Career Development Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words - 1

Career Development - Essay Example My acumen on the technical skill rapidly becomes well established each day to an extent that they were delegating very technical and intricate work to be done. I easily I adopted to the Chinese working culture. The roles that I widely worked on included the following: When repacking the bearing for the wheel of car, I was involved in, jacking up the car and removing the wheels. Then checking the drum and ensures it is rubbed. Then prying the grease drum and also removing the cotter pin, and sliding all the castellated nuts off the spindles. In addition, I used to slide the outer bearing, with the washer in front of it, off the spindle and check the grease availability in all the spaces between the bearings. The second contact that gave a wealth of experience in my field of automotive was very satisfying. It was in a very renowned club of Manchester that involves international countries in racing competition of Manchester. I used to work for 2 hours per day earning a wage of 100$ per hour. It is contract that lasted for three years that is from September 2007 to September 2010. I finalized by getting a contract of supplying the very Manchester club with the spare parts. The contracts were for two years. I have registered with professional bodies that are affiliated with car repackaging to ensure that I get any updates involving the field of car repackaging I am at abreast with the knowledge. I have registered with the following professional bodies that allow keep me updated with the very current knowledge. Communicating ones conviction can be hard verbally compared with written. In my resume, words have been given power to communicate my convictions. In my resume I have one single conviction in life that has been the drive of my life. The drive that I intend to impact with on the institution that I place my bid for employment. The

Rhetorical Analysis Essay Example for Free

Rhetorical Analysis Essay McDonalds is commonly known as a satisfying fast food restaurant that can be found all over the United States. It has great tasting food and a warm, fun environment for parents and children. McDonalds continuously tries to be portrayed as a healthy, happy, and family friendly setting to attract their intended audience but in reality, this food is extremely bad to eat. They provide commercials and advertisements that look very appealing to the human eye because the meals they sell are commonly eaten in the United States. Between the food and the environment, it is hard to pass up a trip to this restaurant. They are most famous for their burgers, fries, and milkshakes which are typical meals that young kids and their parents like to snack on without realizing how unhealthy they can be. Ronald McDonald, the restaurants character, is an interesting man that looks like a clown, which is an attraction to a little kid that wants to eat there. McDonalds is a great example of how restaurants say and do whatever it takes to get more customers using pathos and ethos. McDonalds puts out commercials where all their customers; parents and children, look extremely happy and healthy when in this atmosphere. The indoor playgrounds and appealing food make it seem like it is one of the best places to eat out, but customers do not realize that what they see in this advertisement is too good to be true. The people may seem to look friendly and skinny on television and on billboards, but in reality, those that eat at McDonalds all the time are not in shape and most likely do not feel good about their health. This chain restaurant uses the technique of pathos to try to attract more customers by making the people in the commercials look as if they feel great and make them look overly happy to be eating this food. Those that eat at this restaurant are really looking for cheap food on the go. McDonalds is very well known in the country to have reasonably priced, good tasting food. Those that have experienced eating here know it tastes good and those who have not tried it yet, have heard about it, so it is safe to conclude that they use the technique of ethos as well. Reputation in any restaurant is important because if there is a bad reputation no one will want to eat there Although the food at McDonalds tastes exceptionally good, they are falsely advertising the environment that this restaurant brings about. It may be delicious but it is necessary to make sure that people know it is not good for them and can be very detrimental to their health. McDonalds incorporates pathos and ethos in order to advertise the best way they possibly can to attract the customers and to make more money.

