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Aging in Australia

March 25, 2019

This paper focuses on aging in Australia, the different policies and services for the aging population, and provides some examples about what it would be like to age in Australia. First, it is important to understand the age care policy in Australia. There are four different components to this policy: the old-aged pension system, pursuit of the aging-in-place policy, self-funded services and supports, and residential and frail aged care. The aged care policy in Australia is “built on the premise of independence and individualization and assumes that older people will remain in the community for as long as they are able to” (Gray & Heinsch, 2009, p. 108). In order to fully understand these different components of this policy, each of them will be looked at more closely.

Old-aged pensions were the first form of income support provided for the aging population and today, nearly two-thirds of retirees in Australia rely on this pension as their main income source (Grey & Heinsch, 2009). Currently, it is required that men be 65 years of age in order to receive this pension, and an estimated 63.5 years of age for women. It is estimated that by 2014, women will also be required to be 65 years old to receive the pension. One component of the old-aged pension is the superannuation guarantee, which was introduced in 1992; it consists of a mandatory employer contribution to a private pension plan, and the rate has been 9% of employee earnings since the 2002-03 tax years (“Australia”, n.d.). According to Gray and Heinsch (2009), aged pensions make up the largest portion of the welfare budget (about $22.6 billion in 2006-2007). Generally, the Australian public seems to be pleased with the old-aged pensions and often desire increases to the pension.

Next there is the pursuit of the aging-in-place policy, and this is maintained through community care. The public opinion in Australia generally sways in favor of community support. Not only are families and neighbors pitching in to help the aging population, but “large religious charities, such as Anglicare, UnitingCare, Benevolent Society, Salvation Army, and St Vincent de Paul, are key providers of formal, paid community care” (Gray & Heinsch, 2009, p. 109). The increasing amount of community care in Australia has led to more informal and unpaid care, where family members and neighborhood services provide assistance with household tasks, such as shopping, cooking, and cleaning and other sorts of chores (Gray & Heinsch, 2009). This type of support is essential for the aging population, as many older people feel that they are a burden when they need help with simple tasks. It is generally the responsibility of the daughter in the family to be responsible for the care of an aging adult, but if they get busy or find that they cannot devote as much time/services that is necessary, this can leave the elderly adult in a sticky situation. “Swedish research has found that older people prefer help from public services rather than having to rely on family and friends” (Gunnarsson 2009; Szebehely and Trydegård 2007). This is one of the reasons it is so crucial for services to be provided for the aging population and that they know where to look for whatever assistance they may need in their lives. In Australia, “there are currently several government-funded programs rendering community-based care, namely, the Aged Care Assessment Program (ACAP), Home and Community Care (HACC), Community Aged Care Package (CACP), and Extended Aged Care at Home (EACH)” (Gray & Heinsch, 2009, p. 110).

The next part of this policy, self-funded services and supports, is exactly what it sounds like: the aging population in Australia is given more responsibility regarding their retirement and finances. This shift is implemented by the Australian government and encourages self-responsibility among the aging population (Gray & Heinsch, 2009). As expected, it is common that elderly adults with more competence around their retirement plan and financial situation find themselves to be more independent and happier with their situation. One of the interesting things about this portion of the aged care policy is that there is a significant gender difference surrounding it. It has been observed in Australia that women are generally poorer than men when they retire and that they prepare less for this period of time (Gray & Heinsch, 2009).

There are a few different reasons for this phenomenon as illustrated by Gray and Heinsch (2009): “women feel that retirement planning is a male role, and that they will be taken care of; women find existing preretirement planning programs are generic, male or couple oriented, and do not address women’s specific needs and situations; women are traditionally ‘otherfocused’ and place their wellbeing behind nurturing others; and women may not feel they have a locus of control.” It is fascinating that these differences are illustrated, and they really make a lot of sense. The point about how women place their wellbeing behind nurturing others is really key; it is discussed so much in class about how women are often placed with the pressures of caring for their elderly parents or family. It is really interesting that this theme of caring for others seems to follow women up until and through their own retirement, when self-care is truly essential. It is really important as a social worker working with this population that women are reached out to and informed about the importance of planning for their retirement, in order to minimize this gender difference in satisfaction after retirement.

