. His biggest early contribution to the cause of the Patriots was his powerful pamphlet A Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774), originally written for presentation to the Virginia convention of that year. In this he emphasized natural rights, including that of immigration, and denied parliamentary authority over the colonies, recognizing no tie with the mother country except the king. When he was a member of the Continental Congress (1775-1776), Jefferson was chosen together with John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Robert Livingstone and Roger Sherman in 1776 to draft the Declaration of Independence . He wrote the declaration almost all by himself and was amended by John Adams and Benjamin Franklin . Jefferson left Congress in 1776 and served in the Virginia legislature until his election as governor in 1779. He was governor from 1779 to 1781. During this brief private interval (1781-1783) he began to write the Notes on the State of Virginia, which was published in 1785. In this document there are some of his opinions on slavery. From 1783 to 1784 he was a member of the Continental Congress. While Jefferson was secretary of state from 1790 to 1793, Alexander Hamilton, secretary of the treasury, defeated the movement for commercial discrimination against Britain, which Jefferson liked. Jefferson's policy was not pro-French, but it seemed anti-British. Hamilton was distinctly pro-British. By late 1792 or 1793 the opponents of Hamiltonianism (I hope I used a real word) constituted a fairly definite national party, calling itself Republican. Early in 1793 the Virginians in Congress forced Hamilton to quit his office. Jefferson retired as Secretary of State at the end of the year 1793. During a respite of three years from public duties, he began to remodel his house at Monticello and interested himself greatly in agriculture. He was supported by the Republicans for president in 1796, and running second to John Adams by three electoral votes, he became vice president. Jefferson and his running mate Aaron Burr defeated John Adams in the elections of 1800. Jefferson's own title to the presidency was not real for some weeks because he was tied with his running mate under the workings of the original electoral system. The election was thrown into the House of Representatives. The Federalists voted for Burr through many indecisive ballots. Finally, enough of them allowed the obvious decision of the majority to be carried out. And so Jefferson became the 3d president of the United States of America. And what also was important that the movement was effected by strictly constitutional means. Jefferson emphasized this in his accommodating inaugural address. Jefferson was replaced in 1809 by his loyal lieutenant, James Madison. During the last 17 years of his live, Jefferson remained in Virginia. As the 'Sage of Monticello' he engaged in a large and rich correspondence with John Adams and others. Jefferson's last great public service was the founding of the University of Virginia in 1819. He died at Monticello on July 4, 1826 on the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Tip ONeill.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Thomas P. O'Neill Tip was a man who was not bashful to call himself "a man of the house." Thomas P. O'Neill was a person whose greatest charm was that he seemed "completely out-of-date as a politician." (Clift) He was a gruff, drinking, card playing, backroom kind of guy. He had an image that political candidates pay consultants to make over. He knew these qualities gave him his power because they "made him real." (Sennot 17) His gigantic figure and weather beaten face symbolizes a political force of five decades, from Roosevelt's new deal to the Reagan retrenchment. He was the last democratic leader of the old school and "the longest-serving speaker of the house (1977-1986) and easily the most loved." (Clift) Thomas P. O'Neill (1912-1994) always knew why he was in Washington, and what he stood for. He was a native of Boston and always prided himself on his theory that "all politics is local." (O'Neill 1) Tip was a friend of everyone. When ordinary people wanted something of O'Neill he gave it to them. When anyone asked him a favor, he would do it. O'Neill served fifty years in public life and retired with only fifteen thousand dollars to his name. He devoted his life and his money to the people of Boston. Tip came of age in the Great Depression, arrived in congress from Massachusetts in 1952 and "came to power amid the plenty of the '60s and '70s." (Woodlief 4) He was a rampant liberal who "would usually vote yes on any bill that helped people (he once voted to put money into an appropriations bill to study knock knees)." (Gelzinas 6) When Reagan came into office in 1980 big government began to feel the pinch and O'Neill's big hearted liberalism was on the way out. In 1980, O'Neill was a target of a clever Republican ad campaign that pictured him in a limo as a symbol of a bloated out of control congress. The advertisement backfired and it sent O'Neill into folk hero status. Tip even "made an appearance on "Cheers" as an effect of the advertisement." (Time 18) Tip said that he "only made one vote that he regretted." (O'Neill 218) It was a yes vote on the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution that gave Lyndon Johnson full control over all military intervention in Vietnam. He did this because it was a time when Congress did what leadership asked, in fact there was not one descending vote in the house on this issue (414-0). Right away he had speculation that the White House might use this as a device to open up full scale war in Vietnam. Tip had many questions about the war in Vietnam, but at first stuck with the saying by Samuel Rayburn, "When it comes to foreign policy- support the Pres." His attitude changed. He felt if the U.S. was to fight they should fight to win, and he did not think this was the case. Student kept badgering him with questions of his support of the foreign policy of Dean Rusk, the secretary of state. Finally a student got him with a question. A student at Boston College, Tip's alma matter, said, "Sen. O'Neill you have told the public about your many briefings of the war by General Westmoreland, Robert McNamara, the CIA, and even President Johnson but have you ever considered hearing the briefings of the other side?" This hit Tip head on. He decided to get a good look on the other side of the issue. He began his investigation at his best negotiating table, the poker table. At the Army and Navy Club in Washington. At the table were Generals and other high ranking military officials. Three loosing games and a couple dozen drinks later Tip started to ask questions. He found that all these pentagon officials felt that we should not send troops to Vietnam unless we plan to win. Johnson didn't want the soldiers to take the offensive. They were not the only ones. Most CIA officials and members of the defense department who openly supported Johnson's stance were "saying the opposite after a few beers." (O'Neill 233) Tip was invited to a private dinner of CIA officials and there everyone he met was openly against the war because they felt it was unwinnable, but the all pledged publicly with Johnson. These CIA officers said all foreign officials were against the war as well as the American public. They pleaded for Tip to come out into the open to oppose the war. They told him to tell Speaker McCormack that the entire Central Intelligence Committee is opposed to the war. Tip could not because McCormack was a war hawk that would not oppose the president. In June of 1967, Tip went to Malta for vacation. By coincidence Malta was the place where American soldiers were brought from Vietnam for rest and relaxation between tours of duty. Tip was smoking a patented cigar in a bar when group of U.S. soldiers entered. Tip introduced himself to one of the soldiers who was ironically from Buzzards Bay. He recognized Tip and introduced him to his fellow marines. Tip being himself opened up the bar. He found from the guys that they did not object to being in Vietnam. They did object to the U.S. stategy of the war. The soldiers could not fire unless being fired apron, the could use no land or sea mines and did not select any targets. The troops did not understand why they were in Vietnam because they said it was simply a Civil War the U.S. should have no interest in. Tip came to the conclusion that we were in a conflict "that we could not win- that we were not even trying to win- and could be stuck in for years taking huge U.S. casualties." (O'Neill 232) In September 1967, Tip made up his mind. He was not going to publicly support the war any longer. The Vietnam conflict was a civil war and U.S. involvement was wrong. He decided not to go to the press (because he never did before), but to write a newsletter to his constituents. In the letter he "took the stand as a citizen, a congressman, and a father that by remaining in the Vietnam we were paying too high of a price in both innocent human lives and money." (O'Neill 233) He outlined instructions for Johnson in the letter. They are as follows: "1) Stop further escalation and attempt to bring the conflict before the UN. 2) Stop bombing of the North. 3) Promote an Asian solution to an Asian problem." He sent the letter and told his sun Tommy that he had signed "his political death warrant." (Edwards 25) People in Boston wanted to kill Tip but he knew it was the right thing to do. All his political colleagues and constituents were lost. Every one. Tip was getting the squeeze from his voters and the democratic party. His approval rate went from around eighty percent to about fifteen. Rioting college students were referred to Tip's kids. Tip was infuriated at being blamed for their actions. The Boston Globe printed a headline in response to riots that said," O'Neill is Dove, academic community influence." Tip regarded this is "Bullshit!" and said recently in response,"[He] opposed the war not because of the students but in spite of them." (Rosen) When the letter was first sent out no one knew of it actual contents. The Washington Post received a copy of the letter and ran it on September 14, 1967. The Secret Service was out to find Tip. They searched for ten hours. No one could find him. He showed up at his home three hours after the Secret Service gave up. He explained he had hot hand at the card table in a backroom of a local bar. The President ordered to see Tip the next day. President Lyndon Johnson had a private meeting with Tip in the Oval Office, his first time alone with the president. The President said," Tip, what kind of son of a bitch are you? I expect shit like this from those assholes like Bill Ryan (an ultra-liberal from New York). Tip, I've been friendly to you since you came to Washington, What do you think you know more about this fucking war than I do?" Tip replied, "Mr. President, no. But in my heart and in my conscience I believe you are wrong. You can't fight your damn war when everyone else knows it is wrong! You can't expect America to stand behind you when you're fighting your war that can't be won." After the President brief Tip on the situations of the war he hugged Tip and told him, "I am glad you had the balls to tell me, I very glad you came in to explain yourself... I now understand you are doing this because you really care." The President saw something that is rare in politics. Tip was not the best speaker but everybody knew he didn't care what others thought of him. He voted because he "really cared." (Edwards 25) We must thank God for men like Thomas P. O'Neill. Thomas P. O'Neill did not vote to stay on the public payroll. Tip was a man who is a better example of how our political system can work. President Johnson decided not to be re-elected as President because he realized he caused a terrible war and for that he should never be forgiven. Tip took a possible chance of vanishing into obscurity. Congress eventually swayed on Tip's side and the incident was forgotten in the minds of the public. Thomas P. O'Neill was Mr. Speaker. He was a man who took all comers and played hardball in Politics, and was their instant friend as soon as they left the senate chambers. Thomas P. O'Neill will always be close to home no matter where he has gone. "Rest well, and thank you Mr. Speaker." (Gerald Ford) Works Cited Clift, Elanor. "Last Hurrah for Tip." Newsweek 17 January 1994: 22 Edwards, Mickey. "Let's hope Tip wasn't the Last of his kind." Boston Herald 11 January 1994: 25. Gelzinas, Peter. "Despite the pomp, he was a family man." Boston Herald 11 January 1994, morning edition: 6. Holmes, Gerald. "Thomas P. O'Neill." World Book Encyclopedia. Volume 14. New York: World Book, 1992. 287. "In Tip-Top Shape." Time 26 January 1987: 18. O'Neill, Thomas P. Man of the House. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987. Rosen, Arthur. "Tip O'Neill." New Multimedia Encyclopedia. Groliers Multimedia, 1994. IBM CD-Rom. Sennot, Charles. "The last words for Mr. Speaker." Boston Globe 11 January 1994: 17(25). Woodleif, Wayne. "Family and friends say farewell to Tip." Boston Herald 11 January 1994: 4. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Towards a better understanding of Shamanism.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Shamanism in Anthropology has been an entity in a constant metamorphosis. It has always been considered exotic and its existence around the globe was never contradicted. However, over the years it did not receive the scholarly attention that it so requires. The age of discovery garnered a multitude of information on shamanism all over the world. The reporters invested a great deal of accuracy in the gathering of the information, but their observational skills were mostly underdeveloped. Furthermore as could be expected, they saw and evaluated things solely on the basis of European religion and social customs (Flaherty, 1992, pp.3) without having it necessary to view its ramifications to the people who are so imbued by it. Despite these methodologies which were grave in nature, matters began to shift during the 1940's and 1950's when the social sciences were rapidly coming into their own disciplines. Shamanism, was beginning to be looked upon as a complex religious notions and modes of behaviour (Lommel, 1967, pp.8). Although shamanism was beginning to harness scholarly attention there were still different contradicting theories being laid out in the scientific community. More recently since the notion of tribalism has become more prevalent shamanism is beginning to be recognized as holding the key puzzle in life. Furthermore, it is growing and encompassing many areas such as Psychology, Pharmacology, and even believe it or not Physics. Now before we elaborate on the historical significance of shamaninsm in anthropology it is imperative that a general definition of shamanism is established. In order to study shamanism the shaman must first be understood. The original word shaman came form the Ural mountains in Russia. It applied to people who acted in several 'non-ordinary' capacities for their tribes. Shamans may be defined as man or a woman who through their ability to enter a trance state in any given moment can influence the course of events, find lost or stolen items and identify the criminal when a crime takes place. Thus in a sense shamanism is the practising of these mechanisms in trying to make sense of the world. As you can see it encompasses various facets of the social life from healing illness to maintaining social order. This definition of shamanism is very brief and really can not be upheld as a precise and accurate definition, however shamanism within these parameters has always been accepted both in the early and late twentieth century. Nevertheless, differences did emerge that transformed the definition of shamanism in anthropology in that it added more to this vague definition. According to Mircea Eliade the shaman who is an inspired priest, in ecstatic trance ascends to the heavens on'trips'. In the cause of these journeys the shaman persuades or even fights with the gods in order to secure benefits for his fellow men. Here, in the opinion of Eliade, spirit possession is not an essential characteristics and is no always present (Eliade, 1951, pp.434). He goes on by stating that the "specific element of shamanism is not the incorporation of spirits by the shaman but the ecstasy provoked by the ascension to the sky"(pp.434). That is to say that the incorporation of spirit possession does not necessarily belong to shamanism. Therefore, from Eliade's view point we see that there is a wedge between shamanism and spirit possession (Lewis,1971, pp.49). This was a view that was prevalent in the study of shamanism in anthropology at the time. Other writers on the subject clearly accepted this view as expressed by Luc de Heusch. He sought to develop these ideas into an ambitious, formalistic theory of religious phenomena. He states that shamanism and spirit possession are an antithetical process. The first is an ascent of man to the gods, the second the descent of the gods on men (Lewis,1971,pp.50). So shamanism in de Heusch's view is the movement of pride were man sees himself as an equal to the gods. Possession on the other hand is an incarnation. The distinction between shamanism and possession on the basis of whether spirits were incorporated or not was generally accepted at the time. This differentiation upheld by many anthropologists implied or rather claimed that shamans were not really 'masters of spirits'. The so-called trance state was dubbed unauthentic and a consternation was placed on the credibility of the shaman who is so revered by his people. This notion reenforced the idea among psychiatrists that shamans had in fact some sort of psychological disorder. Now even much earlier than the cited works of Eliade and de Heusch there was a general notion that shamanism and possession were cultural abnormalities. In fact, according to the French psychiatrist Levy-Valensi shamanism is not for the psychologically normal people, but only for the disturbed. The shaman was thus portrayed as a conflict torn personality who could be classified either as seriously neurotic or even psychotic (Lewis, pp.179). Although this was a pshyciatric summary and one can argue that it did not represent the anthropological view point; however many of our authorities on shamanism such s Bogaras (1907) stated that shamans were on the verge of insanity. Krader an ethnographer has classified the Buryat shaman as a highly nervous person, one subject to nervous disorder (Krader,1954,pp322-51). So there was an apparent belief among the anthropological society that shamans were some sort of beings with mental disorders. As Devereux argues, that "there is no reason and no excuse for not considering the shaman as a severe neurotic and even as a psychotic" (Devereux,1956,pp.23). He goes on by stating that any society where shamanism is rampant as being in a sense anomic. Thus it is quite obvious that shamans were viewed as social and psychological misfits. So far we have seen how shamanism was viewed in the earlier part and even in the mid twentieth century. The anthropological literature that dominated that period links shamanism to mental disorder and a distinction is also made between possession and shamanism. As a result of these assumptions a negative definition of shamanism is created. Thus, during this period the definition of shamanism can best be described as phenomena practised by mentally disturbed people in trying to make sense of the world. Now as time progressed especially in the early seventies new ideologies contradicting early and mid twentieth century definitions of shamanism emerged. Some of these new concepts were upheld by Lewis who refuted many of the earlier works on the basis that the empirical evidence present did not support their theories. Previously we have mentioned that according to Eliade and de Heusch spirit possession and shamanism were two distinct elements and during shamanistic processions, possessions were absent. Now according to Lewis, primary accounts of Arctic shamanism utilized by Eliade and also by de Heusch shows that the distinction made by the two is in fact untenable (Lewis,pp.51). The word shamanism in itself which is derived from the Tungus word shaman means literally one who is excited, moved or raised. More specifically a shaman is a person of either sex who has mastered spirits and who at will introduce them into his own body. As Shirokogoroff, the great Russian authority on the Tungus puts it, the shamans body is a placing or receptacle for the spirits. It is in fact by his power over the spirits which he incarnates that the shaman is able to treat and control afflictions caused by pathogenic spirits in others (Lewis,pg55). The relationship between shamanism and possession is even better illustrated when an old shaman is about to die. When this is the case a new shaman must be found before the old one dies and wreaks havoc in the community by unleashing all the spirits that is within him. The qualification of the new shaman is that he must demonstrate a proof of his command of the ecstatic technique and control over spirits. Moreover, the Tungus distinguish between a person possessed (involuntarily) by a spirit and a spirit possessed (voluntarily) by a person. The first is an uncontrolled trance interpreted as an illness; the second is a controlled trance, the essential requirement for the exercise of the shamanistic requirement (Lewis,pp.54). Therefore contrary to Eliade and De Heusch's conclusions regarding shamanism and spirit possession, there is no distinction between the two. The Tungus form of shamanism in which the two base their assumptions involves controlled spirit possession. The shaman incarnates spirits in both a latent and active form, but always in a controlled fashion (Lewis,pp.55) Our analysis of shamanism does not end here. In fact earlier it was established that previous works done by anthropologist in the study shamanism attributed it as relative to mental disorder. That is to say that the shaman or rather all shamans are individuals with serious psychological problems similar to those found in western asylums. Again contemporary analyst refute these ideologies. Previous works suggested that shamans must have a history of psychiatric disorder but Jane Murphy reports of the Alaskan Eskimo shamans whose personalities she examined suggested that they were extremely sober individuals of unusual mental health (Lewis,pg.182). Earlier anthropologist based most of their observations during shamanic rituals when the shaman was in a trance state, but Murphy closely observed the shaman's daily routine concluded that shamans were in fact of sound mental state. So from what we have seen, the study of shamanism went through a metamorphosis over the years. In the early twentieth century it was regarded as some sort of a cult is practised by psychotics and neurotics in a community filled with lunatics. Now these notions hardly did shamanism any justice. The practice was viewed in a rather ethnocentric manner that undermined its richness. Further more fundamental questions such as whether shamanism, despite being different from western modes, assisted the people in question in their daily life was hardly even raised. How then can an anthropologically pragmatic study of shamanism be made if such critical issues are not tackled. Anthropology is not free of ethnocentrism, but objectivity should not be clouded by it. The new ideologies that surfaced in the late 60's and 70's expressed a much deeper analysis of the concept of shamanism as compared to earlier works. It was objective and intelligently critical. Furthermore the definition of shamanism was transformed and it did not include psychopathological notions rampant in the early part of the twentieth century. Shamanism holds a great fascination for the western imagination that much continues to be written about it. This overflow of information has however, given rise to a number of methodological problems (Flaherty, 1992,pp.208). Shamanism has become some what over-sensationalized that it has become hard to distinguish fact from fiction. There has also been little historical accountability. Most writers uncritically create their own profiles of the shaman from literature that was published long before their time (Flaherty, pp.212). They do so without having it necessary to think about the external pressures that shamansim might have been experiencing over the years. Shamanism has been interpreted as a set of rituals, maybe, it is time to view it as a religion. Just as Islam and Christianity have undergone through external pressures, surely shamanism must have experienced its share of influences. Especially those inflicted via centuries of contact with other cultures at different levels of development than their own that would have forced it to device adaptive mechanisms that might have perhaps altered its course. The implications of these questions go on and on however, one thing is for certain and that the study of shamanism with its recent glorification is rapidly expanding. It is beginning to encompass areas that it never permeated for this reason perhaps it is time that a new discipline is created. One that in its own way will combine the best of humanities with certain aspects of anthropology, medicine and the physical sciences. " Perhaps it is time for a shamanology " (Flaherty, pp.215) B I B L I G R A P H Y. 1. Eliade, Mircea. Shamanism And Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. Paris, 1951. 