The Rise in Penal Populism | Dissertation

The Rise in Penal Populism | Dissertation Abstract Since the mid-1970s onward, the vast majority of Western countries have experienced a significant plus continual rise in their incarceration rates, leading to the problem of overcrowded prisons. We examine the extent to which the ‘incarceration boom’ of many modern societies can be attributed to the phenomenon of penal populism. Specifically, we argue that some short-lived actual crime waves during the late 1970s and 1980s may have initially generated a small amount of rational penal populist sentiment among the public, it is the strong divisions within the increasingly heterogeneous public (both politically and ethnically), the central government, and the popular media industry of many democratic developed nations which have ultimately sustained the growth of both penal populism and prison population numbers. Furthermore, we focus on the types of crime that are most commonly targeted by strong penal populist sentiments in the public and criminal justice system, and suggest that all such categories of crime can be fundamentally linked to the cultural ‘purification’ of children which has taken place in virtually all Western societies during the latter half of the twentieth century. Finally, we consider the limitations of penal populism, referring to those few post-industrial states where such populist punitiveness has been largely resisted, and postulate what the end-stage consequences of a penal populist movement spanning over the past three decades are likely to be. 1. Introduction The term ‘penal populism’ denotes a punitive phenomenon that has become characteristic of many modern industrial societies, especially within Western liberal democracies since the late twentieth century onward, whereby anti-crime political pressure groups, talk-back radio hosts, victim’s rights activists or lobbyists, and others who claim to represent the ‘ordinary public’ have increasingly demanded of their governments that harsher policies and punishments be enforced by the relevant organs of the criminal justice system (e.g. law enforcement agencies, prosecutors, legislators, etc.) in order to combat the perceived rise in serious crime rates (Pratt, 2006). One direct consequence of the increasingly severe ‘tough on crime’ measures – such as ‘Life means Life’, ‘Three Strikes’, and ‘Zero Tolerance’ policies – exercised in many economically advanced countries from the mid-1970s onward has been an unprecedented rapid rise in the incarceration rates of these respective nations, leading to the problem of overcrowded prisons. The United States epitomises the tempo of the modern change in national imprisonment rates, and currently has the worst problem of prison overcrowding on a global scale. Indeed, ‘American incarceration numbers [have] increased fivefold between 1973 and 1997’(Caplow and Simon, 1999, p63). More recently, ‘in 2004 the United States surpassed Russia in incarceration rates to become the world leader. With 2.2 million individuals inside (assuming a U.S. population of 290 million in 2004, that is an incarceration rate of approximately 759 adults in prison per 100,000 residents of the United States) and upwards of 7 million individuals either on parole, probation or awaiting trial, 1 in every 33 people in the U.S. is currently under state control and the number is growing’(State-Wide Harm Reduction Coalition, 2005). Clearly, an interpretation of the widespread incarceration rise must be able to accurately explain its rapidity, extent, and endurance on a global scale. There are two principal explanations for why such a large number of developed countries have experienced an ‘incarceration boom’ over the past three decades. Both theoretical models assert that it is changes in penal policies plus sentencing practices, rather than simply significant increases in crime rates alone, which are the primary factor responsible for driving prison population growth, but there is considerable disparity between the two theories about the causes of penal policy changes. One ‘crime wave’ hypothesis posits that actual rising crime rates in many Western countries, including the vast expansion of drug crime during the late twentieth century, have resulted in a greater rational public demand for the criminal justice system to take more severe punitive measures against convicted dangerous criminals (i.e. those offenders who pose the highest threat to public safety and social order; the criminal offenders most commonly targeted by penal populism in modern societies shall be considered in detail below), such as a more frequent use of incarceration with longer custodial sentences. In contrast, the second ‘political opportunism’ hypothesis suggests that many majority government parties have intentionally overstated the size and severity of the national crime problem in order to heighten public fears or instil ‘moral panic’ over perceived (as opposed to actual) rising crime rates, which are merely a political artefact, and subsequently utilise harsher crime control policies to win electoral favour (Caplow and Simon, 1999). Importantly, irrespective of which mechanism has in actual fact been operating across numerous advanced industrial states, and has led to the observed excessive growth in prison population sizes, both explanatory models can clearly be regarded as strongly related to the presence of penal populism. The critical difference between the two theories is whether the main original source of those penal populist sentiments can be accurately considered to be the public or the state, or both. According to the first model, which may be described as the public-induced penal populism hypothesis, it has been the persistent public demand for the government to impose harsher punitive measures on convicted criminals which has primarily caused the fast-paced escalation of incarceration numbers in many modern nations. In other words, the criminal justice systems in these countries have largely been exercising a regime of penal excess because constant pressure from a large sector of the public (in response to an actual rise in crime rates) has compelled them to do so. In comparison, the second model, which we may refer to as the state-induced penal populism hypothesis, postulates that within many Western countries the government parties in power have often created and sustained an artificial appearance of rising crime rates in order to instil widespread public anxiety. Subsequently, the majority government (and individual politicians) can be observed by the public to be apparently controlling the perceived illusory crime problem, such as through adopting and enforcing ‘tough on crime’ measures, and thereby attain public popularity to secure their party’s (or their own) success in the next general election. The second model further suggests that the government is not the only state institution in developed nations which benefits from overstating the scale of the dangerous crime threat, but that there are also large rewards for popular media outlets or news companies willing to do so. It is argued by many criminologists that within almost all democratic Western countries, the central government and the popular media, which are both fragmented into multiple competing party’s or companies, are highly dependent on addressing and reporting criminal activity that specifically victimises ‘ordinary people’ in order to retain electoral votes and public ratings, respectively. Hence, the state-induced penal populism hypothesis proposes that politicians and media outlets lead rather than merely follow or passively represent the public opinion: the public only supports or appears to ‘demand’ the government’s harsher punitive policy strategies because the same national government and popular media industry (as two powerful state institutions) have manufactured a compelling false image of prevalent serious crime which has instilled strong penal populist sentiments in a large proportion of that public. The central aim of the following examination is to determine which of these two distinctive theoretical positions is most likely to be correct. It is of course possible that the public-induced penal populism mechanism primarily operates in one developed nation, while in another Western country it may be the state-driven penal populism process that is predominant. However, to the extent that the relatively recent phenomenon of globalisation has resulted in many common economic, social, political, and cultural practices being widely adopted by a number of modern industrial states, one may plausibly expect a similar (if not identical) mechanism of generating penal populism to be present in the developed nations affected by prison population growth, especially with regard to the United States and Western Europe. At the outset, we may hypothesise that although some short-lived real increases in Western crime rates during the late 1970s and 1980s may have initially triggered some rational penal populist sentiments among the public of these modern societies, it has been the combined interaction of both political opportunism and media opportunism which has acted as a powerful vehicle in numerous modern societies for distorting the public’s common view of the national crime problem, and ultimately for sustaining the growth of both penal populism plus prison populations, regardless of how those crime rates may have subsequently changed (and in most developed countries they have steadily declined). One fundamental feature of the modern incarceration surge over the past three decades that is observed in virtually all countries affected by rapid prison growth is the significant proportion of these prison populations that has become comprised of racial minorities, including both of resident ethnic groups and of non-citizen illegal immigrants. As one study (O’Donnell, 2004, p262) remarks, ‘one factor that accounts for rising prison populations across Europe is the incarceration of ‘foreigners’. It is likely that prison accommodation in the Republic of Ireland will be used to hold growing numbers of failed asylum seekers, at least pending deportation. It is also inevitable that the composition of the prison population will change as members of minority groups begin to appear before the courts on criminal charges’. In terms of the racial minorities imprisonment trend in the United States, Caplow and Simon (1999, p66) assert that ‘it is undeniable that the incarcerated population is disproportionately composed of minorities (especially African Americans and Hispanics), and that the disproportion has increased during the period of rising imprisonmentThe period of rapid growth in incarceration rates has seen a significant increase in the proportion of minorities in the inmate population, especially among drug offenders, the fastest growing segment of that [prison] population’. As is the case with most Western European countries, the United States prison sector has also experienced a mass round up of illegal immigrants or non-citizens during the last three decades, who in 2003 made up 40% of federal prisoners (State-Wide Harm Reduction Coalition, 2005). Ultimately, therefore, it is apparent that the incarceration boom in many developed countries has primarily affected various racial minority populations present within these nations. It is the cumulative incarceration of racial minorities that is significantly responsible for the prison overcrowding problem commonly observed. Thus, one crucial question that we must address in the following study is what has caused (and continues to cause) the increased imprisonment of racial minority populations, relative to the incarceration rate of the racial majority host population (typically white), within the modern industrial societies affected by prison overcrowding? Specifically, we shall seek to determine whether pervasive ‘penal racism’, indicated by a greater tendency in developed nations for both the law enforcement system to arrest and subsequently for the criminal justice system to imprison ethnic or non-white defendants compared with white ones who have committed the same offence, is sufficient to explain the large racial differentials observed in incarceration rates, or not. The methodology of the following study consists entirely of literature-based research and analysis. 2. The Origins of Penal Populism: Real Crime Waves versus Political and Media Opportunism It is widely acknowledged that the prevalent public sentiment in many developed countries to ‘get tough’ with criminals has played a central role in catalysing the incarceration surge which has occurred in these nations since the mid-1970s onward, an influential social movement that is referred to as penal populism. Furthermore, whether one regards the source of that penal populism as stemming from a rational public response to actual rising crime rates or, conversely, as triggered by public exposure to political and media manipulation, the measured strength of the public’s demand on their respective democratic governments to impose harsher punitive measures on convicted criminals has remained consistently high over the thirty year period of vast growth in incarceration numbers. For example, with regard to the United States, one study notes that the time series of public responses to the survey question of whether courts are too lenient has remained highly stable since 1972 (Caplow and Simon, 1999). The significant temporal correlation in many modern industrial states between the onset of strong public desire since around the mid-1970s for more stringent crime policies and the period of rapid prison population growth is a clear indication of the vital part that penal populist sentiments have played in causing prison overcrowding. One may plausibly argue that the strong growth of penal populist sentiments in most advanced industrial societies over the past three decades has been initially generated by temporary real increases in crime (including the rapid expansion of a drug-crime economy during the 1980s) and sustained by an increased reliance of governments on implementing harsher crime control measures (rather than more effective social welfare policies) to gain public support plus secure electoral favour. Accordingly, we intend to demonstrate that penal populism in developed nations is a product of both short-lived actual crime waves and manipulative political opportunism. Indeed, one would theoretically expect the two factors operating in conjunction to result in a significantly larger escalation in incarceration rates (as is in fact observed) than would occur if only one of these forces was present in isolation. As one study has observed, ‘tough on crime’ policies produce prison population increases only to the degree that offenders are available to be imprisoned (Zimring and Hawkins, 1991). Conversely, an increase in crime rates would also not produce a corresponding increase in imprisonment rates unless some suitably punitive crime control measures were in place. During the last thirty years there has also certainly occurred in many Western countries a greater dependence of competing popular media companies, both television and the press, on selectively reporting dangerous (i.e. worse than normal) crime on an almost daily basis, simply in order to maintain or increase viewer and reader ratings. By portraying the national crime problem as more severe and more prevalent than in reality, individual popular media outlets (e.g. tabloid newspapers) in developed nations have become more appealing to public viewers than their quality media counterparts (e.g. broadsheet newspapers) who often object to distorting or manipulating the reporting of crime news. Since the late twentieth century onward, crime news has become