Finally, there is a portion of the aged care policy in Australia that addresses residential aged care. “Residential aged care is divided into nursing homes, now referred to as ‘residential aged care facilities’ (RACFs), where nursing care is required and aged care accommodation, where it is not a major service” (Gray & Heinsch, 2009, p. 112). Although residential care is used in Australia, it is still the goal to maintain the idea of aging-in-place. For example, it is often the case that once an elderly adult enters into a residential facility, they will remain in the same room (or at least the same space) for the entirety of their stay. Also, there can be self-care units, where it is encouraged that when an elderly adult enters any given residential care facility, they remain in the same facility as their physical or mental capacity worsens. In simpler terms, imagine that an elderly woman enters a residential care facility, but she can still walk around and remain somewhat active. As she continues to grow older and it becomes harder to be mobile, this individual would simply move to a different part of the given facility where there is more care provided; this maintains the idea of aging-in-place.

The need for residential care facility for the aging population in Australia is quite prominent, as “At the end of June 2008, there were an estimated 175,500 aged care beds in Australia, an increase of 5,500 on the previous year. These ‘beds’ could be in nursing homes, hostels, or independent units within an aged care setting” (Gray & Heinsch, 2009, p. 113). The increase of beds can be partially explained by two different factors: the fact that people, in general, are living longer, and that the baby boomers are quickly reaching old age. One flaw in the area of residential care in Australia is the Aged Care Funding Instrument (ACFI). This instrument measures the needs of the residents, rather than the care that is actually provided to them. Residential care facilities are not fond of this instrument because “it is highly manipulable and does not encourage improvement in residents since it pays more when people are frail resulting in a disincentive to work towards increasing resident capacity” (Gray & Heinsch, 2009, p. 114).

One final issue that needs serious attention is how Australia refers to their social workers in relation to elderly care. Gray and Heinsch (2009) “refer to social workers in Australia as poorly skilled workers, who may only have undertaken a 10-week course, may be poorly educated and, while often well intentioned, poorly equipped emotionally” (p. 115). These two authors continue to maintain that social work in the aging population is decreasing in demand, and this seems ridiculous. It is discussed in class how crucial it is for social workers to be available for the aging population, especially since it is a fast growing population. The aging baby boomers and the fact that people are living longer are contributing to the fact that there is a higher demand for support for the elderly population. One statistic from the article by Gray and Heinsch (2009) suggests that only 7% of social workers work in aged care.

This interesting phenomenon may be explained by the fact that there is a continuing growth in community-based care in Australia, where most of the care is provided by family and close friends. The fact that these authors had such negative things to say about the social workers that do work with the aging population in Australia is rather disturbing. It is maintained that when care for the aging population is not provided by the community, it is taken care of by health care professionals. There doesn’t seem to be a demand for social workers, as most people in Australia appear to be pleased with the policies in place for the aging population. On the other hand, it is surprising that there is not a demand for social workers in this country for the aging population.

If there is not a current demand, then why tamper with the system? It is my belief that as people continue to grow older, there will be an increased demand for social workers to serve the aging population. Although Australia seems to be able to manage without the support of social work, it is likely that this may change in the future. It may also never change, but if it does, it is essential that there are more educational programs and training provided for social work, in order to prevent social workers from being referred to as incompetent and ‘well-intentioned’.

Essay Papers

Customer Service

March 25, 2019

You should use this file to complete your Assessment.
•The first thing you need to do is save a copy of this document, either onto your computer or a USB drive •Then work through your Assessment, remembering to save your work regularly •When you’ve finished, print out a copy to keep for reference •Then, go to www.vision2learn.com and send your completed Assessment to your tutor via your My Study area – make sure it is clearly marked with your name, the course title and the Unit and Assessment number.