2. Devereux, G. Normal and Abnormal: Key problems of Psychiatric Anthropology. Washingtno, 1956. 3. Flaherty, Gloria. Shamanism In The Eighteen Century. Princeton: Priceton University Press, 1992. 4. Krader, L. `Buryat Religion and Society`, Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, 10, 1954. 5. Lewis, I.M. Ecstatic Religion. Middlesex: Penguin, 1971. 6. Lommel, Andreas. Shamanism: The Beginnings of Art. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1973. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Traffic Control The Need for Change.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Traffic Control: The Need For Change As the population of the United States dramatically increases and the number of vehicles on the nation's roads and highways skyrockets, new methods of traffic control and organization have become necessary, by utilizing new methods of transportation or by revising the current system. In the past 15 years, the number of vehicles on American roads has increased 41.9%, the number of licensed drivers has increased 29.3%, but the size of the general population has only risen 15.9% (Clark 387-404). Between the years 1975 and 1985, the number of miles driven by Americans rose 34.6%, but the number of miles of roads increased by only 4.4% (Doan 64). Cars and other vehicles are an enormous cost to society, costing between $300 billion and $700 billion per year. These expenses are caused mainly by traffic accidents, traffic jams, and the environmental hazards created by the large number of vehicles on the road. Traffic accidents account for one of the major reasons that the current techniques of traffic control need revision. Traffic jams, along with broken cars and the lack of alternate routes, account for one half of the traffic congestion in the United States (Clark 387-404). Although the number of traffic accidents in the United States has slowly decreased over the past several years, it is still alarmingly high. In 1990, approximately 7 deaths occurred for every 10,000 people in the United States due to traffic accidents (Wallich 14). In addition, traffic jams also demonstrate the need for better methods of traffic management. Due to both the increase of women in the work force and the expansion of businesses to the suburbs, traffic jams have increased dramatically over the past few years (Koepp 55). As a consequence of traffic jams, the American population was delayed 722 million hours in 1985 (55), costing the average citizen approximately $800 (Doan 64). In 1984, drivers, while waiting in their cars during traffic jams, used three billion gallons of gasoline (Koepp 55). This figure represents four percent of the total amount of gasoline used during that year (55). Highways themselves cause a large number of traffic jams in America today. Of the 3.88 million miles of roads in the United States, 92% of them were built before 1960 (Koepp 54). The government has failed to increase the number of roads and highways proportional to the extraordinary increase of vehicles on the road. On major highways in Los Angeles, the most congested city in the United States, the average highway speed is 37 miles per hour, and is expected to drop to 17 miles per hour by the year 2000 (Doan 65). Problems with traffic congestion arise not only in the United States but also in Europe. In the spring of 1992 on the Nuremberg-Berlin motorway, a 70 kilometer traffic jam occurred during a holiday weekend ("Jam tomorrow" S15-S17). At a standstill for up to 18 hours, many drivers fell asleep and had to be awakened by police officers when the traffic jam began to disperse (S15-S17). Hazards to the environment also prove the necessity for more worthwhile methods of traffic administration. As many more vehicles make use of United States roads, the amount of poisonous hydrocarbons released into the atmosphere steadily increases. On the average, one out of every four Americans has problems breathing during the peak summer months due to the excess of smog in the atmosphere (Carpender 69). Studies have shown that automobiles produce the majority of this smog (69). This dramatic increase exists as one of the major reasons for the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1970, the same year that the Clean Air Act passed through Congress (Clark 387-404). As the number of automobiles kept increasing, the emissions standards became more rigid in 1980, especially in California (387-404). Governments even passed laws requiring large businesses to provide better and more environmentally safe methods of transportation for their employees (387-404). Noise pollution from the large number of automobiles on the road also contributes to the devastation of the environment. While traveling on the nation's many expressways, one cannot avoid seeing large, unsightly sound barriers that are constructed between busy highways and large housing developments. Also, complaints about noise pollution have increased 390% since 1978 ("Noisy Parkers" 63). Traffic problems also contribute to economic problems in today's society. In 1987, transportation in the United States cost a total of $792 billion (Koepp 55). This figure represents 17.6% of the gross national product, hence it is not difficult to see that transportation has a major effect on economics (55). Despite the many problems that exist with the present systems of transportation and traffic control, numerous solutions exist that provide both efficiency and effectiveness. These include formulating new methods of transportation, developing better traffic signaling and controlling equipment, and utilizing better techniques of highway design and construction. Designing new types of transit provides one of the most obvious and efficient approaches of improving traffic management. In today's society, mass rail transit exists as one of the most efficient and quickly developing techniques of enhancing the current transportation system. Many moderate to large sized cities currently offer some kind of rail transit, whether it be a subway or elevated system, and most of them are well-used. In the San Francisco area, for example, the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system, opened in 1972, handles approximately 29,000 passengers every day (Rauber 45-47). During natural disasters, use of rail transportation systems usually increases enormously, as rails are much easier to repair than roads (Clark 387-404). After the Los Angeles earthquake in January 1994, use of the city's rail system, Metrolink, increased from 900 passengers per day to 22,000 passengers per day (387-404). Rail transit systems do have their downfalls, however. New York's subway, commonly called the "electric subway" by many of its riders, is considered to be a terrible and unsafe form of transportation, mostly due to poor planning by the city (Bedard 22). Also, many prospective rail transit users have claimed that they would prefer not to use rail transit if they had to walk more than a half-mile to reach the station (Clark 387-404). Many residents discourage the construction of more stations as they do not want to see their neighborhoods change due to the need for a rail station (387-404). On the other side of the spectrum, however, many new and exciting forms of technologically advanced rail transit are currently in development. A MAGLEV train, or MAGnetic LEVitation train, has recently been introduced into the transportation world (Koepp 60). Driven by powerful electromagnets, this train levitates several inches above the track (60). This reduction in friction allows the train to reach speeds up to 300 miles per hour (60). A 230 mile route between Los Angeles and Las Vegas was recently proposed for the MAGLEV train (60). This route would take approximately 70 minutes to cover, as opposed to five hours by automobile (60). In addition to rail transportation, buses represent not necessarily a new transportation method, but certainly one that can be taken advantage of and utilized to its fullest potential. One of the major advantages that buses have over rail transit is that buses can take their passengers wherever they want to go, and routes can easily be changed (Koepp 58). However, there is a price to pay for this: many passengers claim that they will use bus service only if the nearest station is less than a quarter-mile from their homes (Clark 387-404). Houston, Texas provides an excellent example of an efficient bus system in action. The Houston bus service used to be considered terrible (Koepp 57). The buses were late almost 50% of the time, and almost always needed repairs (57). In 1978, the voters approved a one percent tax increase to improve bus transportation (57). As a result of this vote, $790 million was spent to improve the city's bus transportation (57). Almost 800 new buses were purchased, 20 park-and ride lots were constructed, 750 sheltered bus stops were built, and five maintenance shops were constructed (57). In the future, the city plans to keep making improvements, including increasing the number of bus express lanes on the highways (57). The American Public Transit Association ranked Houston as the city with the safest bus system in the entire United States (57). Carpooling, commonly called ridesharing, provides another alternative to the use of the automobile. Many cities and businesses have made ridesharing a more desirable form of transportation over the past few years. The 3M Company in Minneapolis, Minnesota furnishes an impressive example of successful ridesharing use (Clark 387-404). Employees sign up as passengers, drivers, or both, and pay a small monthly fee for the non-profit service. (387-404). The company offers a cash incentive for those employees who use the carpooling program (387-404). The use of high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes has increased dramatically in recent years (Clark 387-404). HOV lanes are special lanes on highways reserved for high-occupancy vehicles only (387-404). Typically, a vehicle must be carrying at least two to four passengers, depending on location, to use HOV lanes (387-404). The use of HOV lanes is restricted by small radio transmitters placed in the carpooling vehicles (387-404). When any vehicle enters a HOV lane, a transmitter above the lane scans for a receiver in the automobile (387-404). If the system detects one, the vehicle is allowed to enter the lane (387-404). If not, it alerts a nearby highway patrol officer to pull over the charlatan and ticket him (387-404). In 1990, 40 HOV lanes covered 332 miles in 20 cities in the United States (387-404). Many cities and states are promoting ridesharing by increasing taxes and fees for those drivers who drive solo (Bedard 23). However, a disadvantage to carpooling exists: those who participate must arrive and depart from work at the same times every day, a task not easy to accomplish in today's fast-paced society (Clark 387-404). Finally, bicycle transportation furnishes both a clean and energy-efficient form of transit. With the exception of speed, bicycles provide one of the most efficient forms of transportation in existence today. Bicycles produce no poisonous fumes, they provide exercise, and, if the proper safety equipment is used, they are very safe forms of transportation. Today, only about 27.5% of bicycle owners actually use them regularly, and bicyclists make up only one to three percent of the total number of commuters in the United States (Clark 387-404). However, this figure could soon rise to 5-15% if the number of bicyclist commuters keeps increasing (387-404). Many proponents of bicycle use have predicted that if cities were completely car-free, the cost of living would decrease 50-80%, since no expensive buying, parking, insuring, and maintaining of an automobile would be required ("Jam tomorrow" S15-S17). Many governments, both in the United States and overseas, have formed systems to promote the use of bicycles over automobiles. The Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA), formed in 1991, gives grants to support the use of transportation methods other than roads, such as pedestrian and rail transit (Clark 387-404). Many European countries have also attempted to support bicycle transportation, by constructing bicycle-dedicated lanes near major roadways (Knight 82-83). Several cons to using bicycle transportation exist, however. Bicycles can be somewhat dangerous, physically demanding, and not suitable for use in bad weather (Clark 387-404). In addition to adopting new methods of transit, modifying the current techniques of traffic control exists as another solution to the traffic congestion problem. One way to improve the current methods of transit is by optimizing better traffic signaling and controlling equipment. Created in 1990 by the United States Department of Transportation, Intelligent Vehicle Highway Systems (IVHS) oversees the development of advanced transportation management systems and advanced traveler information systems which monitor traffic and ease congestion (Zygmont 18). The IVHS is currently working on three stages of development for the new advanced highway control systems (Pennisi 184-186). Cars will first begin to contain warning and assistance devices which simply aid the driver (184-186). Next, automobiles will have the ability to control themselves on certain restricted-access highways (184-186). Finally, vehicles will have the capability to operate themselves on all roads (184-186). Several "smart" highway systems currently exist which are paving the way for even more evolved systems to be developed and for the advancement of the three stages of the IVHS. The SmartSonic Traffic Control Surveillance System, originally developed by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) for the Navy to use as a sub-detection system, is now in the process of being sold to the government for use as a highway control system (Marbach 95). This system detects special signals emitting from vehicles, then determines the type of vehicle. This information is then used to open special lanes, divert traffic, and limit access at entrance ramps (95). Project Pathfinder, formulated by General Motors and the Federal Highway Administration in Southern California, would make use of a two-way radio network and an in-car mapping system (Therrien 84). No dominant technology has been decided upon yet (84). Possible methods include sensors attached to the vehicles' wheels, satellite signals, synthesized voice, or radio and infrared waves (84). Many experts have predicted that if Project Pathfinder was initiated successfully, traffic congestion would drop 20-30% if 40% of the vehicles were equipped (84). The price of the equipment for each automobile is expected to cost $500-$700, and the entire mapping system will probably cost about $35 billion to construct (84). The Traffic Master system, currently in use in England, consists of a pager with a small display in each vehicle (Pennisi 184-186). Sensors in and around London measure speeds and use this data to report traffic information to the pagers (184-186). The Travtek system not only features a color display which indicates the locations of traffic jams, such as the Traffic Master system, but also shows the locations of restaurants, hotels, and other facilities (Pennisi 184-186). This system also boasts a guidance mechanism consisting of magnets which detect when the car begins to drift out of its lane and warn the driver (184-186). In addition to the several major "smart" highway systems, an abundance of smaller utilities which aid drivers is available. The Roaddirector pager, designed to help drivers avoid traffic, consists of a small pager which is updated every four minutes (Munk 20-21). The cost of the system is $9.95 per month, and for an extra $1.75 per call, alternate routes are provided (20-21). Autotalk, Inc., has recently introduced a system which gives 17 hour-a-day traffic reports to those who purchase special $125 receivers (20-21). Although not instituted yet, Cue Paging Corp. hopes to develop a traffic data system by which traffic information can be picked up by Sharp Wizard personal organizers and laptop computers (20-21). Although many of the "smart" highways systems that have recently been developed may seem like the answer to traffic congestion, many disadvantages exist associated with their use. As with most new technology, these new highway systems are terrifically expensive. The IVHS predicts that the testing and construction of a very advanced vehicle control system will cost approximately $290 billion (Zygmont 18). The system will monitor all vehicles at all times, which could be considered a breach of civil liberties (Clark 387-404). Also, like any computer, the possibility exists that hackers could infiltrate the system and wreak havoc on the computers (Yates 19). If the system should malfunction for some reason, this could create more gridlock or even accidents (19). In addition, the fact that drivers would be watching video monitors instead of the road could lead to possible accidents (19). Finally, common traffic disruptions, such as a flat tire, could interfere with the computer system and cause confusion to many other drivers (19). Another way to revise the current system of traffic control is by reforming the way in which tolls are instituted and collected. One of the most effective and advancing methods of improving the toll system is by collecting tolls electronically. Although it may seem quite difficult, automatic toll collection is technologically simple (Rauber 45-47). Electronic sensors in the roadway scan tags on each car and automatically charge the driver's bank account (45-47). Tested in Hong-Kong, this system proved to be 99.7% accurate (45-47). Electronic toll collection systems have been instituted in Oklahoma and Florida and have proved their efficiency (Zygmont 18). In addition to electronic toll collection, a system called congestion pricing has recently been developed in the field of toll collection (Rauber 45-47). Congestion pricing is a system of tolls which vary according to the amount of traffic on the road (45-47). The more traffic congesting the roads, the higher the price of the tolls (45-47). A congestion pricing procedure can be established using either manual or automatic methods (45-47). If an effective system of congestion pricing was instituted, peak hour traffic would be expected to drop 10-25% (45-47). Congestion pricing is an advantageous technique of controlling traffic because it reduces congestion, raises economic productivity, decreases pollution levels, preserves drivers' freedom of choice, saves the government from expensive construction costs, and provides revenues (Rauber 45-47). However, despite the plethora of advantages of congestion pricing, a few disadvantages exist which could lead to its downfall. The burden of congestion pricing would fall on lower-class citizens, who may have to wait until peak traffic periods conclude before they can afford to pay the toll (Rauber 45-47). Also, systems of congestion pricing may be difficult to pass through Congress (45-47). A congestion pricing demonstration project is currently planned for the Bay Bridge in the San Francisco area (Rauber 45-47). Drivers currently pay one dollar to cross the Bay Bridge between Oakland and San Francisco (45-47). The bridge tolls may rise, however, to three or four dollars during morning rush hours (45-47). Experts have theorized that this will give drivers an incentive to use other methods of transportation (45-47). Several smaller but quite effective systems of tolls have also been established which help to ease the traffic congestion problem. The DRIVE program consists of a special electronic meter which is fitted into each vehicle (Mogridge 49). The driver is charged extra if he consumes too much time on the highways and finding a place to park (49). Also, a system of urban tolls has also been instituted in some cities (49). This plan would allow vehicles to enter the city based on their license plate numbers (49). Although this project failed in London, it proved quite effective in Singapore, demonstrating its effectiveness and the vigor of new practices of toll collection in general (49). Using better techniques of highway development and construction also accounts for part of the effort to modify current traffic control methods. Although it may seem like the obvious solution, simply building more roads and highways is not the answer (Koepp 57). On numerous occasions, it has been proven that when new roads and lanes are constructed, they simply fill up to capacity again (Rauber 45-47). For example, the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system, built in 1972, currently handles 29,000 passengers per day, but roads and highways around the city of San Francisco are still badly congested (45-47). Building new highways also incurs many expensive costs (Koepp 57). The most efficient solution is the rebuilding of existing highways, since 62% of United States highways need repairs (57). Even though simple road building may just encourage more gridlock, it can also prove to be an efficient solution to traffic congestion if roads are designed with the thought of gridlock reduction in mind. In the 1970's in Atlanta, Georgia, traffic on I-75 and I-85 was horrendous (Koepp 54). Jammed with 100,000 cars every day, it quickly became evident that a solution was needed (54). In 1978, Atlanta's voters passed a $1.4 billion plan to "free the freeways" (54). This resulted in the "Spaghetti Junction", a large highway system of up to 10 lanes and capable of handling up to four times the volume of the old system (54). In Houston, Texas, the recently developed "contraflow" lane easily switches traffic from one direction to another, reducing traffic congestion in the process (Doan 64). Many new technological developments in highway construction have recently been introduced which help to ease gridlock. A material called Kynar, a special polymer piezoelectric film, generates electric signals when run over by vehicles (Amato 79). Although this product is not currently in use yet, the possibilities for its use are endless (79). It could be used to measure speeds, count vehicles, weigh trucks in motion, and an abundance of other previously time-consuming activities (79). The advancing field of materials like Kynar dramatically aids the reduction of traffic congestion. Therefore, due to the dramatic increase of licensed drivers in the United States and the minuscule increase of roads and highways, the necessity has arisen for new and improved methods of traffic control and management to handle this large increase in traffic. Works Cited: Amato, Ivan. "Kynar and gentler streets." Science News 4 February 1989: 79. Bedard, Patrick. "Send 'em a signal." Car and Driver August 1990: 22-23. Carpender, Betsy. "The suffocating politics of pollution." U.S. News and World Report 20 June 1994: 69. Clark, Charles S. "Traffic congestion: can America win the battle against gridlock?" The CQ Researcher 6 May 1994: 387-404. INFOTRAC. Doan, Michael. "Traffic Jams: New Ways to Unsnarl an Old Mess." U.S. News and World Report 16 December 1985: 64-65. "Jam tomorrow." The Economist 17 October 1992: S15-S17. INFOTRAC. Knight, Robin and Julie Corwin. "Easing gridlock, European style." U.S. News and World Report 12 September 1994: 82-83. INFOTRAC. Koepp, Stephen. "Gridlock!" Time 12 September 1988: 52-60. Marbach, William D. "An Electronic Ear for a Brainy Highway System of the Future." BusinessWeek 26 April 1993: 95. Mogridge, Martin. "Unjamming Traffic." World Press Review August 1992: 49. Munk, Nina. "Information pileup?" Forbes 11 October 1993: 20-21. INFOTRAC 70K1657. "Noisy Parkers." The Economist 10 September 1994: 63. Pennisi, Elizabeth. "Auto(-matic) commute." Science News 21 March 1992: 184-186. INFOTRAC 63M0009:A1X0433. Rauber, Paul. "Key to Gridlock? The free ride goes the way of the free lunch." Sierra March-April 1994: 45-47. INFOTRAC 73L1324:A2W0770. Therrien, Lois. "A Gridlock-Buster for the 21st Century?" BusinessWeek 27 August 1990: 84. Wallich, Paul. "Grim Statistics." Scientific American November 1993: 14. Yates, Brock. "Just what we need. Automatic Roads." Car and Driver February 1989: 19. Zygmont, Jeffrey. "Intelligent Highways." Omni January 1992: 18. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Transcendantalism.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Back in the 1800's, people trusted in their innersoul. it was called transcendentalism. People like Emerson and Thoreau were transcendentalism. They didn't think with their heads. They do things like in their first impression. If they sees that a tree is violet, they will paint it violet. During that era, Romanticism was party of it too. Ideas of Romanticism with transcendentalism. In our everyday life, we use transcendentalism. We use our head to think and our hart to feel love and hate, but sometimes you say something without thinking about it. It came from your inner soul. I paint, and when I paint, I don't draw something realistic. When I am in front of my paper, I just draw and paint with any color, I don't think. Then when I feel it is finished, I look and it can be a yellow sky and a violet ocean. I love it! What Thoreau did, of isolating himself, I couldn't do it because it is not my character. Sure I could live without television nor exaggerated furniture, but I need to speak, I need to be with someone, to listen music. I am afraid to be alone. I have a part of transcendentalism, I think we all do, even if we don't agree with it. Talking about Emerson, he had puritan influence. He struggle in his life, and this help him with his writing. Emerson was transcendentalist. Emerson did lot of writing. One of them was " Nature ". One of his transcendentalist sentence was, " I become a transparent eyeball. " With his inner soul, he really become it, it was real, what he feels. He wouldn't be able to smell or to talk to anybody, and he didn't needed to listen. With his eyeball, he was able to see everything, very far. The word he use, " transparent,'' I think is that because he was so lonely, he felt transparent. Another writer of that time, was Thoreau. He studied in Harvard. He was going to be a lawyer. Then he read " Nature, " from Emerson, and after that wanted to live school. he wanted to live his life like in " Nature." He graduate, but then Thoreau went in the forest without anything, and isolate himself in a little house in the woods. He wanted a simple life. Thoreau wanted to find out by himself what transcendentalism. He wanted to simplify life and instead of eating three meals per day, just one. He too wrote. In his writing, sentences reflected transcendentalism. One of it was, ´´ It looks poorest when you are richest. ´´ His ideas were to live your life with necessary things. Don't be materialistic. The main idea was simplicity. His quotation means for me that you are rich, but poor in the inside. In your inner soul you are poor in the inside. In your inner soul you are poor, because materialistic person only thinks in money. The difference between Emerson and Thoreau, is that Emerson was getting paid, but Thoreau not. In conclusion, a transcendentalism person, lived his life without thinking, and being alone. they trust their first impression. They go beyond, go above the senses, to rise above. Transcendentalism contains Romanticism ideas too. It had political, ethical, aesthetic and religious implications. I Think that it is hard to be a transcendentalist person, just to live around it. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Treatments for Bipolar Disorder.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The phenomenon of bipolar affective disorder has been a mystery since the 16th century. History has shown that this affliction can appear in almost anyone. Even the great painter Vincent Van Gogh is believed to have had bipolar disorder. It is clear that in our society many people live with bipolar disorder; however, despite the abundance of people suffering from the it, we are still waiting for definite explanations for the causes and cure. The one fact of which we are painfully aware is that bipolar disorder severely undermines its' victims ability to obtain and maintain social and occupational success. Because bipolar disorder has such debilitating symptoms, it is imperative that we remain vigilant in the quest for explanations of its causes and treatment. Affective disorders are characterized by a smorgasbord of symptoms that can be broken into manic and depressive episodes. The depressive episodes are characterized by intense feelings of sadness and despair that can become feelings of hopelessness and helplessness. Some of the symptoms of a depressive episode include anhedonia, disturbances in sleep and appetite, psycomoter retardation, loss of energy, feelings of worthlessness, guilt, difficulty thinking, indecision, and recurrent thoughts of death and suicide (Hollandsworth, Jr. 1990 ). The manic episodes are characterized by elevated or irritable mood, increased energy, decreased need for sleep, poor judgment and insight, and often reckless or irresponsible behavior (Hollandsworth, Jr. 1990 ). Bipolar affective disorder affects approximately one percent of the population (approximately three million people) in the United States. It is presented by both males and females. Bipolar disorder involves episodes of mania and depression. These episodes may alternate with profound depressions characterized by a pervasive sadness, almost inability to move, hopelessness, and disturbances in appetite, sleep, in concentrations and driving. Bipolar disorder is diagnosed if an episode of mania occurs whether depression has been diagnosed or not (Goodwin, Guze, 1989, p 11). Most commonly, individuals with manic episodes experience a period of depression. Symptoms include elated, expansive, or irritable mood, hyperactivity, pressure of speech, flight of ideas, inflated self esteem, decreased need for sleep, distractibility, and excessive involvement in reckless activities (Hollandsworth, Jr. 1990 ). Rarest symptoms were periods of loss of all interest and retardation or agitation (Weisman, 1991). As the National Depressive and Manic Depressive Association (MDMDA) has demonstrated, bipolar disorder can create substantial developmental delays, marital and family disruptions, occupational setbacks, and financial disasters. This devastating disease causes disruptions of families, loss of jobs and millions of dollars in cost to society. Many times bipolar patients report that the depressions are longer and increase in frequency as the individual ages. Many times bipolar states and psychotic states are misdiagnosed as schizophrenia. Speech patterns help distinguish between the two disorders (Lish, 1994). The onset of Bipolar disorder usually occurs between the ages of 20 and 30 years of age, with a second peak in the mid-forties for women. A typical bipolar patient may experience eight to ten episodes in their lifetime. However, those who have rapid cycling may experience more episodes of mania and depression that succeed each other without a period of remission (DSM III-R). The three stages of mania begin with hypomania, in which patients report that they are energetic, extroverted and assertive (Hirschfeld, 1995). The hypomania state has led observers to feel that bipolar patients are "addicted" to their mania. Hypomania progresses into mania and the transition is marked by loss of judgment (Hirschfeld, 1995). Often, euphoric grandiose characteristics are displayed, and paranoid or irritable characteristics begin to manifest. The third stage of mania is evident when the patient experiences delusions with often paranoid themes. Speech is generally rapid and hyperactive behavior manifests sometimes associated with violence (Hirschfeld, 1995). When both manic and depressive symptoms occur at the same time it is called a mixed episode. Those afflicted are a special risk because there is a combination of hopelessness, agitation, and anxiety that makes them feel like they "could jump out of their skin"(Hirschfeld, 1995). Up to 50% of all patients with mania have a mixture of depressed moods. Patients report feeling dysphoric, depressed, and unhappy; yet, they exhibit the energy associated with mania. Rapid cycling mania is another presentation of bipolar disorder. Mania may be present with four or more distinct episodes within a 12 month period. There is now evidence to suggest that sometimes rapid cycling may be a transient manifestation of the bipolar disorder. This form of the disease exhibits more episodes of mania and depression than bipolar. Lithium has been the primary treatment of bipolar disorder since its introduction in the 1960's. It is main function is to stabilize the cycling characteristic of bipolar disorder. In four controlled studies by F. K. Goodwin and K. R. Jamison, the overall response rate for bipolar subjects treated with Lithium was 78% (1990). Lithium is also the primary drug used for long- term maintenance of bipolar disorder. In a majority of bipolar patients, it lessens the duration, frequency, and severity of the episodes of both mania and depression. Unfortunately, as many as 40% of bipolar patients are either unresponsive to lithium or can not tolerate the side effects. Some of the side effects include thirst, weight gain, nausea, diarrhea, and edema. Patients who are unresponsive to lithium treatment are often those who experience dysphoric mania, mixed states, or rapid cycling bipolar disorder. One of the problems associated with lithium is the fact the long-term lithium treatment has been associated with decreased thyroid functioning in patients with bipolar disorder. Preliminary evidence also suggest that hypothyroidism may actually lead to rapid-cycling (Bauer et al., 1990). Another problem associated with the use of lithium is experienced by pregnant women. Its use during pregnancy has been associated with birth defects, particularly Ebstein's anomaly. Based on current data, the risk of a child with Ebstein's anomaly being born to a mother who took lithium during her first trimester of pregnancy is approximately 1 in 8,000, or 2.5 times that of the general population (Jacobson et al., 1992). There are other effective treatments for bipolar disorder that are used in cases where the patients cannot tolerate lithium or have been unresponsive to it in the past. The American Psychiatric Association's guidelines suggest the next line of treatment to be Anticonvulsant drugs such as valproate and carbamazepine. These drugs are useful as antimanic agents, especially in those patients with mixed states. Both of these medications can be used in combination with lithium or in combination with each other. Valproate is especially helpful for patients who are lithium noncompliant, experience rapid-cycling, or have comorbid alcohol or drug abuse. Neuroleptics such as haloperidol or chlorpromazine have also been used to help stabilize manic patients who are highly agitated or psychotic. Use of these drugs is often necessary because the response to them are rapid, but there are risks involved in their use. Because of the often severe side effects, Benzodiazepines are often used in their place. Benzodiazepines can achieve the same results as Neuroleptics for most patients in terms of rapid control of agitation and excitement, without the severe side effects. Antidepressants such as the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI's) fluovamine and amitriptyline have also been used by some doctors as treatment for bipolar disorder. A double-blind study by M. Gasperini, F. Gatti, L. Bellini, R.Anniverno, and E. Smeraldi showed that fluvoxamine and amitriptyline are highly effective treatments for bipolar patients experiencing depressive episodes (1992). This study is controversial however, because conflicting research shows that SSRI's and other antidepressants can actually precipitate manic episodes. Most doctors can see the usefulness of antidepressants when used in conjunction with mood stabilizing medications such as lithium. In addition to the mentioned medical treatments of bipolar disorder, there are several other options available to bipolar patients, most of which are used in conjunction with medicine. One such treatment is light therapy. One study compared the response to light therapy of bipolar patients with that of unipolar patients. Patients were free of psychotropic and hypnotic medications for at least one month before treatment. Bipolar patients in this study showed an average of 90.3% improvement in their depressive symptoms, with no incidence of mania or hypomania. They all continued to use light therapy, and all showed a sustained positive response at a three month follow-up (Hopkins and Gelenberg, 1994). Another study involved a four week treatment of bright morning light treatment for patients with seasonal affective disorder and bipolar patients. This study found a statistically significant decrement in depressive symptoms, with the maximum antidepressant effect of light not being reached until week four (Baur, Kurtz, Rubin, and Markus, 1994). Hypomanic symptoms were experienced by 36% of bipolar patients in this study. Predominant hypomanic symptoms included racing thoughts, deceased sleep and irritability. Surprisingly, one-third of controls also developed symptoms such as those mentioned above. Regardless of the explanation of the emergence of hypomanic symptoms in undiagnosed controls, it is evident from this study that light treatment may be associated with the observed symptoms. Based on the results, careful professional monitoring during light treatment is necessary, even for those without a history of major mood disorders. Another popular treatment for bipolar disorder is electro-convulsive shock therapy. ECT is the preferred treatment for severely manic pregnant patients and patients who are homicidal, psychotic, catatonic, medically compromised, or severely suicidal. In one study, researchers found marked improvement in 78% of patients treated with ECT, compared to 62% of patients treated only with lithium and 37% of patients who received neither, ECT or lithium (Black et al., 1987). A final type of therapy that I found is outpatient group psychotherapy. According to Dr. John Graves, spokesperson for The National Depressive and Manic Depressive Association has called attention to the value of support groups, and challenged mental health professionals to take a more serious look at group therapy for the bipolar population. Research shows that group participation may help increase lithium compliance, decrease denial regarding the illness, and increase awareness of both external and internal stress factors leading to manic and depressive episodes. Group therapy for patients with bipolar disorders responds to the need for support and reinforcement of medication management, and the need for education and support for the interpersonal difficulties that arise during the course of the disorder. References Bauer, M.S., Kurtz, J.W., Rubin, L.B., and Marcus, J.G. (1994). Mood and Behavioral effects of four-week light treatment in winter depressives and controls. Journal of Psychiatric Research. 28, 2: 135-145. Bauer, M.S., Whybrow, P.C. and Winokur, A. (1990). Rapid Cycling Bipolar Affective Disorder: I. Association with grade I hypothyroidism. Archives of General Psychiatry. 47: 427-432. Black, D.W., Winokur, G., and Nasrallah, A. (1987). Treatment of Mania: A naturalistic study of electroconvulsive therapy versus lithium in 438 patients. Journal of Clinical Psychiatry. 48: 132-139. Gasperini, M., Gatti, F., Bellini, L., Anniverno, R., Smeralsi, E., (1992). Perspectives in clinical psychopharmacology of amitriptyline and fluvoxamine. Pharmacopsychiatry. 26:186-192. Goodwin, F.K., and Jamison, K.R. (1990). Manic Depressive Illness. New York: Oxford University Press. Goodwin, Donald W. and Guze, Samuel B. (1989). Psychiatric Diagnosis. Fourth Ed. Oxford University. p.7. Hirschfeld, R.M. (1995). Recent Developments in Clinical Aspects of Bipolar Disorder. The Decade of the Brain. National Alliance for the Mentally Ill. Winter. Vol. VI. Issue II. Hollandsworth, James G. (1990). The Physiology of Psychological Disorders. Plenem Press. New York and London. P.111. Hopkins, H.S. and Gelenberg, A.J. (1994). Treatment of Bipolar Disorder: How Far Have We Come? Psychopharmacology Bulletin. 30 (1): 27-38. Jacobson, S.J., Jones, K., Ceolin, L., Kaur, P., Sahn, D., Donnerfeld, A.E., Rieder, M., Santelli, R., Smythe, J., Patuszuk, A., Einarson, T., and Koren, G., (1992). Prospective multicenter study of pregnancy outcome after lithium exposure during the first trimester. Laricet. 339: 530-533. Lish, J.D., Dime-Meenan, S., Whybrow, P.C., Price, R.A. and Hirschfeld, R.M. (1994). The National Depressive and Manic Depressive Association (DMDA) Survey of Bipolar Members. Affective Disorders. 31: pp.281-294. Weisman, M.M., Livingston, B.M., Leaf, P.J., Florio, L.P., Holzer, C. (1991). Psychiatric Disorders in America. Affective Disorders. Free Press. fghghghghghhghghghgh f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\understanding homelessness.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ I knew that I would encounter homelessness when I came to Berkeley. I was expecting it, because just about everybody I knew had something to say about the rumors they'd heard filter over from the West Coast. Coming from New York, however, I figured I'd seen it all, and would be in control over whatever I would be up against. Reality quickly hit me, though, as I began to familiarize myself with Berkeley and its main streets. I'd never seen anything quite like Telegraph Avenue and People's Park. No matter how much poverty one has seen throughout the course of their lives, it's far more difficult to accept when it occurs in areas of high concentration. Understanding the nature of homeless people asking for money and their interactions with people walking up and down a main street such as Telegraph Avenue is a difficult task. This observation process, which took place on Telegraph Avenue watching the homeless at "work", was difficult because of the wealth of information one could find in simply watching as one person asked another for money. We looked for a number of signals in the interactions, considering people's ages, how they reacted physically, whether or not they communicated verbally, their demeanor throughout the interaction, and the importance of eye-contact. We must also wrestle with the ambiguity of the power structure within the situation, because it is not nearly as clear as it seems. In the end, we will try to decipher the true nature of these confrontations, concluding by comparing the analysis of these situations to those found in the works of Erving Goffman and Robin Leidner. INTERACTIONS The difficulty in defining the parameters of dominance within the interaction comes in understanding the disparity between the social status of the person being asked for money and the status of the individual begging for it; the real science lies in determining how little that difference actually matters. Socially, the respective status of each individual should be quite clear. The person walking down the street is probably either employed or a student. The stereotypical homeless person, on the other hand, may have alcohol or drug problems, may be suffering from schizophrenia, and is clearly not capable of functioning within the confines of mainstream society. Clearly, according to unwritten rules of our community, the employed person has a much higher social standing. Despite these social differences, the actual interaction is controlled by the panhandler. Their authority role begins with the initiation of the interaction; by being the one to cause the confrontation, the second party- the one being asked for change- is forced to react, if not to respond, in some way. The initiation process itself varies quite a bit from panhandler to panhandler and has a tremendous impact in terms of reinforcing the notion of authority. For example, there were panhandlers we observed who were not capable of singling out an individual person and therefore had a great deal of difficulty initiating or holding on to any interactions; on the other hand, one man we watched was particularly effective simply because he went out of his way to single people out in the passing crowds, he was loud enough to make even the most jaded person turn and was clearly in control of the interaction. Once control has been established and the interaction has commenced, it is necessary to gauge the response of the individual being asked for money and exactly what that response may mean. Of nineteen interactions we observed, only seven people made eye contact with the person asking for money. We found that it was often easier for someone to say no if they did not have to look the person straight in the eyes. One common response was to look to the person without making eye-contact, and then respond while turning away from the panhandler. Many people did choose to communicate verbally, often using the phrase, "I don't have any money." In all likelihood, almost all of the seven people who uttered that phrase had at least a some money, and the homeless probably know that. Still, the phrase- whether an outright lie or the gospel truth- manages to carry a great deal of weight. Another micro-interaction we saw quite a bit of was the use of the body to communicate certain attitudes without the use of words. There were people who looked up as soon as they