a fundamental component of the public’s staple diet. As Pratt (2007, p68) suggests, ‘the reporting of crime is inherently able to shock [and] entertain, sustaining public appeal and interest, selling newspapers and increasing television audiences. Furthermore, the way in which crime is used to achieve these ends is by selective rather than comprehensive reportingHowever, it is not only that crime reporting has quantitatively increased; there have also been qualitative changes in its reporting: it is prone to focus more extensively on violent and sexual crime than in the pastThese qualitative and quantitative changes in crime reporting can be attributed to the growing diversity of news sources and media outletsAs a consequence, both television and the press have to be much more competitive than used to be the case. Their programmes have to be packaged in such a way that they become more attractive to viewers than those of their rivals and competitors’. Evidently, given that it is typically the most popular newspapers (such as the tabloid press in Britain) which feature the greatest number and severity of crime stories, it means that the most common representations of crime, portrayed in ‘the form of randomised, unpredictable and violent attacks inevitably committed by strangers on ‘ordinary people’, reach the greatest audience’(Pratt, 2007, p70). Thus, it is clear that within modern society the potential benefits to popular media outlets from inaccurately amplifying the danger plus scale of national crime in the public’s perception are equally as large as the rewards for politicians willing to do so. With regard to addressing the (largely fabricated) immediacy of the criminal activity problem, therefore, media opportunism and political opportunism are proximately linked in virtually all post-industrial countries where penal populist currents are strongly established. As well as magnifying the size of the dangerous crime problem, the popular media in many Western countries further continually seeks to undermine the current sentencing practices of the criminal justice system, regardless of how harsh they have become over the past three decades. In the same way that the crime stories reported by the popular media are scarcely representative of the actual nature of everyday crime within developed nations, the court stories followed are rarely illustrative of everyday sentencing practices. According to Pratt (2007), that media misrepresentation then reinforces the common public opinion that courts are too lenient, even though they have become significantly more punitive, in addition to fuelling the widely held public sentiment that the crime rate is constantly escalating when recent statistics indicate that crime is in fact steadily declining in most modern societies. Thus, in its reporting style, crime analysis by the Western popular media has become ‘personalised’ rather than ‘statisticalised’, since: 1) it prioritises the experiences of ordinary people (especially crime victims) over expert opinions 2) News reports are more prone to focus on the occasional failings of criminal justice officials as opposed to their many successes. Indeed, in the vast majority of modern societies, the ‘citation of criminal statistics has become a code for softness on crime and callousness towards its victims’(Pratt, 2007, p88), which simply provides the popular media with further scope to legitimately overstate the scale and severity of everyday crime in developed states. For these reasons, the media outlets in many Western countries have played a significant role in facilitating the continual growth of penal populist sentiments among the public. 3. The Transient Growth of a Drug-Crime Economy in Developed Countries It is highly pertinent that the vast expansion in drug crime within many Western nations during the late 1970s and 1980s coincided precisely with the onset of rapidly escalating incarceration rates in these same countries. As is asserted, ‘the growth in nondrug crime has simply not been sufficient to sustain the rapid growth of imprisonment. By the 1970s there was already an active culture of drug use and networks of drug importation/sales in the United States, but their economic importance increased in the 1980s due to new products and distribution strategies, especially for ‘crack’ cocaine. That transformation in the marketing of illegal drugs coincided with political decisions to intensify the punishments for drug crimes. The result was an enlargement of the population available for criminal justice processing’(Caplow and Simon, 1999, p71). It is crucial to acknowledge, therefore, that in any modern industrial society there is not a rudimentary causal link between a greater public desire for severity in criminal sanctions and a sustained growth in incarceration numbers; other conditions must be present. Specifically, ‘a key condition is a large pool of offenders available to be imprisoned’(Caplow and Simon, 1999, p93). Although there had also been documented transient increases in the number of offenders committing nondrug crimes such as violent crime, property crime (larceny), and sex crime in modern societies during the 1980s, these numbers tended to fluctuate in cycles over time, and could not account for the continual rise in incarceration rates observed. In contrast, the number of drug crime offences had remained consistently high throughout the 1980s in virtually all developed countries that have experienced an incarceration boom. However, in most Western nations the total drug crime rate then started to steadily decline during the 1990s largely due to the much harsher punishments being imposed on drug crime offenders (both petty and serious) by the criminal justice systems in these states. One valid explanation for the persistently high rate of drug crime during the 1980s is the ‘economic base’ principle. Specifically, while the average monetary yield of larceny, violence and sex offences is very low, drug crime represents one of the only categories of felony where the potential financial returns are extremely high, and that provides a strong economic incentive for individuals living in poverty. Hence, drug smuggling and trafficking are the only illegal activities capable of providing a solid economic base for a large criminal population in modern society. The initial cost of goods is low and law enforcement efforts sustain high retail prices, thereby ensuring large profit margins (Reuter and Kleiman, 1986). Since the 1980s, drug crime has certainly been targeted by penal populist sentiments in many Western countries affected by a public expectation for greater punitiveness, largely irrespective of how the drug crime rate has subsequently changed in these developed nations, but it is evidently not the only category of felony that has become a common target of penal populism. Sex offences (especially against children), violent or abusive crimes (once again, even more so when the victims are children), and youth crime are three other important types of crime that in late modern capitalist states have characteristically become subjected to a public desire for penal excess. We shall examine in detail at a later stage below what these specific four categories of crime have in common and why they are such typical targets of penal populist sentiments in developed liberal societies. 4. The Increased Dependence of Governments on Crime Control as a Source of Popular Credibility The rapid proliferation of drug crime in many Western countries during the late 1970s and 1980s was accompanied by a great loss of public confidence in the social welfare programs implemented in these same nations. As Pratt (2007, p95) asserts, ‘the visible presence of drug addicts in these countries had become a symbol of misplaced welfarism and tolerance, now believed to be corroding their economic and social fabrics’. Furthermore, the short-lived growth of general crime waves in many modern societies during the late twentieth century led to a significant decline of public assurance in the competence of their respective governments to control the state. As one study remarks, ‘the international crime waves of the 1960s and 1970s helped diminish the prestige of national governments all over the industrial world, by calling into question their capacity to maintain social order. The increase of crime rates at a time of increasing government efforts to help the poor undermined many of the traditional arguments for welfare, and helped confirm the view of many conservatives that efforts to help the poor only made circumstances worse by eliminating incentives for self improvement’(Caplow and Simon, 1999, p88). It is difficult to determine whether the crime wave was caused by expansions in welfare programs or merely coincided with them. The main point is that in addition to the direct relationship between high rates of crime and demands for punitive governmental responses, the crime wave may have indirectly diminished the prestige of and public demand for welfare-oriented government (Caplow and Simon, 1999). Thus, it is argued that during the 1980s many Western governments shifted the priority of their domestic agendas away from welfare policies toward crime control policies. Initially, it was most often right wing conservative politicians that promoted ‘tough on crime’ punitive measures, making crime a political issue and gaining public support. However, Lappi-Seppà ¤là ¤ (2002, p92) suggests that mainstream opposition (i.e. left wing) parties are then forced into advocating punitive policies as well, because although these left wing parties want to ‘distance themselves from the populist programmes of the right wing movements, there is one area where they do not like to disagree – the requirement of being ‘tough on crime’. No party seems to be willing to accuse another of exaggeration when it comes to measures against criminality. Being ‘soft on crime’ is an accusation that no [governmental party] wants to accept. And it is that fear of being softer than one’s political opponents which tends to drive politicians, in the end, to the extremes of penal excess’. It is plausible to argue, therefore, that constant competition between opposing governmental factions for public favour in liberal democracies has created an ‘punitive arms race’ of political opportunism, whereby each party is compelled to promote plus (when in power) implement increasingly more radical punitive policies – irrespective of the actual level of crime that the country is experiencing – in order to avoid appearing weak on crime and consequently losing valuable electoral votes to their political opponents who are prepared to be more severe on criminals. Clearly, such an opportunistic punitive arms race occurring within the governments of developed nations would lead to an exponential increase in the prison population numbers of these countries, and ultimately to prison overcrowding. That political mechanism may at least partly explain why so many Western countries which have experienced a large decrease in crime rates since the mid-1990s and into the early twenty-first century have still reported a rising prison population. For example, Pratt (2006, p1) observes that since 1999 Labour led coalition governments in New Zealand have strongly adhered to Britain’s New Labour ‘approach to crime and punishment, even using the famous phrase ‘tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime’ in its election manifestoes of 2002 and 2005. As a consequence, while [New Zealand’s] recorded crime rate has dropped by 25% in the last ten years, its imprisonment rate has increased to 189 per 100,000, one of the highest of Western countries’. Yet it is not only the divisions (i.e. in terms of competing parties) within Western democratic governments that have catalysed the increased political focus on crime control, but also the growing number of divisions among the public itself. Indeed, modern society in many developed nations (such as the United Kingdom and the United States) has become increasingly heterogeneous since the late twentieth century, and consequently the number of bases of division within these societies has expanded. For example, the members of a diverse post-industrial society are not only partitioned along the traditional parameter of social class, but are also strongly divided by a number of dichotomous value-based issues that are characteristic of ‘post-materialist’ politics such as abortion, gay rights, animal rights (e.g. fox hunting), mass immigration, school prayer, and capital punishment where it still exists (Caplow and Simon, 1999). These value- or identity-based issues are intensely contested over in modern societies by well-organised pressure groups on either side of the bipolar political spectrum. These issues are bipolar or dichotomous in the sense that they are non-negotiable with no ‘middle ground’; one either supports abortion rights or one opposes them. Hence, public division on these post-materialist issues is inevitable. One important consequence of the heterogeneous publics of Western countries becoming divided by such a multitude of value conflicts during the 1970s onward is that government parties had difficulty finding any issues to build successful election campaigns on that would appeal to a vast majority of the public. Harsher crime control appeared to be a clear choice as a singular issue that large sections of the modern public are united in consensus on. As is stated, ‘Unlike most values issues on the left or right, crime control seems to cut across the political spectrumPoliticians seeking to build viable majorities inevitably turn to the few issues that can bring people together in the new political landscapeThat is why election campaigns continue to focus on crime and punishment issues even when opposing candidates agree in their support of punitive anticrime measures. Faced with voters who split on so many issues and who are profoundly sceptical about the ability of government to improve their lives through welfare-oriented interventions, the mode of governing that commands the broadest support – punitiveness toward criminal offenders – is understandably [valued by governments]’(Caplow and Simon, 1999, p83). Ultimately, therefore, while short-lived actual increases in crime rates during the late 1970s and 1980s may have initially triggered the rise in imprisonment rates in a number of developed countries, political opportunism (in the sense of governments capitalising on populist punitiveness) has arguably sustained the incarceration boom in virtually all Western nations affected by prison overcrowding, regardless of how those crime rates may have subsequently changed. 