Please note that this Assessment document has 13 pages and is made up of 5 Sections.

Name:

Organisation: Which organisation(s) are you basing your answers to this assessment on? If you are currently working, you may wish to base it on the organisation which employs you.

Can you provide a brief description of this organisation? (Please note you will not be marked on this; it is simply to provide your tutor with a brief outline.)

AFRICAN HUMAN RESOURCE OF FRENCH SPEAKING ASSOCIATION ( AREFA) This is a local community group that aim to

Section 1 – Understand the factors that affect an organisation and the customer service role

1. Complete the table below with a description of the products and services for at least two commercial organisations, public organisations and third sector organisations.

Please ensure you provide a description for each organisation, rather than a list.

Organisation typeName of organisationDescription of products and services Commercial
organisation

Commercial
organisation

Public
organisation

Public
organisation

Third sector organisation
Third sector organisation

2. Complete the table below by describing the differences in customer service between commercial, public and third sector organisations. You should outline customer service roles in each organisation and highlight the differences in how customer service is carried out across these organisations.

Organisation typeDescription of customer service and
the differences between organisations
Commercial
organisation

Public
organisation

Third sector
organisation

3. In relation to your current organisation (or one that you are familiar with), outline the part that customer service plays in this organisation and its industry as a whole.

4. Who are the major competitors to your current organisation (or one that you are familiar with)?

5. Identify at least two factors that could affect the reputation of your current organisation (or one that you are familiar with).

Section 2 – Understand employee rights, responsibilities and organisational procedures

1. Use the table below to give details of employer and employee rights and responsibilities under employment law and the importance of having these (consider the importance to the organisation, employees and customers, where relevant). You should include at least two employer rights / responsibilities and at least two employee rights / responsibilities in your answer.

Rights and responsibilitiesWhy are they important?
1. Employer

2. Employer

1. Employee

2. Employee

2. Give details of employer and employee rights and responsibilities under the Health and Safety at Work Act. You should include at least two employer rights / responsibilities and at least two employee rights / responsibilities in your answer.

Who?Rights / responsibilities under Health and Safety at Work Act

Employer

Employer

Employee

Employee

3. In relation to your current organisation (or one that you are familiar with), describe the organisation’s procedures for health and safety and any relevant documentation that is used.

If possible, provide relevant health and safety policies / documents from the organisation to support your answer. These documents should be annotated to highlight the relevant sections.

4. Outline how the Disability Discrimination Act relates to employment.

5. In addition to the information provided in the questions above, identify the other key legislation that specifically relates to your chosen organisation and its industry as a whole.

6. Describe the procedures followed by your chosen organisation in relation to equality and diversity. Your answer should include details of any monitoring that takes place and documentation used to support this monitoring.

Section 3 – Understand career pathways within customer service

1. Describe at least two different types of career pathways that may be available within a customer service role.

2. Identify a range of sources where a person can find information and advice
on the customer service industry, occupations and career progression.

Information relating to:

Source(s)

Customer service industry

Occupation

Career progression

3. In your current organisation (or one that you are familiar with), what methods of learning are available to help with career progression?

4. In your current organisation (or one that you are familiar with), what is the procedure for accessing formal learning programmes? What is the procedure if an application for access to learning is refused?

If possible, provide relevant organisational procedures to support your answer. These documents should be annotated to highlight the relevant sections.

5. Explain how new customer service situations can help with self-development and career progression.

Section 4 – Understand how employees are supported within the customer service role

1. Identify a range of sources where a person can find information and advice on employment rights and responsibilities. You should identify at least three sources of information in your answer.

2. Complete the table below, identifying the representative bodies related to your chosen organisation / industry. You should also include details of the
main roles and responsibilities of these bodies and their relevance to the organisation / industry.

Representative bodyRoles and responsibilitiesRelevance

3. For a customer service role in your current organisation (or one that you are familiar with), use the table below to provide details of the support that is available in relation to the following issues: a)Equality

b)Health and safety
c)Career progression

IssueSources of support
a)Equality

b)Health and safety

c)Career progression

Section 5 – Know the organisation’s policies and procedures

Please answer all of the questions in this Section in relation to your current organisation (or one that you are familiar with).