noticed the homeless people and would actually face their entire bodies to them as they walked by, suggesting acceptance, and there were others who angled their bodies so that their shoulders provided a clear barrier, shielding the individual as they walked silently by. Although I had expected age to be a factor in the interactions- and it was in that panhandlers did not ask children for money-peoples age, and even the nature of their dress did not seem to have any clear impact on the interactions. In truth, finding many specific patterns in these interactions would require far more time spent in the field doing research. One factor which I took notice of early on in the field research process was the behavior of people wearing sunglasses and their responses to the same panhandlers. The initial results, in which three out of three subjects wearing sunglasses actually struck up conversations and appeared particularly at ease- to the point of laughter in two instances- convinced me that it would be worth doing more research during the daylight hours. The next time I was on Telegraph during the day I sat down for a few minutes and watched only for people wearing sunglasses. Six people passed a homeless man directly outside of Fat Slice Pizza wearing sunglasses during the next ten minutes. Of those six individuals, two ignored the requests for change and the other four acted friendly and natural, looking directly at them and responding in a pleasant manner. In total, of the nine people I witnessed wearing sunglasses, seven of them chose to respond to the beggar, a much higher percentage than in the total group. Interestingly enough, however, not one of the sunglass wearers offered money. If we look back at the factors which characterize the nature of these interactions, eye-contact would be very high on the list. The fact that sunglass wearers have an instant barrier between themselves and those asking for money makes the argument all the more reasonable that eye-contact has the greatest impact on the interaction. It's much easier to respond to someone if you don't have to look them in the eye; in fact, wearing sunglasses automatically puts the propositioned individual into the dominant role in the interaction. The reality is that the information set may not be an entirely accurate representation of the actual social group; it's hard to believe that over seventy-five percent of the entire Berkeley population would be inclined to talk with panhandlers simply by wearing sunglasses. What the information set does suggest is that, for some people, sunglasses lighten the tension in a somewhat difficult exchange. LEIDNER If we were to look at the work of Robin Leidner in the book Fast Food, Fast Talk, we would actually find similarities in the nature of some aspects of the interactions between the Telegraph confrontations and the interactions between customers and employees at McDonalds, suggesting that both interactions are somewhat routinized. Anyone familiar with Telegraph Avenue knows that, upon deciding to walk down the street, there is a very high chance that they will be asked for money. In response to this, some of us do everything in our power to avoid Telegraph altogether. Those of us who don't avoid it find that a planned approach to these interactions is often the most effective method for dealing with them. We may choose to give change, we may choose to smile and apologize for not having any more money, and we may simply ignore the requests. Still, there is a good chance that what ever we choose to do, we begin to prepare as soon as we see a homeless person. When we walk into McDonalds, Leidner explains, we must, in order for the purchase to run smoothly, already have a general idea of what we want and how to order it. In both situations, the interaction has been routinized, in that a certain routine, or set of actions, has been developed in order to deal with a situation. Even the expectations of the employee and the panhandler fit directly into the routine. If you were to ask a McDonalds employee for a large bowl of pasta and a glass of wine, they would not immediately be able to respond; it's likely that the same reaction would occur if you went up to a panhandler and asked them for money, challenging them to behave as you are expected to. While the nature of each of these two routines may be quite different, there is no denying that there are many similarities inherent in both. GOFFMAN This notion of a planned response, as well as the behavior of a panhandler tossing pennies onto the street, fit very well into Erving Goffman's discussions in Asylums. Goffman talks both about secondary adjustments, which he defines as "ways in which the individual stands apart from the role and the self that were taken for granted for him by the institution" (Goffman, page 189), and mortification, or being "stripped of one's identity kit." (Goffman, page 21). By developing techniques in order to most quickly and painlessly respond to the demands for change, we are actually making a secondary adjustment; if we never trained ourselves to deal with these situations, we would probably feel very ill at ease with the situation and not handle ourselves well. Being put out on the street is clearly quite difficult. How does one respond to suddenly being alone and forced to fend for oneself, without money, shelter, or food? This process of developing a new life on the street, without the support of society, is very close to what Goffman calls mortification. Although the situations are very different, one with too many walls, one with too few, there is no denying the sense of loss of self felt in both cases. The prevention of mortification is one of the biggest reasons for secondary adjustments and when we look at one particular panhandler, who, in an effort to maintain some final shreds of dignity, would throw any pennies he had been given out onto the sidewalk, we see a clear adjustment made. To this man, it wouldn't matter if he was given ten dollars worth of pennies, because needing those pennies represented the lowest he could possibly reach CONCLUSION What does any of this mean? What can we gain from looking at this information? While no great social upheaval will occur because of this research, there is no question that we at least have a bit more perspective as to the nature of these interactions. Though I expected to find more patterns- for example, I had expected that older people would perhaps be more sympathetic- I also had not expected to witness so many clear interactions from the homeless and methods used to challenge the authority the panhandlers had gained. Even though there is no question that the homeless, through the initiation of the interaction, control that element of the confrontation, it's important to realize that it is the person who is being asked for the money who ends up with control as it is their choice whether or not to give away any of their money. Out of about forty people who walked by at one point, only one of them gave a panhandler any money, and that represents a very clear pattern. Sadly, that pattern, without a significant effort on the part of local and national government, won't change anytime soon. We may never cure the problems faced by the homeless and we may never be able to retrain our society to be more tolerant, but we can at least, hopefully, begin to take steps to that end. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\United NationsJapan.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ REFORM JAPAN FIFTH COMMITTEE Many of the UN's functions and responsibilities have come under weighty circumstances. For example, the delegation of revenue to it's ramifications and the standard of which "who" will "maintain" a seat on the security counsil are two of the main topics. First off, financing the United Nations 15 specialized agencies, the UN itself, and roughly 9,000 staff members (of which 40% are of professional grade) with the "Regular Budget" is a problem that continues to be a major threat to the continuation of the UN for two reasons: Some of the larger industrial countries, such as the United States and Russia, have been with-holding a portion of their assessed contribution due to their dissatisfaction with certain aspects of UN administration. The concern also exists that since all members must pay in U.S. dollars which are earned strictly through trade, the United States indirectly causes many developing nations to fall behind on payments. Secondly, the struggle just to maintain one of the two year seats on the SC has been a major concern. A yearning for a permanent seat on the SC has been expressed by many more countries. The European Union (EU)stated on April 9, 1996 that it feels strongly that the United States should not collect anything off of the UN because it is not contributing what it is supposed to. Many third world nations, such as Indonesia and Chile, are frightened by the attempts at cutting the UN's budget. Most countries feel Japan deserves a permanent seat on the Security Council. The UN proposed an elimination of 70 worldwide UN information centers on May 13,1996, With the supporting argument that with our current information superhighways these centers are becoming antiquated. Nations such as Indonesia and Chile argue that such cuts are unjust to those who have not been given the "Technological Gift." The nation of Japan is going against what would normally be expected of us. We are not following along in the trail left by the United States in the ongoing struggle for the United Nations financial reform. Instead we hold ground in that everyone should pay their assessment. Japan also feels it is imperative for Japan to recieve a permanent seat on the SC, because it is the second largest donor dealing with pecuniary items. Factors that affect Japans present position are the long-standing focus on economic development, the policy of unilateral pacifism, the large assessment due to the UN, and sharp splits in public opinion. The nation of Japan supports with-holding full UN privileges to those nations which refuse to pay their assessment and/or their pending debts in full. Also, the nation of Japan feels thatpermanent seating on the Security Council should be based on assesed contributions as well as former violations of the founding and framework principles by which the Security Council abides. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Untraditional Traditions.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Nontraditional Tradtions We live in an age in which it is hard to spend time together as a family. Many families today wonder if having quality time together is a thing of the past. We are inordinately busy, for one thing, whether household bread-winners or college students. Also, the definition of family has changed. We are dealing with new definitions and characterizations of the idea of family. Some of us have traditional families. Some families have divorced, single, and/or remarried parents, creating a rather confusing family tree. Some people choose to live their lives alone, but may still be close enough to some friends to consider them family. Whatever the circumstances, many of us honestly don't know how to celebrate together. We may even see the word "tradition" as something stultifying and old, having no meaning for or application to us personally; something usually being forced upon us by someone who smells funny and is only seen on holidays. What all of this means is that we can no longer simply follow the examples of old. It is up to us to create new family traditions. Celebrating is not hard. We all know about celebrating and have some ways of doing it. The only challenge is to find new ways. Why do we need to celebrate tradition? It gives us something to look forward to and makes a formal statement that there are some things in life to be grateful for. The notion of honoring tradition is unsettling for some people; let alone creating new ones. We understand that we need something to add a sense of order and stability to our lives. But we are not sure about how to create our own traditions. We seem to think that traditions must be heavy and complex ideas that had been around for hundreds of years and will be around for a hundred more. In my opinion, this is not true. It need not be big or religious at all. I believe a tradition is something that you do once that feels good, so you do it again and again. The tale in Frost's "Mending Wall" can be viewed as an impromptu tradition. The two neighbors needing to repair the wall after the winter chill, find time to converse with each other about what's on their minds. For example, every Sunday my dad makes tea and puts out two cups, his and mine. I am used to this. If I had to reach in the cupboard to get my own cup, something would be wrong. As it is, I get up out of my bed, I go into the kitchen, I see my cup sitting there, and I know I am ready to start the morning and I feel a little happy. Similarly, I sleep everynight with a greatly worn pillow that really should be thrown away, but for which I have a fondness for. I have a bad case of "pillow-head" every morning to prove it. When I lay my head on it at night ready for sleep, I am comforted. Every day, my mom makes dinner while I do my homework listening to the familiar bangs and clangs associated with making a meal. On Sunday, our family goes out to a Chinese restaurant for dinner. These small things are some of our traditions. They are all qualities that identify my family and make us special. If we did not have these particular traditions, we would have others. That is because traditions insist upon themselves. Look around your own life and you will realize that they are everywhere. We clearly need them to provide a sense of order in our lives. I know a chef who works long hours and is never home for dinner except on Monday. Then, he leaves the restaurant earlier than usual, and hurries home to spend time with his family. His family knows that they can depend on this, and they celebrate with a special dinner at home every Monday night. My friends Brian and Andy have a house that has both a living room and a family room. I have never seen them in their living room. Once I admired its beautiful decoration and said, "But you never use it, do you?" "Oh, yes!" they said. "Every Sunday, we read the paper in here." My neighbor decorates the windows on her house for the season. Valentines, snowflakes, pumpkins, and fireworks are drawn by her children and taped into place. I get reminded of upcoming holidays that way. My friend Vinh gives his son Jackie "horsy rides." Everynight at seven-thirty, Jackie saddles up on the mighty steed and is buckled off landing on the soft carpeting. It is hard to tell who gets more out of this. All of these moments are traditions, inventions of people who mean to put more meaning into their lives and those they love. Tradition is in all our lives in one way or another. Without participation in such activities there would be no family bond or pride. Being involved in these activities brings people closer and makes us understand who we are. Everything we do and every day of our lives we take part in a tradition in one form or another. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\urban sociology.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Have you ever put yourself in someone else's position to see how it would feel like to be that person for one day? I have, for my urban experience paper I put myself in a position of a hotel clerk in a high-classed hotel, as a worker in a factory, as a homeless person living in a shelter and as a "simple person" living in the suburbs. My first urban experience that I was very curious about compared to the other three, was how it would be like to live in the shoes of a homeless person living in a shelter for a day. I was very eager to find out how one becomes homeless, because I never understood why there were so many homeless people scattered all over New York, when there are more than enough ways to avoid becoming homeless. My mentality about homeless people was always, that person chose to be homeless because he / she just basically gave up on life, stopped trying to live, and refused to seek help from social workers. Because, I know there are f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\US Constitution.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ US Constitution The Unites States Constitution incorporates many significant figures. Three of these are: The Elastic clause, The Amendment Process, and the Electorial College To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof. This is the elastic clause. It gives congress the right to do anything for the betterment of the American people. It makes the constitution flexible and keeps it with the times. The amendment process is how changes can be made to the constitution to keep it with the times. For example, Amendment 19 states that the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. To make an amendment, first 2/3 of either house must propose it. Then to ratify it, 3/4 of the state legislatures must approve it. The Electoral College system is a system used to elect the President. Each state is given a certain amount of Electoral votes. This number is based on how many congressmen that particular state has. The people of the state vote, and whichever candidate gets the most votes gets all of that state's electoral votes. We see this used every four years in the presidential election. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\USE EXAMPLES TO EVALUATE THE OPTIMUM SIZE OF A FIRM.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The optimum size of a firm is a very subjective idea. The ways in which size can help or hinder a firm vary from which angle you a looking at the situation from. Size can have its benefits and its drawbacks, and each firm will have its own benefits and drawbacks that come from either increasing in size, or remaining small, and these will depend on the market in which the firm is in, the current economy, and in some cases the preferences of the manager(s). For example a small firm may be small for many reasons. It may be small because it has just started out in business, and still has relatively little funds, so although the owner/manager may have aspirations of the business growing, at the present time, his main concern would be keeping the business afloat. Another small business may stay small due to the preference of the manager/owner, for example a corner newsagent's shop may remain a small retail business as the owner is making a profit from the business that he finds acceptable, and does not want the hassle of either expanding his current business, setting up new shops, or taking over another business. The size of a business does however depend a great deal on the market which it is in. For example a business which makes specialist goods, or caters to only a very small number of people, will not be able to grow beyond the capacity of that market. This means that the optimum size for a business in a market with little growth and only a small number of prospective customers would be large enough to serve as many customers as it had market share for, but small enough to ensure that they don't over produce. If there is a fairly large market for the product/service that a company is providing, then there is likely to be a large amount of competition in the market. This means that it would be fairly hard for the company to grow in that market unless they did one of three things. Firstly they could come up with a better and cheaper product then the rest of their competitors, if their customers noticed this then the customers would choose their product over their competitors, leading to growth in the company (although internal growth can be one of the slowest, and sometimes one of the most costly methods of growth). Secondly the company could invest money into giving themselves a recognisable brand name, although this can be a costly procedure, and can take a great deal of time, one customers recognise a brand name they will choose the product over a less swell known branded product. Thirdly the company could take over, merge with or enter into a joint venture with another company in their market. If the company were to horizontally integrate with another company in their market, they would take on all of that company's knowledge an expertise in that area. The company could also utilise and pre-existing brand names which the other company had established. They could sell off any assets from the other company which they did not require (assets stripping) and utilise economies of scale. Economies of scale are one of the reasons why companies choose to expand. Economies of Scale are where when a company grows, it can take advantage of its size in bulk discounts, machine utilisation etc. However once a company reaches a certain size than diseconomies of scale start to predominate over economies of scale. Diseconomies of scale can be caused by thing such as administrative waste, and break down of communications. This balance between the predomination of economies of scale and the predomination of diseconomies of scale is what some people consider to be the optimum size of a firm, however this is only one view point. For example in a small retail outlet (such as a corner shop) it is the manager's personal preference to keep the business the size that it currently is, therefore in this situation for the owner of the small business it is the optimum size of the firm for him, but a more analytical approach would suggest otherwise. For many small businesses the optimum size is small, sometimes this is because of the VAT threshold, as if a company's profits are greater than £40,000 VAT must be paid on all sales, thus if the company were to slightly increase in size so it made more than £40,000 in profit, it would have to pay VAT leaving it worse off than before it grew (even though economies of scale etc. would be achieved, and after expanding more the firm would be better off, the period of reduced profits due to the VAT may endanger the company). Therefore in conclusion I would say that there are many different factors that might determine the optimum size of a firm, and many different point of view of what the optimum size of a firm really is. It varies from company to company and from person to person as to what they think the optimum size for a firm really is. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\W E B Du Bois.