5. The Target Crimes of Penal Populism There is a high degree of uniformity across all Western nations that have experienced an incarceration surge over the past three decades in the types of crime that are most commonly subjected to strong public demand for harsh punitive sanctions. Generally, the four most frequent felony targets of penal populism are: Drug crime; Sex offences, especially when the victims are children; Child abuse (physical, sexual, or psychological), and; Youth crime. Correspondingly, these have also been some of the fastest growing segments of prison and boot camp populations in many developed countries during recent years. One fundamental property that the above four categories of crime have in common is that children are extremely vulnerable to the effects of all of them. We may validly question why children have come to occupy such a central place in the penal populist sentiments of modern industrial societies. Pratt (2007, p96) remarks that ‘crime control policy driven by penal populism targets ‘others’, not ordinary, ‘normal’ peopleGiven the nature of populism, we should expect that crime control policy will gravitate towards easy and familiar targets, for whom there is likely to be the least public sympathy, the most social distance and the fewest authoritative voices (if any) to speak on their behalf: tho Effects of Watching Soap Operas | Research Effects of Watching Soap Operas | Research Shaping Minds: The Soap Opera and the Power of Representation Abstract In this thesis I aim to identify what the younger British public find engaging about Soap Operas, and to identify some of the processes at work during viewing, which might alter or enhance the ways in which we see the world. Focusing specifically on the relationship between popular media and the attitudes of young people towards sex and social class, research addresses the power of media representation, the use of role models, and how popular media encourages the viewer to make social distinctions and reinforces our ideas of classification. My research examines the influence of popular programmes, such as Sex and the City, and Australian and British Soap Operas, and throughout the thesis I refer to the theoretical approaches of Bourdieu and Michel Foucault, where I discuss the paradoxes latent in both the logic and language that people generally perceive to be stable and fundamental to social order. I also consider systems of classification and how the act of perceiving the validity and existence of such distinctions creates them. Conclusions drawn suggest that people consider soap viewing to be more dangerous in hindsight, whereas younger people do not recognise, or are less willing to recognise the inherent influences of soap story lines. Research does conclude that most people do consider soap operas to present an unrealistic portrayal of family life and relationships. Introduction Before the seventies a relatively small and largely irrelevant body of research existed that was solely based around soap operas, and it was only at that point when soaps began to assume a position as a topic of interest (LaGuardia 1974, 1977; Stedman 1971; Weibel 1977. In Blumenthal, p.43), as well as an area worthy of academic research (Katzman 1972; McAdown 1974; Newcomb 1974. Ibid). As Blumenthal openly writes ‘there were those who simply were against them, or found them silly.’ (Blumenthal, p.43). The context for this research formed out of a perceived gap in current research topics between the effects of media on children and adults, with relatively few projects being based solely upon teenagers and young people. As noted by Hawk et al (2006) much public and scientific concern has been expressed regarding the influence of sex in the mainstream media on childrens sexual development, such as Greenfield, 2004. However, fewer studies have studied in depth the relations hips between adolescents viewing of sexual content in the media and their own sexual behaviours and attitudes, and of those studies which do exist many are subject to severe limitations such as small samples, and narrow focus on a single type of sexual outcome, such as incidence of intercourse (Peterson et al., 1991. In Hawk et al, 2006: 352). An important consideration for the topic of this research also rested upon the observance that it is less common for research into sexual attitudes to be combined with attitudes towards social class; the decision to marry these two topics derived from the consideration that British soap operas more often represent the working class, whereas Australian soap operas mostly refer to middle class families. It was therefore an interesting research proposition to consider whether attitudes towards sex and class are being shaped by the type of target audience that these programmes are being aimed at. Although the present study does not focus on the ex tent to which women only are influenced by viewing soap operas, it does recognise that a large body of research exists on women and soap operas, and that more useful responses might be given by women respondents. Methodology In considering the methodology for this project it was decided that in order to achieve a more comprehensive collection of data with specific personal reactions to media that primary data in the forms of questionnaires and interviews should be used, rather than basing the thesis purely on secondary textual and resource analyses. As some critics suggest, textual analysis cannot always enlighten us as to what goes on in the minds of viewers and often relies upon inference and speculation (Dow, 1996). Secondary materials used for this project also include journals, articles, and books which have attempted to define the relationship between viewers and popular media. Results and findings are discussed using the research of theorists such as Adorno and Fiske; this was decided in order to encompass opinions which span a broad spectrum of relevant ideas, and are useful for how they illustrate the contrasts present in media research. Participants Participants who filled in only questionnaires were obtained by contacting high schools and middle schools, mostly in urban areas, that agreed to participate in data collection. Fifteen schools (who had their own colleges for 17-19 year olds) were initially randomly selected and contacted, 10 of which agreed to participate. As this project did not aim to highlight how attitudes might vary between age and race the identity and nationalities of respondents were not obtained. This was also decided upon because the ‘blind’ questionnaire offered school pupils more scope to provide false answers, especially concerning age and gender. In total there were 200 pupil responses with ages ranging from 12 to 18. As part of gathering primary data slightly different form of questionnaire (see Appendix Two) was presented to a random selection of young adults. This sample was achieved by approaching people on the street in a local town during rush hour. The only criteria that the second lot of respondents had to meet was that they were aged 30 or under this was to ensure that recall of their watching soap operas during their teens would be more likely to be more accurate. Furthermore, this age limit was necessary considering the ages of the programmes themselves, many of which have been running approximately 20 years or less. In the random sample interview it was possible to make a note of gendered responses Questionnaire and Interview Design In the interviewing techniques selected for this project it was decided to use a combination of single and multiple choice options and include questions which encouraged respondents to give subjective views and opinions. Contact with sexual and class content in the mainstream media, as represented through the viewing of soap operas and popular programmes, was measured by asking respondents on a four point scale the degree to which they felt that their favourite programme had influenced their ideas concerning these issues. In order to account for the differences in age between the two sets of respondents it was decided that when questioning the elder set that questions should include a retrospective option. For example, when questioning people about the influence of soaps on their opinions the question would read: â€Å"Would you say that watching this programme has or might have done so in the past altered your understanding of sexual relationships?† Chapter One:  Literature Review The Meaning and Origins of Popular Culture Over the last few decades culture has become frequently used to denote changing tastes and popularity in appreciation of interests such as music, art, theatre. As noted by Peter Goodall the word ’culture’ is consistently made use of by journalists and politicians, and especially by people studying within the Humanities (Goodall, 1995). The same author also notes that the word ’culture’ has become an ‘increasingly empty term [†¦] more frequently it is used, the more regularly it seems to need another word to prop it up and define its field of reference.’ (Goodall, 1995: xii). Take, for example, the term ‘police culture’, says Goodall, and the term ‘welfare culture’: does the word promise to mean more because these areas of society actually have little in common with one another? In both contexts the word ‘promises much [..] but delivers little; it poses as a noun but it is really an adjective’ where c ulture means little more than ‘group behaviour, practice or shared assumptions.’ (Ibid). The phenomenon of popular culture and the ease with which it has spread across the Western world, owes much to the existence of television, radio, and, more recently, the Internet. It was the Queens Coronation that begun the television age, with half the adult population watching the ceremony on TV sets; and most of these people not owning their own television at the time (Karwowski: 2002: 281). Statistics show that in 1951, the only available BBC channel had just 600,000 viewers, and that by the end of the century, watching TV was the most popular leisure activity with 94 per cent of homes having at least one colour TV and 66 per cent a video cassette recorder (Ibid). Karwowski highlights the following televised programmes as being central to the historical analysis of popular culture: the Queens Coronation The Goon Show from June 1952 to January 1960, described as ‘a surreal form of humour that lampooned all forms of pomposity and hypocrisy.’ (Karwowski: 2002: 281). Situation comedies such as Till Death Us Do Part 60s TV comedies, such as That Was The Week That Was and Monty Pythons Flying Circus Independent TV (ITV) began broadcasting in 1955. The number of TV channels grew to three with the start-up of BBC 2 in 1964, to four with Channel 4 in 1982, and five with Channel 5 in 1997, while colour TV was available from 1968. British Costume Drama, portraying English novelists such as Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and Evelyn Waugh Educational documentaries such as Sir Kenneth Clarks Civilisation (1969), Dr Jacob Bronowskis The Ascent of Man (1973) and Sir David Attenboroughs Life on Earth (1979) Walking with Dinosaurs Childrens programmes, such as Moles Christmas and the BBCs Teletubbies to more than 125. Quiz programmes such as the BBCs Quiz shows, such as The Weakest Link, and detective series such as Inspector Morse, currently being seen in 211 countries. However, KarwowskI observes that ‘all these genres become mere niche markets when compared to the soap opera, which has around a third of the nation addicted to its multifarious expressions.’ (2005: 282). In the UK, the most popular soap is Coronation Street, longest running since 1960, is as popular in Canada and New Zealand, with the Coronation Street web site having more hits from Canada than anywhere else. (Ibid). What we see in soap operas is often designed to provoke an empathic response in the mind of the viewer. Soap viewing can offer very contrasting experiences sometimes alienating or even shocking the viewer, and other times offering emotional support and guidance concerning difficult issues. It is perhaps this ‘mixed bag’ effect of soap viewing when a person is never sure what content will shape their viewing experience that make soap viewing so popular. Media theory questions how knowledge is received and understood by the audience. Charlotte Brunsdon once said that the pursuit of the audience can be characterized as a search for authenticity, for an anchoring moment in a sea of signification (1990, p.68). The interpretations of the complex relationship between the viewer and the viewed have been controversial and often, contrasting; for example, Theodor Adorno believed that the influence held over the public by mass media was potentially harmful and brainwashing, wher eas John Fiske wrote that work should focus on viewers’ interpretation of what they saw that the viewer had autonomy over the extent to which they would absorb and articulate the information presented (Gauntlett, 2002). Fiske also used the term ‘polysemy’ to refer to the potential for audiences to decode texts in varying ways (Fiske, 1986). Dow presents her idea that the viewer has almost complete autonomy over how they interpret what they see, saying that: â€Å"The most powerful claim of audience studies has been that real viewers often resist the dominant messages of television and interpret programming in ways that suit their own interests [..] Intentional or not, such judgments cast the differences between approaches within the framework of a zero-sum game in which only one party can be right, making the other automatically wrong.† (Dow, 1996: 2) Dow also suggest that it is not possible to completely disassociate oneself from the object of criticism because of the cultural and social interests which are shared by both the critic and the creator of the media in question. Furthermore, criticism becomes less about discovering meaning in texts and becomes more of a performative activity that is about creating meaning. Sex and Identity Part of the idea for this project was born out of the premise that there exists a strong link between ideas about sexual relationships and a young person’s sense of identity. It is an aim of this project to explore the degree to which hindsight might affect a person’s belief as to whether they have been influenced by what they have seen on soaps. Research has been conducted into the damaging nature of representation in popular media especially into the use of models or ‘ideal’ body types; what Virginia Blum calls the ‘yardstick’ of the ‘Other Woman’ against which women measures their imperfections. For the ‘twenty-first century Western woman,’ says Blum, ‘who is always evaluating her appearance (intimately bound up with her identity) in relation to some standard that must be Other in order to function as a standard’ (Blum, 2005: 27). Gauntlett cites research findings on women in prime time TV in the early nineties as being ‘young, single, independent, and free from family and work place pressures’ (Elasmar, Hasegawa and Brain, 1999:33. In Gauntlett: 2002, 59). Gauntlett goes on to suggests that the 1990’s saw the use of inoffensive models of masculinity and femininity, which were generally acceptable to the majority of the public, and that this reflected producers’ beliefs that they no longer needed to challenge gender representations (Ibid). In the case of the sitcom Friends the use of male and female models of represnetation were equal. As Gauntlett explains: â€Å"The three men (Ross, Chandler and Joey) fit easily within conventional models of masculinity, but are given some characteristics of sensitivity and gentleness, and male-bonding, to make things slightly refreshing. Similarly, the three women (Rachel, Monica and Phoebe) are clearly feminine, whilst being sufficiently intelligent and non-housewifey to seem like acceptable characters for the 1990s. The six were also, of course, originally all characters with a good set of both male and female friendships i.e. each other and the friendship circle was a refreshing modern replacement for the traditional family. (It was not long, of course, before they spoilt that by having Ross and Rachel, then more implausibly Monica and Chandler fall in love.)