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ "One ever feels his two-ness. An American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two warring ideals in one dark body whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder." This was how William E. B. Du Bois described how it felt to be a Negro in the beginning of the twentieth century in his book The Souls of Black Folk. W.E.B. Du Bois, was a black editor, historian, sociologist, and a leader of the civil rights movement in the United States. He helped found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and was its spokesman in the first decades of its existence. William Edward Bughardt Du Bois was born three years following the Civil War, on February 23, 1868, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. His paternal side was French, settling in America in 1674 and, the Burghardts', his maternal side, were descendants of slaves who fought in the Civil War. William' father died when he was a child and was reared by his mother, and judgmental aunts. Massachusetts was predominately white and so were Du Bois friends. As William grew he realized some people thought that his black skin was a disadvantage. In high school, his teachers encouraged him as a student and school work always came easy to him. Du Bois excelled in Latin and Greek and participated in active discussions about the meaning of Love and Life. At the age of 15, William began to write weekly columns in the New York Globe and Springfield Republican. Attending Harvard was W.E.B.'s longtime dream, however after receiving a scholarship to Fisk University in Nashville he gladly accepted. Du Bois was amazed by the South, he felt a home on the campus of Fisk. William had never been surrounded by fellow blacks, and he began to understand the plight of the Negro. He enjoyed concerts given by Fisk's Jubilee Singers, giving him faith about blacks, and how they will have a better life to come. However, after visiting back home he saw that Tennessee deprived Negroes of citizenship rights, and that Negroes were the blunt of jokes. W.E.B. realized the discrimination and knew something had to happen to improve the lives of Negroes. "I am a Negro, and I glory in the name!," claimed Du Bois in one of his pep speeches at Fisk. Upon graduation at Fisk, William received a scholarship to Harvard. He never felt as if he belonged at Harvard as he had at Fisk. While at Harvard Du Bois was not allowed to join clubs and dances due to his skin color. With his background and study in philosophy, W.E.B. was driven to write The Suppression of the African Slave- Trade. This was the first volume in the Harvard Historical Series, and William was the first Negro to receive a Doctor of Philosophy degree from Harvard. Although Du Bois was qualified for any teaching position, no white university would hire him. After a two year fellowship in Europe, he obtained a teaching position in Latin and Greek at Wilberforce, in Ohio. Two years were spent at Wilberforce, when William married Nina Gomer. The University of Pennsylvania asked Du Bois to do a study of the Negroes of Philadelphia. After living in the slums of Pennsylvania, he published Philadelphia Negro about the lifestyle of a Negro in Philadelphia. Du Bois spent the next 13 years teaching history and economics at Atlanta University, writing many books including: The Negro in Business, The Negro Artisan, Notes on a Negro Crime, and many others. All his books at this time dealt with Negro history and their living conditions in the late 1890's to 1910's. In 1900, W.E.B. Du Bois attended the first Pan-African Conference in London. After attending the conference in London, he later created the Pan-African Conferences in the United States and in Europe. For this extraordinary accomplishment, he received the Springarn Medal in 1920. Booker T. Washington felt that Negroes should gain rights slowly, however Du Bois wanted immediate rights for the Negro. The split between Washington and Du Bois reflected a bitter division of opinion among these two prominent black leaders. In 1905, at Niagara Falls, Canada, Du Bois joined the more militant leaders to demand equal voting rights and educational opportunities for blacks and an end to racial discrimination. However the Niagara Movement lost momentum within a few years, when he helped form another group, in 1910 which became the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. He edited the NAACP's journal, the Crisis, in which he often wrote that blacks should develop farms, industries, and businesses separate from the white economy. NAACP officials, who desired integration, criticized his opinion, and he eventually resigned as editor in 1934. He returned to Atlanta University, and in 1939 launched Phylon, a new magazine about blacks' lives. W.E.B. wrote many books while most notably The Souls of Black Folk that was a collection of essays promoting black leadership in the government. His other works include Black Reconstruction, Dusk to Dawn, and The Autobiography of W.E.B. Du Bois. Later, Du Bois believed that the United States could not solve its racial problems and that the only country opposed to racial discrimination was the Soviet Union. He was awarded the Communist-sponsored International Peace prize in 1952 and the Soviet Lenin Peace prize in 1958. Du Bois joined the Communist party of the United States in 1961 and emigrated to Ghana, where he became a citizen, in 1963. "My great-grandfather was carried away in chains from the Gulf of Guinea," he said, "I have returned that my dust shall mingle with the dust of my forefathers." Du Bois died in Ghana on Aug. 27, 1963. William Edward Bughardt Du Bois was a controversial black leader who was not afraid to speak and write his opinion. With Du Bois, Negroes of America found courage and a source of strength to strive for equality. As W.E.B. Du Bois said: "My leadership was a leadership of ideas. I never was, nor ever will be, personally popular." f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\War in the Falklands 2.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ War in the Falklands Fact: April 2, 1982, Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands At 4:30 A.M., helicopters had started to land on Mullet Creek; they were the first of the many invaders from Argentina. At 6:08 A.M., an attack was at full fledge. The Argentina government had claimed that they told their men it was to be a bloodless fight, but that was not the case. Argentineans busted down barrack doors and began to throw powerful grenades into the barracks and killing many unsuspecting men. Fact: February 26, 1982, The war could have been prevented On February 1982, there was supposed to be a meeting where the British government would hold a meeting with the Argentinean government to talk about preventing the war. This was a two-day event in New York, the first day the Argentineans were to host the meeting, but there was a glitch in planning, and the dates were to be changed. The leaders were under so much pressure, that some said they were going to breakdown. What basically happened at the meeting, was that both sides could not come to agreement. This resulted in a war. Nobody really knew who owned the Falkland Islands. Some thought Spain, Argentina thought they owned it, and Britain thought they owned it. No agreements could be made. Fact: The war of the Falklands was a perfect opportunity to unleash state of the art weapons on the opponents. Later, after the first invasions, some messages went out over the radios. The first ones told people of a small invasion, then they began broadcasting from live sights, complete with gun fire in the background. There were a lot of battles that went on between the British and the Argentineans. The British won some, and the Argentineans won others. They were all fighting for the Falklands. These were a group of small islands that were all bunched up. You could not use the islands for much, seeing as that they were craggy mountains. That would not make for very productive farm land, but there were a lot of mountain lions and goats. After the many battles, many deaths and many tests on weapons, the British had won the War in the Falklands. This war was won both in military action, and in speech. Most say to end violence in verbal communication, but verbal communication was a giant factor in the beginning of this war. Conclusion This book had a couple aspects of history, it had facts, told the reader how the British government thought, and even had some of the British speech in it. I learned how the Falklands were fought over, in the sense of military tactics and what the Falklands were. Although the Falkland Islands weren't very good land, the British did not want to lose it. If they did loose it, it would make their government and army look bad, and they did not want that. I also read how some of the new weapons were used and their effects on the war. I thought this book was not too good. It did include many historical facts and dates, and the format was excellent. The things that made this book hard to fallow and challenging to understand was that it was written out of order. The first thing it talks about is how there was an invasion, but in the next chapter it was talking about how the whole thing could have been avoided. Also, I think the authors went into too much detail. It gets to a point where the details get old. Also, I think the war was stupid. I don't think that as many people should have died. The whole thing could have been avoided anyway. But here is the really dumb part: what are the Falklands? A bunch of rocky hills in the water. You could not farm much on them, and not many people lived on them. You would love living there if you were a hermit, but the war as I saw it was "Whoever gets the most toys at the end wins!" I can see why the sides wanted it, but was it that important? If someone really wanted to learn a lot mare about this war, they should read this book. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone else though. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\War in the Falklands 3.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ War in the Falklands Fact: April 2, 1982, Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands At 4:30 A.M., helicopters had started to land on Mullet Creek; they were the first of the many invaders from Argentina. At 6:08 A.M., an attack was at full fledge. The Argentina government had claimed that they told their men it was to be a bloodless fight, but that was not the case. Argentineans busted down barrack doors and began to throw powerful grenades into the barracks and killing many unsuspecting men. Fact: February 26, 1982, The war could have been prevented On February 1982, there was supposed to be a meeting where the British government would hold a meeting with the Argentinean government to talk about preventing the war. This was a two-day event in New York, the first day the Argentineans were to host the meeting, but there was a glitch in planning, and the dates were to be changed. The leaders were under so much pressure, that some said they were going to breakdown. What basically happened at the meeting, was that both sides could not come to agreement. This resulted in a war. Nobody really knew who owned the Falkland Islands. Some thought Spain, Argentina thought they owned it, and Britain thought they owned it. No agreements could be made. Fact: The war of the Falklands was a perfect opportunity to unleash state of the art weapons on the opponents. Later, after the first invasions, some messages went out over the radios. The first ones told people of a small invasion, then they began broadcasting from live sights, complete with gun fire in the background. There were a lot of battles that went on between the British and the Argentineans. The British won some, and the Argentineans won others. They were all fighting for the Falklands. These were a group of small islands that were all bunched up. You could not use the islands for much, seeing as that they were craggy mountains. That would not make for very productive farm land, but there were a lot of mountain lions and goats. After the many battles, many deaths and many tests on weapons, the British had won the War in the Falklands. This war was won both in military action, and in speech. Most say to end violence in verbal communication, but verbal communication was a giant factor in the beginning of this war. Conclusion This book had a couple aspects of history, it had facts, told the reader how the British government thought, and even had some of the British speech in it. I learned how the Falklands were fought over, in the sense of military tactics and what the Falklands were. Although the Falkland Islands weren't very good land, the British did not want to lose it. If they did loose it, it would make their government and army look bad, and they did not want that. I also read how some of the new weapons were used and their effects on the war. I thought this book was not too good. It did include many historical facts and dates, and the format was excellent. The things that made this book hard to fallow and challenging to understand was that it was written out of order. The first thing it talks about is how there was an invasion, but in the next chapter it was talking about how the whole thing could have been avoided. Also, I think the authors went into too much detail. It gets to a point where the details get old. Also, I think the war was stupid. I don't think that as many people should have died. The whole thing could have been avoided anyway. But here is the really dumb part: what are the Falklands? A bunch of rocky hills in the water. You could not farm much on them, and not many people lived on them. You would love living there if you were a hermit, but the war as I saw it was "Whoever gets the most toys at the end wins!" I can see why the sides wanted it, but was it that important? If someone really wanted to learn a lot mare about this war, they should read this book. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone else though. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\War in the Falklands.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ War in the Falklands Fact: April 2, 1982, Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands At 4:30 A.M., helicopters had started to land on Mullet Creek; they were the first of the many invaders from Argentina. At 6:08 A.M., an attack was at full fledge. The Argentina government had claimed that they told their men it was to be a bloodless fight, but that was not the case. Argentineans busted down barrack doors and began to throw powerful grenades into the barracks and killing many unsuspecting men. Fact: February 26, 1982, The war could have been prevented On February 1982, there was supposed to be a meeting where the British government would hold a meeting with the Argentinean government to talk about preventing the war. This was a two-day event in New York, the first day the Argentineans were to host the meeting, but there was a glitch in planning, and the dates were to be changed. The leaders were under so much pressure, that some said they were going to breakdown. What basically happened at the meeting, was that both sides could not come to agreement. This resulted in a war. Nobody really knew who owned the Falkland Islands. Some thought Spain, Argentina thought they owned it, and Britain thought they owned it. No agreements could be made. Fact: The war of the Falklands was a perfect opportunity to unleash state of the art weapons on the opponents. Later, after the first invasions, some messages went out over the radios. The first ones told people of a small invasion, then they began broadcasting from live sights, complete with gun fire in the background. There were a lot of battles that went on between the British and the Argentineans. The British won some, and the Argentineans won others. They were all fighting for the Falklands. These were a group of small islands that were all bunched up. You could not use the islands for much, seeing as that they were craggy mountains. That would not make for very productive farm land, but there were a lot of mountain lions and goats. After the many battles, many deaths and many tests on weapons, the British had won the War in the Falklands. This war was won both in military action, and in speech. Most say to end violence in verbal communication, but verbal communication was a giant factor in the beginning of this war. Conclusion This book had a couple aspects of history, it had facts, told the reader how the British government thought, and even had some of the British speech in it. I learned how the Falklands were fought over, in the sense of military tactics and what the Falklands were. Although the Falkland Islands weren't very good land, the British did not want to lose it. If they did loose it, it would make their government and army look bad, and they did not want that. I also read how some of the new weapons were used and their effects on the war. I thought this book was not too good. It did include many historical facts and dates, and the format was excellent. The things that made this book hard to fallow and challenging to understand was that it was written out of order. The first thing it talks about is how there was an invasion, but in the next chapter it was talking about how the whole thing could have been avoided. Also, I think the authors went into too much detail. It gets to a point where the details get old. Also, I think the war was stupid. I don't think that as many people should have died. The whole thing could have been avoided anyway. But here is the really dumb part: what are the Falklands? A bunch of rocky hills in the water. You could not farm much on them, and not many people lived on them. You would love living there if you were a hermit, but the war as I saw it was "Whoever gets the most toys at the end wins!" I can see why the sides wanted it, but was it that important? If someone really wanted to learn a lot mare about this war, they should read this book. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone else though. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Watergate.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Watergate was a designation of a major U.S. scandal that began with the burglary and wiretapping of the Democratic party's headquarters, later engulfed President Richard M. Nixon and many of his supporters in a variety of illegal acts and culminated in the first resignation of a U.S. president. The burglary was committed on June 17, 1972, by five men who were caught in the offices of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate apartment and office complex in Washington D.C. Their arrest eventually uncovered a White House-sponsered plan of espionage against political opponents and a trail of complicity that led to many of the highest officials in the land, including former U.S. Attorney General John Mitchell, White House Counsel John Dean, White House Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman, White House Special Assistant on Domestic Affairs John Ehrlichman, and President Nixon himself. On April 30, 1973, nearly a year after the burglary and arrest and following a grand jury investigation of the burglary, Nixon accepted the resignation of Haldeman and Ehrlichman and announced the dismissal of Dean U.S. Attorney General Richard Kleindienst resigned as well. The new attorney general, Elliot Richardson, appointed a special prosecutor, Harvard Law School profesor Archibald Cox, to conduct a full-scale investigation of the Watergate break-in. In May of 1973, the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Activities opened hearings, with Senator Sam Ervin of North Carolina as chairman. A series of startling revelations followed. Dean testified that Mitchell had ordered the break-in and that a major attempt was under way to hide White House involvement. He claimed that the president had authorized payments to the burglars to keep them quiet. The Nixon administration immediately denied this assertion. The testimony of White House aide Alexander Butterfield unlocked the entire investigation pertaining to White House tapes. On July 16, 1973, Butterfield told the committee, on nationwide television, that Nixon had ordered a taping system installed in the White House to automatically record all conversations; what the president said and when he said it could be verified. Cox immediately subpoened eight revelant tapes to confirm Dean's testimony. Nixon refused to release the tapes, claiming they were vital to the national security. U.S. District Court Judge Johm Sirica ruled that Nixon must give the tapes to Cox, and an appeals court upheld the decision. Yet, Nixon held firm. He refused to turn over the tapes and, on Saturday, October 20, 1973, ordered Richardson to dismiss Cox. Richardson refused and resigned instead, as did Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus. Finally, the solicitor general discharged Cox. A storm of public protest resulted fron this "Saturday night massacre." In response, Nixon appointed another special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski, a Texas lawyer, and gave the tapes to Sirica. Some subpoenaed conversations were missing, and one tape had a mysterious gap of 18 minutes. Experts determined that the gap was the result of five separate erasures. In March 1974, a grand jury indicted Mitchell, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and four other White House officials for their part in the Watergate cover-up and named Nixon as an "unindicted co-conspirator." The following month Jaworski requested and Nixon released written transcripts of 42 more tapes. The conversations revealed an overwhelming concern with punishing opponents and thwarting the Watergate investigation. In May 1974, Jaworski requested 64 more tapes as evidence in the criminal cases against the indicted officials. Nixon refused; on July 24, the Supreme Court voted 8-0 that Nixon must turn over the tapes. On July 29-30, 1974, the House Judiciary Committee approved three articles of impeachment, charging Nixon with misusing his power in order to violate the constitutional rights of U.S. citizens, obstructing justice in the Watergate affair, and defying Judiciary Committee subpoenas. Soon after the Watergate scandal came to light, investigators uncovered a related group of illegal activities: Since 1971, a White House group called the "plumbers" had been doing whatever was necessary to stop leaks to the press. A grand jury indicted Ehrlichman, White House Special Counsel Charles Colson, and others for organizing a break-in and burglary in 1971 of a phsychiatrist's office to obtain damaging material against Daniel Ellsberg, who had publicized classified documents called the Pentagon Papers. Investigators also discovered that the Nixon administration had solicited large sums of money in illegal campaign contributions--used to finance political espionage and to pay more than $500,000 to the Watergate burglers--and that certain administration officials had systematically lied about their involvement in the break-in and cover-up. In addition, White House aids testified that in 1972, they had false documents to make it appear that President John F. Kennedy had been involved in the 1963 assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam, and had written false and slanderous documents accusing Senator Hubert H. Humphrey of moral improprieties. Throughout this period of revelations, Nixon's support in Congress and popularity nationwide steadily eroded. On August 5, 1974, three tapes revealed that Nixon had on June 23, 1972, ordered the Federal Bureau of Investigation to stop investigating the Watergate break-in. The tapes also showed that Nixon himself had helped to direct cover-up of the administration's involvement in the affair. Rather than impeachment, Nixon resigned on August 9, the first U.S. president to do so. A month later his successor, Gerald Ford, pardoned him for all crimes he might have committed while in office; Nixon was then immune from federal prosecution. The Watergate scandal severely shook the faith of the Ameican people in the presidency and turned out to be a supreme test for the U.S. Constitution. Throughout the ordeal, however, the constitutional system of checks and balances worked to prevent abuses, as the Founding Fathers had intended. Watergate showed that in a nation of laws no one is above the law, not even the president. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\What is Sociology.