† (Gauntlett, p.59) In most soaps there exists a core set of characters who form the firm basis of the on-screen reality. If these core characters were to change too often then the soap loses credibility, and becomes an unreal parallel of the world that it is trying to represent. It is important that themes such as sex and class are presented in a coherent and consistent way. As Gauntlett’s comment on Friends suggests this is sometimes not the case as the idea of quasi family is ‘quashed’ by the sexual dynamics within the group, thus complicating the original idea. The Concept of Transformation It is a premise of this project that women might be more likely to have experienced closer identification with soaps than men. Although it was beyond the scope of this project to direct an in-depth inquiry into this premise, the questionnaire nevertheless attempted to explore whether there was a gender divide, although this attempt was limited due to the size of the questionnaire. As academic and soap viewer, Danielle Blumenthal, is quoted as saying: Soap operas . . . a connection with other women, beloved to me: my mother, grandmother, aunt, sister . . . a steady stream of modern folktales that symbolically link us together. Memories abound: racing off the schoolbus to catch the last ten minutes of General Hospital; laughing with Grandma over the plotline antics of Days of Our Lives; worrying over the lives of characters I cared about; endless feverish conversations with girlfriends, sister, aunt over who should do what, how, and with whom. (Blumenthal, 1997: 3) In her publication on feminist perspectives and soap operas, Blumenthal refers to soap opera viewing as a ‘specific cultural activity’ questioning how much the activity is an ‘empowering practiceor, praxisfor women to engage in.’ (Ibid, p.4). The term praxis, Marxist criticism has been defined as meaning conscious physical labor directed toward transforming the material world so it will satisfy human needs (Rothman 1989:170. In Blumenthal, 1997:3). Blumenthal extends this interpretation to mean not only physical, but also mental labour, ‘which transforms images and experience to meet human needs.’ (Ibid). The concept can also be interpreted as a belief that ‘social objects do not simply exist out there in space, but are mediated through a continual process of interpretation and construction by the subjective and socially oriented mind.’ (Ibid). ‘Girl Power,’ and themes which identify the strengths in women’s att itudes are not limited to the sitcom or the soap opera, in fact they occur, to some degree, within just about every form of visual media and are mediated by the minds of the programmes creators to be received by the viewing public. The concept of transformation is prevalent in most media where women use their new image to take control of their lives and turn around situations. For example, Barbra Streisands 1996 film, The Mirror Has Two Faces, uses the idea of a before and after to provide tension and contrast within the film. In this film, the character Rose is transformed by losing weight and dying her hair this secures the physical adoration of her husband who married her for her ‘inner self.’ While the film encourages viewers to identify with Barbara Streisand it also reinforces the ideal of transformation, where the heroine does not settle for less, but dares to achieve more. Rachel Moseley, in her publication on feminist cultural perspectives, fashion, and media, observes that within these Cinderella stories there exists a ‘moment of increased visibility which provides a space for both the visual pleasure offered showcasing of the transformation, but also for the articulation of the a nxiety and emotional resonance of ’coming out’ in relation to class, as well as gender.’ (Moseley, 2002: p.40). In British and Australian soaps the concept of transformation is readily embraced not least within the lives of individual characters, but within each episode itself so as to create a mini section of a greater storyline. The world of the soap opera is fluid and dynamic it moves along at a much faster rate than reality off-screen, with new ideas and events constituting change on many levels. Blumenthal’s ideas concerning the ‘transformation’ of images is particularly useful here as it might help to explain how the serial relationships of soap characters are interpreted by the viewer. In soaps, it is often the case that characters who are not married engage in a string of successive relationships, which sets an unreal precedent to viewers, especially younger viewers. Media critic Mary-Lou Galician, in her publication Sex, Love Rom ance in the Mass Media lists twelve false premises which are regularly promoted within, and associated with, mass media; all of which she defines as ‘myths and stereotypes’ (2004: p.x): â€Å"Your perfect partner is cosmically predestined, so nothing/nobody can ultimately separate you. Theres such a thing as â€Å"love at first sight. † Your true soul mate should KNOW what youre thinking or feeling without your having to tell. If your partner is truly meant for you, sex is easy and wonderful. To attract and keep a man, a woman should look like a model or a centerfold. The man should NOT be shorter, weaker, younger, poorer, or less successful than the woman. The love of a good and faithful true woman can change a man from a â€Å"beast† into a â€Å"prince. † Bickering and fighting a lot mean that a man and a woman really love each other passionately. All you really need is love, so it doesnt matter if you and your lover have very different values. The right mate â€Å"completes you† — filling your needs and making your dreams come true. In real life, actors and actresses are often very much like the romantic characters they portray. Since mass media portrayals of romance arent â€Å"real, † they dont really affect you.† (2004: ix) Many social critics and relationship therapists have blamed the mass media for brainwashing viewers with portrayals of unrealistic love that are ‘unattainable as a goal and unhealthy as a model and, thereby, contributing to the construction of these unrealistic expectations’ (Dyer, 1976; Fromm, 1956; Johnson, 1983; Norwood, 1985; Peele, 1975;Russianoff, 1981; Shapiro Kroeger, 1991; Shostrom Kavanaugh, 1971. In Galician, 2004: p.13.). Certainly, many soap operas under discussion in this thesis are guilty of this phenomenon, and are suggestive of the idea that it is unfashionable or abnormal to be single. For example, as Glass writes: â€Å"Who can take seriously a character saying, as one does in the televised version of Candace Bushnells column, Were not dating. Its a fuck thing? Or, Ive been fucked every way you can be fucked? These characters are not serious, not even interesting, certainly not funny. With that type of woman, romance, with its necessary belief in an ideal, is impossible. [..] Bushnells women cavort aimlessly in New York, trying different sex games to see which they can win. When they lose, they move on. There is no reflection, no despair, no consequence of any action. The tragedy is that nothing in their lives is tragic.† (Glass, 1999: 14) This sort of promotion of casual sex could be potentially damaging to younger people, who are in the earlier stages of forming opinions about themselves and the world, as it could encourage them to find partners before they are comfortable to do so. Furthermore, in a school environment, where children are exposed to the same sorts of mass media, these ideas are discussed and reinforced within a social reality that is far different from the reality on-screen. As author of Sex and the City, Candace Bushnell, said of her creation: No one has breakfast at Tiffanys, and no one has affairs to remember instead, we have breakfast at 7 am and affairs we try to forget as quickly as possible. How did we get into this mess? (cf Glass, 1999: 14) During its popularity SATC was responsible for liberating the ideas of many women, and even their male partners, who watched it. The character of Samantha, played by Kim Cattrall, has been highlighted as an importnat portrayal of a sexually assertive woman in her forties. As Cattrall once said in an interview, ‘I don’t think there’s ever been a woman who has expressed so much sexual joy [on television] without her being punished. I never tire of women coming up and saying, â€Å"You’ve affected my life†Ã¢â‚¬â„¢ (Williams, 2002. Found in Gauntlett, 2002, p.61). Unfortunately the themes of casual sex is unsustainable and will not hold viewer’s attentions for as long as say, family dramas, which can be played out over a much longer period of time and have far more complex dynamics. Thus, the heyday of SATC is over, while Emmerdale continues. As suggested by Goldenberg et al the themes of sex is both intriguing and disturbing: â€Å"Despite its potential for immense physical pleasure and the crucial role that it plays in propagating the species, sex nevertheless is sometimes a source of anxiety, shame, and disgust for humans, and is always subject to cultural norms and social regulation. [..]We argue that sex is threatening because it makes us acutely aware of our sheer physical and animal nature. Although others (e.g., Freud, 1930/1961) have also suggested that human beings are threatened by their creatureliness, following Rank (1930/1998) and Becker (1973), we suggest that this motivation is rooted in a more basic human need to deny mortality.† (Goldenberg et al, 2002: p.310) Indeed, there is nothing safe about the themes of sex in soaps it is an unpredictable world, where things are more likely to go wrong, in comparison to the world of family life, where there are obvious boundaries and limits within which to localise behaviour. In terms of class, which is the other distinction that this project is addressing, the idea that most soaps represent a particular group of people from a particular area, means that they represent the social structure of that particular area. In turn, this means that most soaps are unable to present a cross section of society from any area wider than that which it chiefly represents, and often only manages to represent the lives of either working class or middle class people. Soaps which concentrate on more elitist tastes or narrower, more inaccessible stratas of society do not often gain such a high level of popularity. This can be seen in the case of Eldorado, a soap set in Spain about the lives of British expats, that lasted only a year before being axed. A different approach to the soap opera came alon gin 1997 with the airing of Family Affairs, a soap that focused on one family. The description of the soap read as follows: â€Å"The biggest, and riskiest, decision they made was to break away from the communal concept that underpins other soaps, whether it is the village (Emmerdale), the close (Brookside), the square (EastEnders), or the local streets and pub (Coronation Street). Family Affairs will centre on one family, and examine in intimate detail the struggles and tensions within the four walls of the Hart household. The other difference between this soap and its rivals will be that Family Affairs will not be geographically characterised. It is set in a neutral town, and will lack the northern atmosphere that permeates Corrie or Brookside. Class differences within the family will play a big part. The personal experience of Young and Hollingworth influenced them to base the soap around a family that had an ex-miner at its head (Hollingworths grandfather was a miner), whose son had become a self-employed builder, and whose four grandchildren were variously a trainee lawyer, an entrepreneur, a shop a ssistant and a schoolboy.† (McDonald, 1997: 1) This soap underwent a complete change in setting and in characters, before it was axed after only seven years. These example show that there is not enough of a market for specialised soaps which dare to do something a little different. It appears that it is the grittiness of urban landscapes or the character of places which people enjoying watching the most. Furthermore, it is interesting how similar themes such as teenage pregnancy, underage relationships, and people seeking to break the boundaries of their family’s class can all assume a different meaning, or at least be interpreted differently, according to the different locations and environments in which they are set. Mass Media and the Body Gauntlett observes a similarity between the malleability of the self and the late modern attitudes to the body: â€Å"No longer do we feel that the body is a more or less disappointing ‘given’ instead, the body is the outer expression of our self, to be improved and worked upon; the body has, in the words of Giddens, become ‘reflexively mobilized’ thrown into the expanding sphere of personal attributes which we are required to think about and control.† (In Gauntlett, p.104). Perhaps one of the greatest power centres behind both of these arguments is Hollywood, which in its history has seen the changing representation of women, and more recently, the increasing number of women, and men, who have surgery to preserve the image of their youth. These ideal images of women are not always positively received. For example, speaking in 1973, Marjorie Rosen commented that ‘the Cinema Woman is a Popcorn Venus, a delectable but insubstantial hybrid of cultural distortions’ (1973:10), and upon the changing representation of women Rosen observed the presence o f rebellious natured commentaries against working women in the 1940s and 1950s, and against female sexual emancipation in the 1960s and 1970s. Whereas women have been consistently promoted as ‘sex objects’ in varying styles throughout Hollywood’s history (Rosen, In Gauntlett, 2002). It would be an interesting line of enquiry to explore the degree to which feminist literature can help to explain the presence of the perceived gender gap in the process of idolisation and representation, and the influence of these processes on ideas concerning sex and sexuality. Some critics suggest that popular media have over-simplified debates which are essentially feminist in nature, and, in some cases, wrongly consider the feminist movement retrospectively, encouraging viewers to do the same. For example, in her article exploring the different definitions of third-wave feminism emerging in the U.S, Amanda Lotz comments that ‘simplistic popular media constructions of third -wave feminism’ are misleading to feminists, and that study of the ‘third-wave feminist ideas may be understood as distinctive of new social movement organization.’ (Lotz: 2003, p.3 ). Other critics pay close attention to the different psychological constitutions of women what Jane Gerhard terms ‘ideas about the distinctive psychological reality of women’ especially concerning our definition of post feminism, which makes a significant contribution to the re-assessment of heterosexual power relations. (2005: 41). With proponents of equality still battling with what Susan Faludi refers to as lackadaisical nature of post-feminism and the unfair ’backlash’ against the feminist movement itself (1992) the idea of feminism and soap opera viewing is topical and extensive, and, unfortunately, beyond the scope of this thesis to explore. Foucault Foucault’s work is useful in the discussion of soap operas and the effects of viewing popular television as it comments on the damaging nature of ‘normalization.’ Foucault argues that there is no such thing as a singular fixed meaning, and that meaning is understood on many levels most often through the historical, retrospective interpretation of rational and reasonable behaviour (Danaher et al, 2000). For example, he suggests that the nineteenth century witnessed a preoccupation with correctness where all things ‘wrong’ had to be ‘righted’ in some way in order to fit into a box of classification. This phenomenon has had long-lasting effects on Western culture to the extent where ‘norms’ have been established, and exceptions to these norms ‘cured’ or corrected. In the discussion of class and attitudes towards sex we might consider how the media has portrayed the image of the ideal woman or man. The difference between the historical normalisation of beauty to contemporary is that such images have been popularised through the media on an increasingly global and interpersonal scale. With the advancement of technology, advertising reaches people even within the private space of their own homes through television, radio, and the Internet. This is all the more dang

Body Ritual Among the Nacirema Essay -- Anthropology

Body Ritual Among the Nacirema What is the precise geographical location of this strange tribe, the Nacirema? The Nacirema is a North American group living in the territory between the Canadian Cree, the Yaqui and Tarahumare of Mexico, and the Carib and Arawak of the Antilles. Little is known of their origin, though tradition states that they came from the east. What are the private and secret shrines of the Nacirema? In the Nacirema, the belief is that the human body is ugly and that its natural tendency is to debility and disease. Every household has one or more shrines devoted to the hope that mans body will be changed through the use of the powerful influences of ritual and ceremony. Each family has at least on such shrine; the rituals associated with it are not family ceremonies but are private and secret. The rites are normally only discussed with children, and then only during the period when they are being initiated into these mysteries. The focal point of the shrine is a box or chest which is built into the wall. Many charms and magical potions without which no native believes he could live. These preparations are secured from a variety of specialized practitioners. The most powerful of these are the medicine men, whose assistance must be rewarded with substantial gifts. Who are the Nacirema’s holy-mouth-men? In the hierarchy of magical practitioners, and below the medicine men in prestige, are specialists whose designation is b...

Marketing and Variable Cost Variances Essay

(a) Refer to the Kinkead templates provided on the unit website. Template (A) calculates the market size, market share, sales mix, sales price and variable cost variances for each product and, Template (B) calculates the market size, market share, sales price, and variable cost variances for each product. Which analysis is most appropriate for Kinkead? A or B? Give reasons. Templete (b) What strategy is electric meters and electric instruments pursuing? ‘Dog’, ‘Cash cow’, ‘Star’, or ‘Question mark’. Analysing the relationship between the BCG matrix and the product of Kinkead, market share and market growth are the considerable reason to measure. Kinkead’s products are grouped into two main product lines which are electric meters(EM) and electric instruments(EI). First, for the EM product, according to template, the variance of the size of the market is unfavorable, the size of the market because their budget is 800000, but the actual market size of 650000, it does not implement the expectations. The EM market share difference to 0, with 10% constant of the actual and budgeted position, it will not change. Therefore, they are a cash cow. Therefore, EM is the Cash Cow. Additionally, the Kinkead has been a leading Australia firm, and EM is the older but still dominant technology. Followed by EI table EI of the variance of the size of the market for 374,464 budgets, the size of the market for 250,000, lower than the actual market size of 363,500, more than expected. The market share variance is 241,321 Unfavorable which has decrease from 10% to 8%. Therefore, EI is question mark. In addition, EI’s future is uncertain, because from the case it says EI technology is new and still experimental. (c) What aspects of performance are important for a product pursuing each of those strategies and which variances reflect those aspects of performance? (d) Critically evaluate the performance of the two divisions.