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Sociology is the scientific study of society and human behavior. This is the most basic definition of sociology that one would find. Getting a little more in depth, it is the study of humans in groups and how they interact with one another. A scientist in this field, a sociologist, would look at these groups by means of the sociological perspective. This involves looking at a certain behavior like you have never witnessed it before. If done correctly the sociologist should be able to gain a new level of understanding of the behavior or social reality. The term group could refer to a lot of things as far as groups of people. It could be two people but for the purpose of sociology it should be a lot more. There are demographic variables used when defining the group. These are things such as race, religion, sex, social class, and so on. When a sociologist studies behavior the most important aspect they view is the interaction of people both within the group and with people that fit into other groups. This action can be what the individuals verbally say to one another or simply their nonverbal messages. There are many hand signs, both good and bad, that people exchange as well as facial expressions in reaction to an event or statement. Now that I have some of the terms described lets look at an example. I hate lawyers. This is a personal opinion of mine and a lot of other peoples. Its nothing personal against any one of them, I don't like the way they operate and the way they have set the system up for their own benefit. They have made it impossible for anybody to navigate their way through even the simplest of legal matters without their assistance. I also believe that there lack of values and ethics are responsible for a lot of problems in this country. This is what's called a level 1 perspective. It's my view of a group of people in our society, their behavior, and how their behavior interacts with society. The aim of sociology is to study this behavior and see it in a different way. Perhaps if I looked at lawyers and what they do through a lawyer's eyes I might catch something I didn't notice. If I were to give more thought to the fact that they go to school for a very long time and have to learn a great deal of material, I might think a little differently. If I imagine myself a lawyer and think to myself, these people will pay whatever I want to get them out of the jams they're in, it might not sound too bad. The idea of sociology is not necessarily to change my view but to give me better understanding, what's referred to as level 2 understanding. Level 2 understanding means that you have taken a new sociological perspective on a behavior and gained a new social reality. When people have opposing opinions in an issue that has to be resolved such as a war, gaining level 2 understanding is of great importance. You wouldn't have to change your view on the situation at all but you would be in a much better position to compromise an end to the argument. This is sociology and it will work with any behavior on any group of people assuming that the researcher, or sociologist, has an open mind to looking at things a little differently than they are used to. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\What is the future of the family in Canada .TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ What is the Future of the Family in Canada? The Canadian family is at a point where it is being challenged. Serious changes have occurred in the family in recent decades, however, it has not harmed the family beyond repair. The children of the future are not doomed. In fact data shows that families are evolving, families are still the most important thing in people's lives, and data shows that the future may have the 'traditional' family come back. Families all over the world are evolving. Structural changes are happening everywhere, and maybe that tells us something: "For better or worse, the family we fondly remember doesn't exist today. It probably never existed at all." For example, three-quarters of absentee fathers in Japan don't pay child support. Furthermore, one third of all children in northern Europe are born to mothers that are not married. It could be time to accept the fact that "families, like everything else, evolve and change no matter how much resistance they face." Although families are at a point where they are changing, it is something the world can adjust to. With families changing in recent decades, data still shows that families are still the most important in people's lives. Following recent studies Robert Glossop said that "Canadians continue to report that the most important things in their lives are their families...more important than their political convictions, their religious beliefs, their jobs, their wages." A Statscan study reported that only forty-five per cent of families are the 'traditional' type, however, Robert Glossop says the data "tell me that people are still living in families, but they don't look like the kind of families I grew up in the 1950s; it tells me that people are still making commitments to one another." Furthermore, when he was going around the country and talking to people, he found that people are very quick to "point to a crisis in the family and to argue that nobody cares about the family anymore. But when asked about their own family, they suggest that it is still the core of their being, the core of their existence." The children of the future are not 'doomed' as children from the age of 12 to 17 are very optimistic. An Angus Reid youth survey found that 70 per cent of that age group believe it is unlikely they will get divorced. It is possible that this is just a 'stage' that families in Canada are going through. Canadian families are being put to a great challenge in todays world. Serious changes have occurred in the family in recent decades, however, it has not harmed the family beyond repair. The children of the future are not doomed. In fact data shows that families are evolving, families are still the most important thing in people's lives, and data shows that the future may have the 'traditional' family come back. In conclusion, Robert Glossop says, "I think people are increasingly adopting a more inclusive definition, focusing more on what families do rather than what they look like." By Mark Blacker f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\What Psychology Is To Me.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ What Psychology is to Me After taking Psychology 1000, psychology means much more to me than it did prior to taking the class. At the beginning of the semester, I was asked to define the word psychology, and the best definition I could muster was simply the study of the mind and how it works. After examining the large realm of the science of psychology I now realize that this definition was quite incomplete. My initial definition simply covered the branch of psychology known as cognitive psychology, and this is only one of many areas that are actually included under the title psychology. Many psychologists focus on more quantitative aspects than the function of the human mind. There are several different areas that are more easily researched than that of the brain's functionality. An example would be behavioral psychology in which the focus is put on observing behavior rather than on the processes going on inside the brain that invoke the subject's behavior. This is just one of the many examples that illustrate this point, and that makes developing a working definition of the term psychology extremely difficult to attain. The range of topics that are considered psychology is very surprising to a newcomer in the field. Everything from determining which parts of the brain are responsible for controlling certain senses to analyzing the influence of society on behavior and development is considered "psychology". So it is obvious that my original definition was extremely limited, but it has now been vastly broadened. In addition to recognizing the broad range of topics that psychology covers, I also realized that there is large number of different occupations a person trained in psychology can hold. My original idea was that a psychologist was a person who dealt only with psychoanalysis, and I would imagine that this is a common misconception. The possible career fields for a psychologist is much greater than I had imagined it to be, it includes everything from school counselors to psychiatrists to sensation and perception researchers. Each different area of psychology has many differences from all of the other areas, but the origins of these areas enables them all to fall under the incredibly large topic of psychology. Although psychology is a very large topic this immense field is still relatively young and has many unopened doors. So not only is the science much larger than I originally thought, but it is still growing and the possibility of making new discoveries is still very open to future psychologists. After taking this class, I have realized that through out the years much has been learned about psychology, and much more is yet to be learned. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Why Are Individuals Aggressive.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ WHY ARE INDIVIDUALS AGGRESSIVE? Aggression is difficult to define, it is a complex phenomenon, and depending upon the context the term can be made to carry either positive or negative connotations, it can be attacking behaviour that may be either self-protective and self-assertive or to the infliction of injury toward oneself or toward others, to the total destruction of others. Is aggression biological determined or the product of learning and environmental influences.? This essay, will consider instinctive theory, the frustration - aggression hypothesis, and social learning theory. It should then be possible to draw a conclusion to see if any or all of the theories discussed are the cause of aggression. Brain disorders, hormonal and chemical imbalances, environmental factors, such as heat, noise, air pollution and overcrowding, although contribute to the causes of aggression will not be discussed during the course of this essay. No universally adopted definition of aggression exists, for the purpose of this discussion, the definition of Gross will be used. Gross defines aggression as :- "The intentional infliction of some form of harm on others" (Gross page 444) Freud proposed that aggression is an instinctive biological urge. According to Freud this instinct, is made up of the libido (pleasure) and "Thanatos" (the death wish) (pain). This basic instinct is present in the Id from birth, at first the aggression is relatively uncontrolled, but with the development of the Ego and superego it becomes channelled into socially acceptable behaviour If these impulses are not released periodically in safe ways, they soon reach dangerous levels capable of producing acts of violence. Sometimes it is released in the form of physical or verbal abuse against another, (where the anger is displaced onto another). Sometimes the aggressive impulse is turned inward and produces self - punishment action, even suicide. The best that can be hoped for, according to Freud, is that aggressive impulses will be "channelled into socially acceptable forms." such as football, sport etc. (Bernstein et al page 715). However, this theory does not explain why some people are aggressive and others are not, and if aggression is dissipated into sport, why is there football violence and violence at other sporting events? Lorenz, like Freud believed that aggressive energy builds up in the individual, and eventually has to be discharged in some way. Lorenz's states that aggression is the "fighting instinct" in man, and that man is naturally aggressive. This instinct developed during the course of evolution because it yielded many benefits, for example, fighting serves to disperse populations over a wide area, ensuring maximum use of resources. "Such behaviour often helps to strengthen genetic make-up of a species by assuring that only the strongest individuals manage to reproduce", ( Baron/Byrne page 328) This fighting instinct is both present in man and animals, and that aggression in animals is do with 'Ritualization and appeasement' and through these rituals and series of appeasements animals avoid destroying each other, but aggression in humans, is 'no longer under the control of rituals, and it has become distorted in man" (Gross page 445). However nearly all the evidence of Lorenz's theory comes from research with animals, and many psychologist "doubt whether the results apply to humans, because in the animal world instinct plays a more significant role than with humans". ( Berstein et al page 716). Further It is generally agreed by looking at present day Eskimos, Pygmies, and Aborigines, that man is a 'hunter - gatherer'. and that there is a powerful human tendency to cooperate which is a legacy from our ancient hunting past, when we had to co-operate or starve. People then lived in small tribal groups, were warfare did not exists, there were no armies, and if conflict did occur, from time to time, casualties would be avoided or limited. Mead argues that man is "not naturally aggressive" and points out many societies, such as the Apraesh of New Guinea where 'aggression is rare, and "peaceful coexistence and cooperation is the norm" (Bernstein page 715) Megargee (1966) , supported the theories of Freud and Lorenz, Megargee reported that studies of "people who commit brutal aggressive crimes, are often over-controlled individuals, who repress the anger and over a period of time the pressure to be aggressive builds up". (Gross page 450). Support for instinct theory has also come from Psychologist who study serial killers, they believe that there is genetic pre-disposition to be aggressive, and combined together with other factors, can aggravate a pre-disposition to violent aggressive behaviour. The psychologist also pointed out, that more evidence for this theory comes from studies of twins reared together or apart, which suggest that there may be a genetic link to aggression in humans. (Channel 4 Television ). Other psychologist emphasised frustration as a potent cause of why individuals are aggressive. Dollard and Miller developed a "frustration - aggressive hypothesis" they put forward the view that aggression was an inevitable consequence of frustration. The 'occurrence of aggressive behaviour always presupposes the existence of frustration and the existence of frustration always leads to some form of aggression' If an individual is prevented from reaching a goal, they are frustrated by not getting something they want, or suffers "deprivation" where something they want is taken away from them, they will experience an increase in aggression. (Hardy/Heyes page 171) This view has been criticized, psychologist point out that it does not explain aggressive behaviour in all circumstances. Frustrated individuals do not always respond with aggressive action, they may show "resignation and despair" (Baron/Byrne page 329), and there are many occasions when aggressive behaviour can be explained more by a breakdown in social norms. Berkowitz suggested "external conditions, serve to arouse a strong motive to engage in harm producing behaviour," (Baron/Byrne page 329) and that frustration produces not aggression, but a "readiness to respond aggressively". Once this readiness exists, cues in the environment, that are associated with aggression, will often lead a frustrated person to behave aggressively. "Cues such as guns, knives, violent television scenes. Neither the frustration alone or the cues alone are sufficient to set off aggression, but when combined however, they do." Berkowitz went on to say that "unexpected failure at some task tends to create a more intense negative reaction then a failure that is expected". Support for Berkowitz theory is very strong. Studies have found that "frustration may facilitate aggression. and experiments have supported this". (Berstein et al page 718) On the other hand, several experiments have reported that frustration sometimes may actually tend to reduce the level of aggression shown by the individual. Existing evidence points to the conclusion that whether frustration increases or fails to enhance aggression, depends on whether the frustration is intense and whether the aggression is seen as 'just' or 'illegitimate'. However, few researchers currently hold the view that "frustration always leads to aggression", frustration is simply one of many different causes of aggression (Baron/Byrne page 329) When you look at the frustration hypothesis, it seems that practically any incident of aggression can be ascribed to frustration of acquisitiveness or "assertiveness. Gentry 1970 said that "frustration does not always produce aggression, sometimes it produces depression and withdrawal, and not all aggression is preceded by frustration" ( Berstein et al page 718) According to Leaky and Lewis (1977), "cultural influences are far more important determinants of human aggression than biological factors." Any potential for aggression that man has, is "culturally overridden and re-packaged into behaviour which fits current circumstances. In most cases, cultural forces teach or support non-aggression, but when pro-social aggression is necessary (disciplining children, and wrong doers,) cultural process teach and sustain it". (Gross page 446) Bandura, Baron, and Zillmann argue that aggressive behaviour is a "learned form of social behaviour, acquired and maintained" in much the same manner as other forms of social activity. (Baron/Byrne page 362) Elicitors of aggression such as personal insults, status threats, and the presence of weapons are all learned sources of aggressive behaviour. Many responses are learned by watching others, further, aggressive actions are often followed by rewards and are therefore likely to be repeated. Bandura said that children were capable of learning aggressive behaviour as a result of being exposed to it, because children tend to imitate what they see. Bandura exposed school children to a film of an adult behaving aggressively toward an inflated doll, ( "Bobo Doll ") Following exposure the children tended to imitate the aggressive behaviour. These finding, Bandura believed, showed that young children learn to be aggressive against others, and that aggressive acts would be imitated. In contrast, critics pointed out, Bandura's experiments were too artificial, that the Bobo Doll was designed specifically to be hit and that the children were aware of this, so maybe they were just expressing the behaviour that was expected of them. Although Bandura was has been criticized, his findings has led to considerable research into the influence of violence in the mass media, especially television, on promoting aggressive behaviour, and there is a growing body of research evidence which indicates that watching violent television is linked to increased tendencies towards subsequent aggression. Support for the modelling and imitation theory comes from Patterson (1976) who found that "aggressive behaviour is frequently reinforced in the home". (Biechker/Hudson page 415) A young child who finds that anger and aggression are more effective in gaining what they want and which can enable them to control resources such as toys and parental attention, is having his aggression reinforced. Further, "aggressive parents who discipline with physical force act as models for their children and are likely to encourage aggression in their children towards other people" (Hardy/Heyes page 163). Children learn aggression by observing others behave aggressively, and this is supported by a recent national survey by the N.C.H. Action For Children which found that in families where there has been domestic violence, children imitate the aggression they witness between their parents, and "33 per cent of children in homes where the father was violent, became aggressive towards their mothers themselves". (The Guardian Newspaper). To summarise, ethologists treat aggression as an evolutionary determined instinct, which was necessary for survival. The frustration-aggression model looks beyond the individual, seeing the tension as being triggered by factors in the environment which prevent the individuals attempts to reach a goal. Both the instinctive and the frustration -aggression models suggest that it is something about the individuals psychological make-up which causes aggression, and individual aggressive impulses are triggered by personality dynamics, such as ego, need or frustration, and in which the aggressive drives/impulses build up, and must be dissipated in some way. On the other hand, Social learning theorist view aggressive acts as responses learned through observations and imitation of others and by positive reinforcement for the behaviour. Also, mans cultural heritage and his experience of socialization, and the many traits or characteristics possed by the individual is an important factor in determining his aggressive behaviour. In conclusion,, the reason as to why the individual is aggressive, has many possible sources. It has been suggested that aggression springs from basic drives. However, there is little evidence that supports the catharsis view, that aggression depends on a build up of energy which must be released in some way. On the other hand, there is a large body of research evidence that supports the view that exposure to aggressive models can stimulate similar behaviour among observers. People who behave aggressively act as aggressive models, and through such action can influence others to act in a similar manner. So it can be seen, that there are views that point towards a pre-disposition towards aggression, while others would indicate either frustration, or a learned form of behaviour as to the cause of aggression. It is proposed, that it is more likely that an individual will be aggressive if all of these criteria are met to some degree or other, however, the greater emphasis should be placed upon learnt behaviour. It would seem strange if we, unlike all other mammals, were not genetically equipped to defend ourselves or our children when under attack, and it would be surprising if we lacked the urge to assert ourselves to some degree in competitive social situations. However, the claim that for man all is learned and nothing is genetically inherited, gives the impression that society can be moulded into any shape and a human being is merely a blank canvas in which anything could be written upon.. In answer to the question, why are individuals aggressive? It is clear that there is no single cause as to why an individual is aggressive, many factors contribute to the occurrence of aggression. and that aggressive behaviour has multiple, interlinked causes. BIBLIOGRAPHY Baron,RA, and Byrne, D, Social Psychology, Bernstein, D.A., et al International Student Edition, Houghton Miffin Company 1991, 3rd Edition Biechler, RF, and Hudson, L.M, Developmental Psychology, Longman Inc. 1972 Dobson, CB, et al, Understanding Psychology, Butler & Tanner Ltd 1993 Gregory,RL, The Oxford Companion to the Mind, Oxford University Press 1987 Gross Hardy, M, and Heyes, S, Beginning Psychology 3rd edition Butler & Tanner 1987 Mussen, P, et al, Psychology An Introduction, Heath & Company 1973 Channel 4 Television , To Kill and Kill Again, A Scientific Analysis of Serial Killers, January 4th 1995 The Guardian Newspaper, Violent Children, Tuesday January 24th 1995 f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Why Are Taxes So High In Canada.