Identifying the Most Diverse Universities in America

Identifying the Most Diverse Universities in America The demographics of America are changing rapidly. Students who attend college today and then join the workforce will face the most diverse population of workers in all fields race, ethnicity, religion, and gender preference. If sensitivity and appreciation for these diverse populations is not developed in college, it will be very difficult for white Caucasian students to enter the adult world of work fully prepared. For this reason, it might be wise for white students to consider diversity in universities when they look to select the institutions they might wish to attend. Two sources are generally used to compile very complete profiles of diversity on college campuses the Shannon-Weiner Index and the National Center for Education Statistics. Based upon the reports of these two sources, here is a listing of the 8 most diverse universities in America. Rutgers University Newark, NJ Rutgers is proud of its diversity, and openly recruits student of all racial and ethnic backgrounds. More than half of its student body is non-white, and the three largest racial groups are white, Asian and Hispanic. In addition to a rigorous academic curriculum, the school sponsors regular programs and events to celebrate diversity, and also offers degree in minority studies Jewish, African-American, Asian, Middle-Eastern, and Hispanic. Rutgers is now the most diverse university in the country. Stanford University, Stanford, CA Stanford is known for its push to create one of the most diverse universities in the U.S., and it has been fully successful in doing so. To promote awareness and relationships among all of these diverse it offers a number of student groups and organizations that blend members of all racial and ethnic backgrounds. Even the residence halls are centered on themes that will bring greater diversity humanities, the arts, biology, language and cultures, and global citizenship. Notre Dame De Namur, Belmont, CA This private Catholic university puts its money where its mouth is. Not only does it openly recruit significant minority groups, it also requires that all student take 9 credit hours from a curriculum in cultural diversity but requires community service work in local minority communities. Not only is this school on of the most diverse universities, its graduate have supreme exposure in real world settings. University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI The majority of minority populations at this university are Asian, Pacific-Islander, native Hawaiians, and the LGBT community. It promotes cultural awareness by many campus-wide organizations, and support organizations for a number of specific groups East Indians, LGBT students, and Vietnamese, to name a few. While its African-American and Latino populations are small, so is its white population. Only 19% of the student body is Caucasian. Dominican University of California, San Rafael, CA 58% of the student population in this school is non-white, and 1/3 of the student body is first-generation college-enrolled. Clubs and organizations support all minority groups, and instructors are employed from as diverse backgrounds as can be found. College of Mount St. Vincent, Bronx, NY This college has an amazing record, specifically with academic performance and graduation rates of its 1/3 Hispanic population and a heft African-American population as well. In 2010, it had the highest percentage of Hispanic STEM graduates of any school in the country. Among its population of first-generation, 67% graduate also a significantly higher number than other schools. Its record earns it 6th place among the most diverse colleges in the U.S. Andrews University, Berrien Springs, MI Only 1/3 of the student population at this Seventh - Day Adventist College is white. The two other largest minority groups are African-American and Hispanic. There are cultural identity celebrations that last for as long as a month at a time throughout the year. University of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA This school openly recruits minorities, specifically among African-American, Hispanic, Asian, Muslim, and LGBT communities, offering scholarships and many other benefits. Coursework in interdisciplinary studies focus on the history, culture and arts of all minorities groups on its campus. These then are the 8 most diverse colleges and universities in the U.S. They are followed by other schools in California, New York, New Jersey, and Maine. From the list of the top 50, there is not one Midwestern university and only one from the South, in Virginia. Two of the top 50 are in Texas. The list is interesting because it also point to the fact that the least diverse universities are clustered in very specific geographical areas.

Bill Cosby essays

Bill Cosby essays Bill Cosby was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on July 12, 1937. He was the oldest of four boys. He had three brothers, and their names were: James, Russell, and Robert. His father ran away near Christmas time when he was very young and he had to get a job to help support the family. In school he was the class clown and was sent to a special school for rowdy boys. In his new school his teacher was Mary Forchic. She saw that he was a great comedian and she put that into her lessons to make them more understandable for Bill. She made the lessons fun for him and made it easier to learn. He said that she made him what he is today. After a couple years he went back to his old school and even though his grades were dropping he still kept it together. Bill was starting to look up to comedians on the radio and the TV. They were comedians like Sam Levenson, Sid Caesar, and Carl Reiner. Even though his grades were poor in junior high, when he took the standardized tests he was accepted to Central High School, which was a school for all the gifted children in Pennsylvania. Now being six feet, he was on the high school football team. But in the first week of football he broke his arm. Since there were few blacks in the school and he was slightly a target of biggotous remarks he went back to getting attention by clowning around in class again. He was later sent to Germantown Highschool where all his neighborhood friends went. He was back with his friends but his grades started to drop. He was left back twice. He was also too old to participate in the city track meets (which he could easily win). Bill dropped out of h igh school. He went to be a shoemaker=s helper, but the shoemaker didn't like it when he nailed the ladies heels onto the mens shoes! Then Bill decided to join the Navy. There he found discipline and no room to joke around. He spent four long years in the Navy but he says that it made him more mature and able to control himself ...

System Board essays

System Board essays The system board is the heart and brain of a computer. If you are building your own computer then the most important thing to decide is what kind of system board you want or need. If you already have your computer case and power supply and dont plan on buying a new case or power supply you need to be sure that the new system board will be compatible with these two things. There are two main specifications readily available. The first is Baby AT Form Factor and is found in older computers so you will probably be going will the newer form factor, which is ATX. Be sure that you buy a system board with a processor socket that is compatible with the CPU that you are planning on using. Many boards already come as a package deal with the processor included but also be sure that it will allow for future upgrades. This will prolong the life of the system board. You also need to be sure that the chipset is compatible with the CPU that you plan on using. If not there may be problem with the way your computer handles data or it might not boot up at all. You should buy a system board that has at least 512k of cache memory installed. This memory is used to speed up the transfer of data by storing data that the computer has recently used. Cache memory is faster and more expensive than main memory. When deciding what system board to buy you also need to consider how fast your selected memory will be. You should buy a board with a memory bus that will support the speed of your memory. If it will not then you are wasting your money buying faster memory. The system bus is also a very important part of the system board that will ultimately affect your computer speed if you dont buy a board that supports at least 100 and 133MHZ. But if you want to be sure that you have the latest and the greatest you need to buy a board that supports bus speeds starting at 400MHZ. Finally you need to verify that the BIOS is compatible with all the compon...

Good and Bad Stress Final Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Good and Bad Stress Final - Research Paper Example Professions related to criminal justice are enlisted among the most stressful professions. This is partly because the nature of job exposes the ones involved to all kinds of social and psychological stressors. However, stress in the professions of criminal justice differs from the stress encountered by people in other professions in that the effects of stress don’t show up immediately. In a vast majority of cases, the stress is post-traumatic in type. The highest mean scores of the stressors are experienced by the officers who have been six and ten years of experience in the profession of criminal justice. (Violanti & Aron, 1995). This paper explores the good and bad stresses in the profession of criminal justice. Sleye (1975) has identified two kinds of stress; good stress and bad stress. Good stress is also known as eustress while another name for bad stress is distress. One of the most fundamental traits that makes the good stress experienced by officers in all professions of criminal justice in general and in police in particular different from the good stress experienced by other professionals is that in criminal justice area, it is as bad or even worse as compared to the bad stress. This is because of the fact that the people belonging to the professions of criminal justice are authorized and empowered to provide people with justice. With power comes responsibility. This is the reason why people get higher salaries and more benefits in the professions of criminal justice. However, the same benefits and luxuries associated with these professions sometimes cause huge burden upon one’s conscience if one is not satisfied with one’s performance. â€Å"High points in life can t urn into disasters. You feel guilty, you party, you spend, you gamble, you drink, you go into more debt, and these are the times when you start looking to fool around† (O’Connor, 2010). Bad stress in the criminal justice professions occurs because of several reasons which

Describe the international efforts to combat the trafficking of Essay

Describe the international efforts to combat the trafficking of cocaine, heroin and cannabis before evaluating their success using both qualitative and quantitative data - Essay Example According to Boivin (2013), international drug trafficking could be attributed to an interplay of geographic, economic, political and cultural factors. Over 40% of trade in cocaine, heroin and marijuana occurs in peripheral countries, with the 2006/2007 United Kingdom Threat Assessment of Serious Organised Crime indicating that criminals drawn from particular ethnicities, Turkish and Columbian traffickers common in the UK case, are largely involved in trafficking. Interestingly, a majority of countries postulated to benefit from the trade in drugs rarely appear among the top global economies. Drug trafficking, and indeed drug abuse, has been associated with negative socio-economic effects among nations (Lyman 2014). Therefore, drug trafficking has been fought against by the international community for many years now. Cocaine heroin and cannabis are among the most common forms of drugs that international focus has been given to prevent cultivation and distribution. Even with such efforts, drug trafficking still remains a rampant practice in a majority of countries across the world. Whereas governments have institutionalised programmes aimed at dismantling the illicit trade, no meaningful reduction in the trade has been experienced. Thus, this paper evaluates some of these efforts to determine their effectiveness. Nations around the world have adopted critical strategies to combat international trafficking of drugs. According to the Maxwell Knowledge Group (2007), four pillars have been adopted in a majority of these cases. As borrowed from the UK Drug Strategy, these pillars encompass prevention of young people from being drug users, reduction of crimes related to drugs, increasing the number of those who could access drugs and reduction of supply of illicit drugs. Combined together, these four efforts seek to eliminate drug trafficking across

E-Commerce Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

E-Commerce - Essay Example The world today has become a highly connected and online place as compared to that of the last decade. The masses all over the world increasingly stay in a wired as well as wireless globalized zone where live communication and direct collaboration happens every hour, every minute, every second and every moment on a regular and daily basis (Solomon and Schrum, 2007, p. 8). In the middle of the 1990s, the Internet, or the World Wide Web as it is commonly referred to, emerged as the most disruptive form of electronic and communication innovation, bringing in a sea change for the kinds of methods and processes used by various business organizations to communicate between their clients, customers, employees and even the suppliers (Petrassi, 2008, p. 1). Web 2.0 can be officially defined as the process of increasing intelligence and values for every one through information sharing and content creation and sharing (Hoegg et al., 2006, p. 13). The web 2.0 is an evolution that has happened ov er the years since the emergence of the dotcom bubble in the US around the year 2001 (O’reilly, 2005). The word Web 2.0 originates around in 2004. The Web 2.0 essentially represents the group of processes concerning social, design and architectural independence that promotes free and seamless migration of data as well as business processes from one platform to another using the common medium of the Internet. The processes and related patterns increasingly focus on various interaction models that facilitate and promote various levels of communication between individuals and software processes and interfaces (Governor, Hinchcliffe and Nickull, 2009, p. ix). On a simpler note, it can be said that Web 2.0 represents the practice of accessing and sharing online digital content for interpersonal purposes as well as for the purpose of service delivery (ExplainingComputers.com, 2011). Today, the latest version of the web is immensely viewed as a platform that is catering to interacti on, innovation and even online delivery of services (Petrassi, 2008, p. 1) There have been a large number of benefits arising out of the huge and major adoption of 2.0 version of the web by individuals and businesses. Increasing in Buyer’s Power The emergence of businesses via the Internet due to the evolution of the Internet has significantly created an imbalance of power in the marketplace. Going by Porter’s five forces model, it can be simply said that the web 2.0 and the emergence of various business on the basis of it has significantly provided a lot of power to the buyers and consumers. Using the Internet, consumers can access feedback for the products that they are willing and interested to buy simply by visiting some websites or product related blogs (Barefoot and Szabo, 2009, p. 6). This has, in return, promoted high levels of diminishing customer loyalty for any particular brand (Governor, Hinchcliffe and Nickull, 2009, p. xi). High levels of Exposure The eme rgence of web 2.0 provides a great window of opportunity for companies around the globe. The companies can display their products to a global audience while also promoting their products using various extensive Internet applications, thereby increasing their degree of involvement (Roughley, 2007, p. 4) Increasing the Consumer Involvement As of today, companies are making their presence felt on the social networking sites and are increasingly rolling out online marketing campaigns in an attempt to increase the degree of involvement for the consumers, which helps in increasing their marketing potential (Lincoln, 2009, p. 140). The web 2.0 provides the online marketers with the opportunity to create advertisements that are engaging, entertaining, informative and creative at the same time (Tuten, 2008, p. 17). This helps in creating a

Topic Selection Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Topic Selection - Essay Example visit to the branch and for this I need to create a list of employees that are working there and who would be in a position to give me information regarding the issues that they are facing. I can access the names of the people that I want to interview and I have to remember to tell them to keep the interview and the material that would be discussed in the interview confidential. As part of my interview process, I have to ensure that the company is meeting all its contractual obligations and that it is fulfilling the regulatory and compliance policies in this regard. This would include the questions about why the company is not paying employees for overtime and who is overseeing the employees at the branch office. These are the basic questions that I intend to seek answers for. Further, the question that why not all employees are complaining needs to be answered as well. As a HR manager, I have to find out if there are other reasons for employees quitting and since the process of attrition comes under the HR manager’s competency as well, I need to find out and take appropriate steps to stop the flow of employees leaving the organization. After I have framed the questions, I have to prepare a questionnaire of sorts and then take it to the employees of the branch office and get their answers to the same. Finally, as part of the researching assignment, I have to design surveys to be used by the employees. Now comes the part where I have to organize the material and this would require merging the answers from the employees by collating all the responses and then consolidating the information that is given in the surveys. I have to list down the problems that are being faced by the employees and then find the solutions for each. It would help if I can list down the problems in a bullet point format and create a matrix where the solutions are listed against the problems that have been described so far. After the surveys and the collection of data, I need to find

Organisational management in health care Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Organisational management in health care - Essay Example Also, regular medical check-ups help maintain the physical fitness of workers and guarantee that work flow will not be derailed due to health reasons. On their part, workers in the healthcare profession should be conscientious enough to provide high quality service. To achieve this, good team work must be established. The unified vision of what the organization wants to achieve and where it wants to go in the future in terms of quality, professionalism, services offered and expertise is what each of the team should aspire for. This paper attempts to analyze how workers in healthcare organizations can work together to attain above-average organizational outcomes. Aside from workers being efficient in the performance of their tasks, key factors in the journey to a team’s success are, good leadership, effective communication and objective evaluation of the team’s performance and quality of service. Management must be consistent in communicating to each worker its philosophy of providing the best quality health care and treatment through collaborative efforts of professionals from different disciplines. Each worker should be able to feel that he is part of a great team that sets high goals and successfully attains them. â€Å"Creating the conditions that engender knowledge transfer entails significant structural and cultural changes by top leadership, which will require leaders to be convinced that the benefits of knowledge transfer outweigh the costs. In the absence of this commitment, it is unlikely that attempts to increase knowledge flow will succeed. Leaders should be cautious about publicly touting the virtues of "knowledge sharing" without a substantive commitment to change, as this may result in the failure of well-intentioned knowledge transfer initiatives, bringing with it lowered employee morale and the potential for resistance against future knowledge-transfer init iatives.† (Burgess, 2005) Leadership may be defined as a â€Å"process in which a

Research research literature to determine the population, sampling Paper

Literature to determine the population, sampling strategy, HIPAA concerns, informed consent procedures, and setting - Research Paper Example The caregivers and patients included in the research were also supposed to have sixth grade education at the minimum and be in a position to read and comprehend English. They should also attain a score of at least seven in the Short Portable Mental Status Questionnaire (SPMSQ) as well as at least 40 in the Palliative Performance Scale (PPS). Since the study concentrated on management of pain, constipation and dyspnea, the patients included in the research had to be experiencing two of them. A sample of 329 home care patients suffering from cancer and family caregivers were selected and randomly grouped into three categories. One control group comprised of 109 people received standard care, another group with the same number received standard care and friendly visits while the third group comprised of 111 people received standard care and COPE intervention. This method of sampling is known as cluster sampling in which case naturally occurring groups would be selected and be included in a sample. In this method, the population would be divided into groups or samples. In some cases, rather than collecting data from every group, a sub-sample would be used. Economical- expenditure is one of the major concerns in any sampling method. However, since the research will be carried out on clusters, the expenditure is tremendously reduced due to the fewer listing efforts incorporated (William, 2007). Feasibility- cluster sampling method is also more feasible when carrying out research on large populations (William, 2007). Given that the population in the large hospice is in excess of 300, carrying out comprehensive research may not be very feasible and therefore, clustering the samples would make it more feasible. In carrying out any form of research, the vulnerability of the variables used in the samples is taken into consideration (William, 2007). In essence, the patients and caregivers used in the research are quite vulnerable given the

Topic Selection Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Topic Selection - Essay Example visit to the branch and for this I need to create a list of employees that are working there and who would be in a position to give me information regarding the issues that they are facing. I can access the names of the people that I want to interview and I have to remember to tell them to keep the interview and the material that would be discussed in the interview confidential. As part of my interview process, I have to ensure that the company is meeting all its contractual obligations and that it is fulfilling the regulatory and compliance policies in this regard. This would include the questions about why the company is not paying employees for overtime and who is overseeing the employees at the branch office. These are the basic questions that I intend to seek answers for. Further, the question that why not all employees are complaining needs to be answered as well. As a HR manager, I have to find out if there are other reasons for employees quitting and since the process of attrition comes under the HR manager’s competency as well, I need to find out and take appropriate steps to stop the flow of employees leaving the organization. After I have framed the questions, I have to prepare a questionnaire of sorts and then take it to the employees of the branch office and get their answers to the same. Finally, as part of the researching assignment, I have to design surveys to be used by the employees. Now comes the part where I have to organize the material and this would require merging the answers from the employees by collating all the responses and then consolidating the information that is given in the surveys. I have to list down the problems that are being faced by the employees and then find the solutions for each. It would help if I can list down the problems in a bullet point format and create a matrix where the solutions are listed against the problems that have been described so far. After the surveys and the collection of data, I need to find

Research research literature to determine the population, sampling Paper

Literature to determine the population, sampling strategy, HIPAA concerns, informed consent procedures, and setting - Research Paper Example The caregivers and patients included in the research were also supposed to have sixth grade education at the minimum and be in a position to read and comprehend English. They should also attain a score of at least seven in the Short Portable Mental Status Questionnaire (SPMSQ) as well as at least 40 in the Palliative Performance Scale (PPS). Since the study concentrated on management of pain, constipation and dyspnea, the patients included in the research had to be experiencing two of them. A sample of 329 home care patients suffering from cancer and family caregivers were selected and randomly grouped into three categories. One control group comprised of 109 people received standard care, another group with the same number received standard care and friendly visits while the third group comprised of 111 people received standard care and COPE intervention. This method of sampling is known as cluster sampling in which case naturally occurring groups would be selected and be included in a sample. In this method, the population would be divided into groups or samples. In some cases, rather than collecting data from every group, a sub-sample would be used. Economical- expenditure is one of the major concerns in any sampling method. However, since the research will be carried out on clusters, the expenditure is tremendously reduced due to the fewer listing efforts incorporated (William, 2007). Feasibility- cluster sampling method is also more feasible when carrying out research on large populations (William, 2007). Given that the population in the large hospice is in excess of 300, carrying out comprehensive research may not be very feasible and therefore, clustering the samples would make it more feasible. In carrying out any form of research, the vulnerability of the variables used in the samples is taken into consideration (William, 2007). In essence, the patients and caregivers used in the research are quite vulnerable given the