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Why the taxes are so high in Canada Every government gets the budget from the taxes, and those taxes are collected from people who live in the country and enjoy the benefit and welfare that provided by the government. Therefore, every citizen in every country has to pay taxes, no matter what products or services they purchase. Some countries have heavy taxation, such as Swiss, Japan, and Canada. People always complain about heavy taxation, especially when the one who live in heavy taxation place. A government can tax its citizens directly and it can tax the property they own. There are many kinds of taxes, for example, personal income tax, foreign income tax, property tax, good and service tax, and business tax ..etc. However, people have to look thing on the other side, when they complained about heavy taxation. Most of heavy taxation countries have a better welfare system than others, like Swiss and Canada. There are so many welfare in Canada, and the residents of Canada have to pay higher taxes to government than any other countries. Then government can find the way to balance the high budget. First, Canadian government provides unemployment insurance to all Canadian. This welfare is very important for every one, especially when people lose the job and have to live on. They can get the pay-cheque from government until they find the job. Every-time, people get the job, they have to pay 5% of their salary for unemployment insurance. Unemployment insurance provide a good working condition for every worker. Also, it help unemployment people to find the second job easier. Second, senior pension and child tax benefits. Senior people and children can not work and most parents have over two or three children in the family. It would be very hard for parents to raise more than two children. Canadian government cares about senior people and children very much. Children and senior people get the pay-cheque every month. It can help the parents to raise the children easier and provide a better living condition for children. It also has same effect on the senior people. Therefore, this is reason that "why the taxes are so high in Canada." Third, Canada have the soundest medical plan for every Canadian in the world. People do not pay any money, when they go to see a doctor or hospital. People only pay small amount of money every year to the government, and that amount is depended on how much income they made on the job. Once people have the care card, they can go to see a doctor or hospital any time, when there is any illness or disease. Therefore, this is the reason "why the taxes are so high in Canada." Fourth, education system is also one of Canadian benefit. Children who under age 19, can go to school without pay any school fee. Canadian basic education is from kindergarten up to grad 12. It means every child has go to school and finish his/her high school by law. Therefor, this is the reason "why the taxes are so high in Canada." Fifth, Canadian government has spend lots of money on public transportation and constructs. People are the beneficiary from those constructs. For example, national park, public library, public transit, police service, community center, and disability constructs.. etc. Therefor, Canadian have to pay higher taxes to balance the budget. All of above are the reasons why the taxes are so high in Canada. There are still a lot of benefits and welfare that did not list out, such as spouse allowance, widowed spouse's allowance, disability benefit, spouse benefit, social assistance, and veterans benefit. Every one wants to have as many benefits and welfare as they can, then they also have to pay as much taxes as they have to. Because no such thing as free lunch in this world. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Why Televisions Should Be Unplugged.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Why Televisions Should Be Unplugged I believe all the televisions in America should be unplugged, and we should become a nomadic, goat-herding race- well, maybe not the part about the goat herding. Anyway, television programming is corrupting our youths' minds; they are being stupefied and are becoming virtual vegetables as they are molded by the programs they view to be lazy, selfish, and to forsake all their moral and ethical values. The so called "entertainment value" to the shows is what's hurting us; kids mimic what they see on t.v., which includes violence, murder, rape, etc. Children's grades drop drastically when tuning in to their favorite cartoon takes priority over completing their math or other schoolwork. The effects may also carry over into the next day, when they re-enact their favorite scene of the previous night's episode of Power Rangers on the playground, often resulting in the injury of several poor kids. Obviously such programs are counter-productive to the educational process. Teen violence is on the rise at an exponential rate. Many teens watch action movies such as Terminator and its sequel or the Die Hard trilogy and conjure up bright ideas to go vandalizing or attacking innocent people. This is especially true when speaking of the gang situation that is currently plaguing our nation. Before the era of the television, crime like the kind we now have was virtually non-existent. Obesity is another indirectly related effect of television on our bodies for people of all ages. The term "couch potato" adequately suits people who would rather watch Cindy Crawford tone and firm her buns than get off theirs. If there's a welt in you favorite spot on the couch that is a perfect outline of your backside, it's a good indicator that you need to get out and do something. An awkward issue I want to discuss deals with programs with adult content and their accessibility to children. They are learning vitally important issues like the "bird & bees" and other things regarded as taboo from the "boob tube." That's not the problem, though. The real problem is that they're not learning it the right way; parents should be the ones to explain it. This is why we have such a high rate of teen pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, rapes, etc. Television "cheapens" the meaning of these sacred acts as well. In conclusion, I believe television is destroying our culture and will eventually lead to our demise. We are on a collision course with chaos, and pulling the plug is our only salvation. It's up to you. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Without a Trace of Bitterness in Her Voice.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Page 1 Guatemala is the land of Eternal Springs and the home of the richly cultured and historic Mayan people. It it also the country of Rigoberta Menchu, an illeterite farm worker, turned voice of oppressed people everywhere. Guatemala also has the sad distinction of being home to Latin America's oldest civil war. "For more than three decades, left-wing guerrillas have fought a series of rightist governments in Guatemala. The war has killed an estimated 140,000 in the country, which has 11 million people." (N.Y. Times June 14, 1996 pA4 col 2) This is a story of a people in crisis, and one woman's struggle to use truth, as a means of setting her people free. The majority of the population are Indians, and much of the struggles arise out of the ashes of the past. Spain conquered Guatemala in 1524, which was the start of the oppression of the native people of Guatemala. Since this time the native people have been ruled by the Spanish speaking minority, the Ladinos, many of which are descended from the Spanish colonists. Beginning in 1954, when Guatemala's elected government was overthrown by the army, the military began a brutal war against the Indian people. This type of torture and oppression continued, and during the 1970's the repression was especially harsh; during this time more and more Indians began to resist. It was during this time that Rigoberta Menchu's family became involved in the resistance. Page 2 The situation in Guatemala is similar to South Africa, where the black majority are ruled with absolute power by the white minority. Like South Africa, the Indians in Guatemala are lacking in even the most basic of human rights. "Indeed the so-called forest Indians are being systematically exterminated in the name of progress. But unlike the Indian rebels of the past, who wanted to go back to pre-Columbian times, Rigoberta Menchu is not fighting in the name of an idealized or mythical past." (Menchu xiii) Rigoberta is working toward drawing attention to the plight of native people around the globe. Once an illiterate farm worker, she has taught herself to read and write Spanish, the language of her oppressor, as a means of relating her story to the world. She tells the story of her life with honesty and integrity in hopes of impressing upon the world the indignation of the oppressed. In addition to the Spanish language, Rigoberta borrows such things as the bible and trade union organization in order to use them against their original owners. There is nothing like the bible in her culture. She says, "The Bible is written, and that gives us one more weapon." ( Menchu xviii ) Her people need to base their actions on the laws that come down from the past, on prophecy. Her own history and the history of her family is told with great detail in the book I, Rigoberta Menchu. Not only does one Page 3 learn about the culture of her people and about the community in which she lives, but an understanding is gained as to impetus to react against ones oppressor. Born the sixth child to an already impoverished but well respected family, Rigoberta remembers growing up in the mountains on land that no one else wanted, spending months at a time going with her family to work on the fincas (plantations). A lorry owned by the finca would come to their village, and the workers, along with their children and animals, would ride together, in filthy and overcrowded conditions. Each lorry would hold approximately forty people, and the trip to the finca took two nights and one day, with no stops allowed for the bathroom, it is easy to imagine the unsanitary condition that resulted. Each worker would take with them a cup and a plate and a bottle for water when they worked in the fields. The youngest of the children that were not yet able to work had no need for their own cup and plate since, if they did not work, they would not be fed by the finca. These children's mothers would share with them their own ration of tortilla and beans, though many of the children were severely malnourished, and two of Rigoberta's own brothers died while on the finca. At the tender age of eight Rigoberta was earning money to help her family, and as proof of her own personal fortitude, by age ten she was picking the quotas of an adult and was paid as Page 4 such. Her first experience in the city was at twelve years old in the capital of Guatemala where she worked as a maid. She retells the story of how when she met the lady of the house, she was told that she needed new clothes, since hers were so worn and dirty from working on the finca, and how she was given a salary advance of two months pay which was to be used for the new clothes. Remembering back, Rigoberta describes how she was treated, "The mistress used to watch me all the time and was very nasty to me. She treated me like... I don't know what... not like a dog because she treated the dog well. She used to hug the dog." (Menchu 94) The first night she recalls being given her dinner the same time that the dog had been fed, she was given a hard tortilla and some beans, while the dog was given "bits of meat, rice, things that the family ate." (Menchu 92) It hurt her to see that in the eyes of this family she was lower than a dog. She left her job when one of her brothers came to tell her that her father was in prison. This was the beginning of her father's involvement with the unions, and the beginning of the awakening for her family, but also, the beginning of their troubles with the government. Three months after getting out of prison, her father was "tortured and abandoned-They had torn off the hair on his head on one side. His skin was cut all over and they'd broken so many of his bones that Page 5 he couldn't walk, lift himself or move a single finger." (Menchu 112) When her father was arrested the second time, he was considered a political prisoner. This prompted Rigoberta to begin to learn to speak Spanish as a means of helping her father. After spending fifteen days in prison and meeting a man who was being held for helping the peasants, her father found his calling and continued to fight against the government. He had to leave his family in order to protect them and as of 1977 went into hiding. The village began to study the bible as text to educate the people. "Many relationships in the bible are like those we have with our ancestors, our ancestors whose lives were very much like our own." (Menchu 131) They learned about revenge and fashioned weapons based on the descriptions in the bible. There were many attacks on the village and many of her friends and family members were killed In September 1979, when she was 19, her younger brother was kidnapped by the Guatemalan army and accused of trying to help the peasants win the right to own land. They cut off his finger-nails, then his fingers, then the skin on his face, then the soles of his feet. He was then marched to the village square where, in front of his family, he was doused with gasoline and set aflame. A few months later her father was also burned to death. Several weeks after that the army arrested, tortured, and killed Page 6 her mother, then left her body hanging from a tree to be eaten by dogs. Menchu fled to Mexico, but continued her struggle to help her people. as a result of her work on the rights of indigenous people around the world, she was awarded the honor of receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992. She still remains a controversial figure in Guatemala, where government officials criticized her selection for the prize. She has been accused of supporting the country's leftist actions and harming Guatemala's image abroad. In awarding the prize, the Nobel committee wanted to draw attention to the plight of Guatemala's Indians in the hope that it would lead to improved conditions. Recently, Guatemalans have found cause for that hope, as a peace accord is due to be signed in January 1997, ending the fighting between the rebels and the government. In addition, a truth commission has been formed to help families of disappeared members find answers relating to their deaths, by uncovering the country's many unmarked mass graves. Rigoberta Menchu continues to live in exile under death threghts upon her return to Guatemala. She is well adapted to the life which has been handed down to her, by generations of poor and oppressed Indians. Yet when she speaks, she speaks of her beautiful culture, and of the many joys that her family had over the years, all without a trace of bitterness in her voice. Without A Trace Of Bitterness In Her Voice Stacye Rothbard Transcultural perspectives November 11, 1996 Page 7 Works Cited Menchu, Rigoberta. I, Rigoberta Menchu: An Indian Woman In Guatemala. London: Verso, 1984. "Guatemalans Take New Step Toward Peace." The New York Times 14 June 1996, pA4 col 2 f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Women and Territory.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Psychology: Women and Territory Basic psychology is the attempt to explain and understand significant issues in human behavior which can shed light on popular misconceptions. Desmond Morris and Naomi Weisstein explore two different psychological areas that are misunderstood by the public and some psychologists. "The invading army encroaching on national territory, the gang moving into a rival district, the trespasser climbing into an orchard, the burglar breaking into a house, the bully pushing to the front of a queue, the driver trying to steal a parking space, all of these intruders are liable to be met with resistance varying from the vigorous to the savagely violent"(P.256,257) These are all examples of the various ways in which people can violate someone's territory. The violation of a boundary can have serious consequences. For instance, a gang uses visual stimuli such as graffiti to illustrate a marked territory. The unreadable words to the average person mean nothing. A rival gang member may ignore these symbols of territory and hence, put their life in jeopardy. Territory is not just environmental, but it is also bodily. A person creates an imaginary bubble around them. This is considered their personal space. Some people are allowed into the bubble while strangers usually must stay outside. The bubble varies from culture to culture. A person in Europe will stand closer to a friend than an American would. The odd feeling that Americans experience in foreign countries when talking to local people is a common misunderstood concept. Naomi Weisstein's article Psychology Constructs the Female, explains the various misunderstanding that male psychologist have towards females. One the prominent psychologists of the sixties, Erik Erikson, explained his biased opinions that women primary function is the being a mother. "We must start with the realization that, as much as women want to be good scientists or engineers, they want first and foremost to be womanly companions of men and to be mothers"(P.178). Erikson is using his own personal beliefs instead of scientific data to misinterpret the role of women. Psychology has always been a good source for clearing up misconceptions about human behavior. When the theories of psychologist are wrong, the truth will prevail. Morris and Weisstein both tap into areas of psychology that explain behavior and correct misunderstood notions. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Women in anthropoogy.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Vanessa KibbleOctober 14, 1996 Sex in Anthropology Anthropological studies are investigations of human life as it functions in a society. These observations are seen through the eyes of an objective anthropologist. But even if an anthropologist is completely objective in his or her studies, can there still be a descrepency in data due to the sex of the person? Over the years anthropology has evolved to an ever expanding world that has more of a variation in thoughts and beliefs, so that all cultures are recognized and respected. Although many changes have been made in anthropological studies, like the introduction of cultural relativity, it seems that woman were the last to be considered in the field, this is mostly due to the lack of them. During the late 19th century, anthropologist were know as "arm chair" anthropologist. These were "anthropologists" who relied on merchants, missionaries, explorers, ect. as informants for their ethnographic presents. All of the latter professions were practiced by men only, as were the roles of anthropologists when fieldwork was introduced. This was in turn reflected through the way that societies were depicted and influenced. The Trobriand Islanders are a society in Papaua New Giuenia. They are composed of about, twelve thousand people in sixty villages. The Trobrianders have been penetrated by outside influences for centuries and have remained considerably unaffected, two primary displays of this is the economical structure and politics of kinship. The economy of the Trobriand Islanders is a complex system in which there is a separate wealth for men and women. Although both sexes have their own capital, the women's wealth is a sign of power and is necessary for the definition of the chief's . The Trobrianders system of kinship is based on a matrilineal principle, in which "mother right" is demonstrated. With this system, birth rights are obtained through the mother's social status. These aspects did not go completely un recognized , but they were differently approach as far as the view in which they were studied and depth. Bronislaw Kasper Malinowski was a male anthropologist who studied the Trobrian Islanders from 1918-1919. He established himself as a participant and an observer, making detailed observations in a way that had never been explored before. Despite the fact that his techniques in gathering information revolutionized anthropological fieldwork, there is ample room for descrepency due to ethnocentric views adorning woman; as was soon addressed by another, female anthropologist. Annette B. Wiener also studied the Trobriand Islanders about sixty years later in 1971, on the island of Kiriwina. Primarily Wiener was sent to study the economical and artistic meanings of woodcarvings, but she changed her subject of study after being approach by a group of women who energetically explained their role in their society to their fellow woman. Wiener looked to the notes of Malinowski as a reference for her to follow and was surprised to see that many important aspects of Trobriand culture and society were missing as a result of a male interpretation; as said by Wiener, (Malinowski) "never gave equal time to the woman's side of things." Malinowski made note of observations he made of women making skirts and collecting banana leaves, all of which are forms of women's wealth, but dismissed their importance by labeling these activities as women's work. On the other hand since Wiener's main informants were woman she was lead to analyze their responsibilities and roles in the society in more depth. These different views come from the era in which Malinowski studied. In his own European culture woman were thought to only be "living in men's shadows," and only to occupy "private sectors of society, like child rearing," and as a man he believed these assumptions that didn't apply to him. Malinowski's approach to the study of woman in society was very common and still is today. A safe way to understand and project something without giving offense is viewing it from a perspective that you can easily relate to, Malinowski is not the only one guilty of this. In the ethnography of Napoleon A. Changnon presents a very clear and concise image of the Yanomamo. Changnon studied the Yanomamo first in1964, they live on the Brazilian and Venezuelan border. All of Chagnon's informants are men and there is no mention of woman by name or even in a generalized form. This was also true for the film shown in class on the Yanomamo and Chagnon. The Yanomamo do not give any obvious importance to women in their society so perhaps Chagnon didn't feel inclined to analyze in depth a woman's role. It would be interesting to see how an ethnographic present of a woman on the Yanomamo would differ from Chagnon's. Acceptance of an anthropologist can be jeopardized or simply affected according to their sex. What is acceptable for a man to do may not be acceptable for a woman. This particular situation is touched on in an exert of Judith Okely's ethnographic present on Gypsies;" The other male visitor, well over sixty, caused a sensation by greeting me with a slight peck on the cheek." This "sensation" was due to the absence of what is the norm behavior for a Gypsy woman involving a man according to his level of intimacy. With so many various factors in mind concerning the sex of an anthropologist a tremendous influence is inevitable. Generally this is not a problem if the society is presented as a whole. In other words everyone, men and woman both are included in the ethnographic present. There is no such thing as a minor role in a society. The example of society represented as a cell is relevant to this idea, everything has its part, and every part working together is what makes the cell (society) function successfully. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\Woodrow Wilson.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ WOODROW WILSON The name of the person I read about is Woodrow Wilson,but when he was young people called him Tommy.When Tommy was only a year old his father [Dr.Wilson]moved his family and him from Virginia to Augusta,Georgia.He moved in 1857.Tommy's father became pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Augusta,Georgia. Woodrow came from a strict,caring household.Dr.Wilson liked to take Woodrow places like cotton mills,iron and steel foundries,and other local industries.He did that to teach Woodrow the manufacturing processes.Dr.Wilson also taught Woodrow respect for other people.His mother[Jessie Wilson] was shy and reserved,but looked and acted like Woodrow. Woodrow's life was different from mine by the way he went to school.His father taught him till he was nine,and then he went to school. Woodrow spent some of his spare time with his gang, called the Lightfoot Club.Also when Woodrow was fourteen,his education was continued at a private school with fifty boys enrolled that cost seven dollars an hour. One of the parts of the book that I liked was when Woodrow Wilson won the Presidency.One of the things that helped him win was when he made two alliances.One alliance was made with Colonel Edward M. House.The other was made with William McCombs. Both of these alliances profound effect on his future. A sad incident that happened in this story was when Woodrow suffered his paralytic stroke.Rumors spread that Woodrow was incapable of handling even the smallest duties.Wilson kept succeeding though. There was still many people that believed in him. If I could choose one thing that Wilson did that I could do it would be a lawyer.First of all most lawyers make a good living.Another thing is that people depend on you.Finally it would be challenging for me. The main thing that Wilson is remembered for is being President.He really put a lot of effort into being President.He worked hard,he acted in control,and he acted mature about the situations he was in.The main thing is that he succeeded with what he was doing. Wilson was different in ways.He was business-like in some ways,and more regular in other ways.An example of when he was business-like was when he is in office at his job.An example of when he was more regular is when he was at home.Wilson was always smart no matter what situation he was in.Wilson was also a caring and honest person about his family and his country and also he was not selfish at all. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\World Bank Goals and Contradictions.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Bureaucracy is one of the pillars of modern western society. Although this statement is debatable from many aspects, most would agree that, at the very least, our lives are greatly affected by bureaucracy. Bureaucracy is the 'pure form of rational organization' (Newson, Jan 11). Not only is it a method for achieving goals efficiently and effectively, but it is acclaimed as the most able strategy to meet objectives. The World Bank is a classic example of a bureaucratic organization. It embodies all the characteristics necessary to qualify; from its complicated hierarchy and impersonal relations, to the specialization and career orientation of its employees. However, not everyone agrees on the competency of the bureaucratic organizational system. George and Sabelli in their book Faith and Credit claim that is the very structure of the World Bank which causes its failures, as well as explaining its continued existence despite these mistakes. Using Faith and Credit, with a focus on chapter six, it will be shown that it is the bureaucratic methods themselves which twist the World Bank's goals, and that these methods undermine the tasks which the Bank has set for itself. The World Bank is one of the world's most powerful agencies. Although it characterizes itself as a purely economic institution -- which controls the lending of billions of dollars -- in practice its influence, wealth, and policies all result in having immense political power (Faith 1). Although originally created to serve as an institution to help rebuild the world (i.e. Europe) after World War II, its task has since shifted to development work and poverty reduction. Through its immense control of wealth, and its international reputation, the Bank has managed to lend billions to 'under-developed' nations. The loans take many forms, including financing of mega-projects and structural adjustment. Beginning in the 1980's vast amounts of criticism on the Bank's policies began to appear, finding faults in much of its work. Many of its projects have been declared more harmful than helpful, often worse names have been used. The Bank has managed to make enemies in many activist circles; including environmentalists, feminists and even the people whose aim is to please: poverty workers (Faith 6). Nevertheless the Bank still remains an eminent institution. It is well respected by many intellectuals, consulted by governments and continues to grown in wealth and power. The very people working for the World Bank are cream of the crop. It is a relatively small organization, and immensely respected, which allows it to chose its staff from the best in the world. However, the Bank's rules and traditions do not allow these top notch women and men to work at maximum efficiency. It is an organization trapped in its own structure, stifling the staff which works for it. Lower level employees are silenced by a hierarchy which provides few methods for the expressing of opinions, and in fact discourages dissent. This commitment to orthodoxy has caused the Bank to fall behind on its development strategies in comparison to the rest of the world. Nevertheless it is not an organization composed of stupid people and is aware -- of at least some -- of its faults. Although attempts have been made to restructure the Bank, they have only ended up further focusing the Bank on its orthodox path. Quantity, instead of quality, has become its purpose and is causing further havoc in the countries to which it loans (part II countries). Instead of dealing with these problems, it fools itself and others into believing in a positive end result; ignoring the rule 'the ends do not justify the means' not to mention the fact that many do not foresee a positive end. To deal with the image problem created by its own disasters, the World Bank has attempted to make itself appear more effective. Yet it seems to have forgotten that what is important is not the image but the results. This is what has become of the humanitarian goals of the World Bank. The Bank, despite its many critics, is considered by most to be "the world's foremost, most prestigious official development institution" (Faith 112). Many seeking a future in development, first attempt to enter the World Bank. Most of the Bank's new recruits are Young Professionals (YP). This is an extremely competitive program which thousands apply to, of which only 35 a year get in. Although Young Professionals come from a variety of countries, this does not necessarily reflect various cultural perspectives. Most of the YP are educated in the North, and a large proportion come from the Ivy League or similar academic institutions (Faith 113). For those who do manage to join the staff, the training does not end there. Once accepted, they must complete one year on probation; usually two six month field projects in which they must make "significant contributions" (Faith 115). Members of the staff are thus the true cream of the crop. The obvious question that one must ask, is how can it be that these top notch men and women can participate in such an ineffective organization. The answer lies in the culture of the World Bank. From the very recruitment of its staff the Bank ensures conformity and unswerving loyalty. "It tries to pick its people young, and shapes them to what it believes to be its needs" (Faith 112). George and Sabelli describe YP very highly, but point to their most lacking characteristic -- apart from humility -- no bent for heresy or dissidence. In other words YP, and all new recruits, do not question authority, do not ask why something is done in a certain way or think for themselves in general. Although the organization does not actively socialize its new staff, George and Sabelli believe that it is the whole Bank's job to pass on its ideology (Faith 116). The Bank has effectively managed to step around the cultural differences of its employees, and has embedded in all of them a tenet: "go by the book" (Faith 120), or in other words, 'just do what we've been doing all along, and everything will be OK'. Yet this bring up the question of why would the staff not rebel against this ideological training or simply quit. The Bank offers many perks. Bank workers receive a very tidy salary, with no taxes, twenty six day working vacation a year, paid home leaves, health and life insurance, language training, private gyms, and the list goes on and on (Faith 114). Not only do staff members receive indirect training to follow Bank orthodoxy, but they have incentive to stay that way. Nevertheless numerous surveys have shown the staff to have a low morale (Faith 119). The World Bank is plagued with communication problems, favoritism, power struggles, and immense tension between members. Dissent is not permitted at any level of the organization. The Bank is hierarchically structured, which staff members perceive as management ordering lower levels, no questions asked. Staff members receive rebukes for disagreeing with policy and orders from superiors (Faith 120). In a survey conducted in 1980, it was found that the staff had a high commitment to development and regarded one another's professional skills with respect. However they appeared to be demoralized over the "burdensome paperwork, the emphasis of quantity over quality [more on this later] and the fear of reprisals from senior management if they disagree" (Faith 120) . It is not the incompetence of the staff but rather the structure of the Bank and its unwillingness to use the full potential of its highly trained people, which prevents change. The researcher believed that this frustration with the Bank was leading to greater tension within the staff (Faith 120). As the Bank grew in size and staff number, it was forced to create a staff association. In 1972, during one of its periods of largest growth, the bank hired full time administrative personnel, created thirty committees, and formed the democratically elected staff association. One of the primary goals of this association was to create an atmosphere of greater trust and allow for recommendations (AKA dissent). Upper level staff were not unaware of the communications problem within the Bank and had said as much: "Mr. McNamara [president of the Bank at the time] has recently called communication his most difficult problem at the Bank" (Faith 120). Nevertheless no great changes took place in the Bank, as is shown by the research carried out by the Berkeley Ph.D. candidate (see above). One of the greatest upheavals experienced by the World Bank is termed the Reorganization. Allegedly the intention was to streamline and efficientize the Bank, but the reality was that the changes were politically motivated, primarily by the US. (Faith 124). In terms of staff, the Reorganization resulted in a massive upheaval of the hierarchy, and the purpose the Bank workers. This restructuring occurred in 1987, a time when the credibility of the Bank was at a low. The steering committee claimed that the staff needed to regain its 'intellectual leadership' (Faith 127). Management had been accused of not dealing "effectively with a mix of staff skills and capacities ... producing critical shortages of some skills, e.g. in sector economies, adjustment lending and finance." (Faith 128), in practice this meant that the Bank needed more structural adjustment specialists (more on this later). To accomplish these feats, all but the highest levels of the Bank were forcibly asked to resign. Following this the top levels, still employed, chose their subordinates, who in turn chose theirs, and so on. The resulting new hierarchy was considerably different from the old, and since no clear criteria for choosing staff had been given, staff were picked on the basis of favoritism (Faith 129). The staff association was understandably outraged, and attempted to file a complaint. It goes without saying that the message went unheeded. Following this, the staff association was handed a new draft of the Staff Rule. 'Never before had the morale of the Bank staff sunk so low' (Faith 130). What little ability the staff had had in following their own initiatives, and acting on original thought, were now more effectively prevented than ever before. The Bank's staff had become fully focused along the same lines as 'the new' World Bank's task. The primary purpose of the Reorganization was not streamlining and efficiency, but to meet the interests of the US. Lending for projects, no matter how massive they were, was no longer enough for the Bank. The US was especially critical of the Bank's policy of lending money to countries with protectionist economies, which is clearly not in the US' interests. As such, the Reorganization was geared at transforming the Bank from a lending organization to a structural adjustment agency (Faith 124). Structural adjustments loans are the Bank's euphemism for altering entire societies. Only those countries which are willing to change their economic structure to meet the criteria of the Bank are given these loans, which in turn is the deciding factor on regular Bank loans (Faith 56). Following the Reorganization the Bank was no longer an agency for development -- if it ever had been-- but an organization dedicated to converting the world to US economic ideology (Faith 125). Bank employees now had no choice but to implement these policies in all part II countries. Whether or not protectionist policies, and other economic changes which occurred during structural readjustment, were good for the countries or not, a country had to first comply with the Bank's demands before money was lent. This gave the Bank tremendous political power, and has effectively raised the debt of part II countries to insuperable levels (Faith 56). In combination with the Bank's readjustment policies, there is also a large focus on quantity. The primary prerequisite for a worker's promotion is the ability to pass large loans, not the outcome of a loan or its environmental impact. This quantity over quality philosophy results in a form of competition by the staff to get bigger projects past the board (Faith 120). Human, financial or ecological concerns become lost in a race for job security and advancement. Not only does the bureaucracy of the Bank compel the staff to create massive, poorly thought out projects but it almost forces them to replicate their mistakes. The fastest, easiest way of getting a new project, is simply to dip into the file drawers and pull out an old project. However, since, no concern is placed on a project's outcome, errors are typically duplicated (Faith 121). The combination of a desire for quantity, a lack of respect for quality and replication of the resulting mistakes accounts for many of the disasters caused by the World Bank in the past. Nevertheless the Bank has done little to improve since then. Reform attempts such as the Reorganization have only led to making more errors faster. The reason for the Bank's lack of progress lies in its culture, which is based upon orthodoxy. Bank employees have a large degree of job security. With the exception of the Reorganization, "the Bank's turnover rate is extraordinarily low -- about three percent a year" (Faith 117). Upper level staff probably has an even lower rate (Faith 117). The Bank is thus prone to accumulating staff who will work there their whole lives, but are not necessarily effective any longer. Even for those staff members which are still capable, they may not have enough time on their hands to keep up with new development techniques. "We're consistently about 10 years behind the times," (Faith 190). This quote -- as said by a high ranking Bank official -- represents not only the topics which are 'hot' in the World Bank, but the techniques in which they try to remedy these dire world problems Finally, new staff members are not able to implement their modern techniques. Instead they are encouraged to conform to standard Bank practice, as they has been passed down for years (Faith 117). Bank practices sometimes even go against the beliefs of new employees, being the opposite of what they were taught or their own best judgment. As such the Bank remains an immensely powerful organization, promoting out-of-date ideologies and methodologies, which because of its own structure and culture is unable to meet the demands of the time. Between the way the staff are treated, and how little they are listened to; its structure, dedicated to conformity and carelessness; the emphasis on quantity and not quality; and its inability to adapt and keep up with the times, we can begin to see how it is the very bureaucracy of the Bank which undermines its tasks -- and this is only scratching the surface. Nevertheless these Bank practices and policies could all still be said to be in done with the interests of development in mind. Undoubtedly there are officials who believe that structural adjustment loans are effective; that Bank projects are effective and as such quantity is a good thing; and so on. Not all people, however, are as faithful as these hypothetical Bank workers. Criticism has plagued the Bank for many years, coming from all different types of groups. Although environmentalists are the greatest opposition to the Bank, women's groups, and anti-poverty organizations are only a few of the World Bank's enemies. Widespread criticism is a great threat to an international organization such as the World Bank. Much of its power lies in its credibility. Not only must the countries from which it borrows from believe in its policies, but the banks of the world must believe its policies. World Bank loans carry immense weight among banks; a loan from the World Bank, will almost ensure an equal amount of money from other lending organizations. The environmental movement poses the biggest of these threats to the Bank (Faith 162). The are numerous examples of Bank loans causing massive environmental destruction, inconsiderate relocation of people and a general disrespect for the future (i.e. long term planning). Nevertheless the 'environmental dilemma' remains a problem of image for the Bank. "Environmental issues are the most important image problem the Bank has to deal with," (Faith 163: Quoted from vice-president for external relations), yet George and Sabelli remind us that these are not image problems but in fact real problems affecting real people (Faith 163). The Bank has dealt with the 'environment problem' as an image problem. It has made token loans ($10 million Vs $400 million) for environmental projects, and has created a form of rating system based on the level of environmental destruction predicted (Faith 171). George and Sabelli criticize these programs as image enhancers and too small to make a difference (Faith 182-3). Instead of dealing with the environmental destruction the Bank has already caused, and the impact of the projects it will implement in the future, the Bank has instead attempted to gloss over their programs. As such the noble goal of development has been subverted to a protectionist strategy. To the Bank it no longer matters what happens to those people in 'underdeveloped' nations, only that its own security and power remains stable. Bureaucracy is exalted as the epitome of efficiency and effectiveness. It is meant to organize social relations so that they can be collectively defined, and accomplished. The World Bank represents a typical bureaucracy, yet it is also highly criticized as an institution which repeatedly fails to attain its goals, and in fact has forgotten them. Although the Bank has the world's cream of the crop development workers, its own structure has stifled, and silenced these individuals to the point of falling behind in development strategies and not adapting to real world situations of the poor. Its own structure has encouraged a quantity not quality philosophy, any attempts to change this philosophy have only exasperate the problem. Finally the poor reputation of the World Bank, due to its own follies, has led to the Bank to shift its focus from development to self preservation, not through correction of errors, but through falsely presenting itself. It is the very bureaucratic nature of the World Bank which has led to its failure. Although clearly this paper does not discredit bureaucracy as a world system, it does present the idea that perhaps bureaucracy is not the most efficient and effective method of achieving goals, in all situations. Bibliography George, Susan and Sabelli, Fabrizio. Faith and Credit: The World Banks Secular Empire. Penguin, Toronto: 1994. Newson, Janice. In class lectures. January 18th and 25th, 1996. f:\12000 essays\sociology (348)\World War II.TXT +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The 1930's were a very turbulent time period for the entire world. Many events occurred during this time that lead to World War II. It all began with a few events that set the stage for the entire thing. Things continued to get worse, until finally, the seemingly inevitable happened. There were several events that set the stage for the upcoming crisis. In Europe, Germany specifically, Adolf Hitler had gained control. Hitler was the head of the Nazi party, a Fascist political group. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, Japan had invaded Manchuria, a province in China. The United States declared its disapproval in the Stimpson Doctrine, which stated that it would not recognize any territorial gain made by force. Lastly, Japan had left the League of Nations, and began building up its navy. During these events, the United States attempted to stay neutral. One war that may have helped was the Nye committee. The Nye Committee investigated how the U.S. got involved in World War I. Many thought that by learning our previous mistakes, we would not repeat them. There was also the Neutrality Acts. The first neutrality act made it unlawful for the U.S. to ship or sell arms to countries where a state of war existed. Roosevelt and the U.S. congress had different views about isolationism. Roosevelt was not an isolationist, and was concerned about what was happening. Congress, on the other hand, was not as concerned. For example, Roosevelt could have eased European tensions somewhat by wiping out allied war debts. Congress, however, would not go along with such a thing. As time went by, the crisis in Europe continued to deepen. Hitler had started to become more aggressive. In 1938, Germany invaded Austria, and annexed it two days later. Later, Germany set its sights on Czechoslovakia. Hitler called Czechoslovakia's president, Emil Hacha, to Berlin. Once he arrived, Hacha was practically forced to allow Germany's occupation of the Sudetenland. Several early events occurred that warned the U.S. that they should prepare for war. One major thing that occurred in Germany was the Holocaust, which was a genocide against the Jews. Very few people approved of this, making it difficult for the U.S. not to act. Another major event was the fall of France. Germany, with its blitzkrieg tactics, had torn the French army to pieces, and had taken control of Paris. These events, amongst others, were definite signs that the U.S. may have no choice but to go to war. In conclusion, it is important to point out that all of the above events are very important parts of the history of the world. World War II has been called the greatest war that has ever occurred. It is my hope that the mistakes made by our ancestors will not be repeated.