1. Use the table below to describe the main principles, policies and procedures of your chosen organisation. You should also include details of documentation used to support these principles, policies and procedures.

DescriptionSupporting documentation
Principles

Policies

Procedures

2. How are the organisation’s principles communicated to employees? Explain this below.

3. Outline the policies and codes of practice that are adopted by the organisation. How are employees made aware of these policies and codes of practice?

4. Explain how employees are involved with and consulted on changes to the principles, procedures and policies within the organisation.

5. Use the table below to identify issues of public concern relating to the industry and organisation, and describe how these issues are addressed / dealt with.

Issues of public concernHow they are addressed / dealt with

Once you have completed all 5 Sections of this Assessment, go to www.vision2learn.com and send your work to your tutor for m

Essay Papers

Conservative education leads directly to conservative politics

March 25, 2019

Question: Conservative education leads directly to conservative politics. Discuss in relation to contemporary Japan

There is no doubt that the quality of education offered in any country largely determines the level of progress .Japan has been hailed to have one of the best education system in the world, perhaps this is what an every outsider will comment but a closer look at what the system offers will reflect the kind of problems that bedevil the education system in this country. The notion of success has emanated from the fact that Japan has been able to educate very competent workforce which contributed greatly to its successful economic recovery in post war Japan. The education system has attracted great attention for the last thirty years; this has been as a result of the outsiders perceptions that it has been the drive as far as economic advancement in this country is concerned. However many still feel that the education system is stunted due to its inability to change with time. This is what has been described as conservative education, the kind of system which has been in place in Japan. (Beauchamp, E 1991 23)

The education system ability to determine the development agenda of the country also applies to other aspects of the society. Though politics will largely determine the type of education offered in a certain country in the long run this aspect of the society will be determined by the education system in place at a particular system. Education plays a very big role as afar as child development is concerned. What a child learns in school becomes the gospel truth and he or she grows up knowing that certain things can only work in a given way. Therefore the kind of education offered to the children will determine their thoughts in their current and future lives. (Schoppa, L 1993 p239)

Back in the 1960s, Japan economy was growing rapidly, the people were involved in mass production of goods and on the other hand there was a great increase in mass consumerism. On this background the education system was perfect, it worked well. Children were comfortable with the system as they thought that they could study in school and then later in their lives enter into the society get employed and be in a position to buy a lot of things and become rich. This notion became a big problem in the 1970s when the sense of individuality started to crop up. People began to think more on how they can individually lead a happy life, there was a general belief that perhaps there were other ways into which happiness can be found rather than schooling or going through the system. This is the period when the school and the society began to contradict each other. If the ultimate thing is to get money and be in a position to buy many things; was going through an education system that only way one could achieve this? This is a question that featured a lot in this period. The education system was not geared towards solving this emerging issue. This is a problem that was supposed to be tackled through making some changes in the education system through accommodation of some of the concerns that were being raised. (Beauchamp, E 1991 53)

Japanese society is moulded in such a way that people do not live independently. Almost everybody lives in a group oriented manner and the see themselves in terms of the group. Whatever is done is geared towards the success of this group. This is a society where conformity is the order of the day, those who carry out their affairs contrary to the group expectations will be seen as outcasts and may not be regarded highly. Children learn from their parents, in most cases they will follow what their parents do, they will aspire to be like them as they are the role models in the society. In 1970s the changes that were taking place in this society brought new dimensions also. As individuality was cropping up so was the kind of thinking also changing especially to the children and the education system that was being offered. There were mass drop out from the education system due to its failure to address the real issues that were pressing the society. There were other problems that were afflicting the school system. Bullying was a common thing in the school. Other forms of truancy were reported. This has been attributed to the pressure applied on the students by the system that relied much on the ability of the students to pass exams. This success was measured by the way a student performed in the exams which were geared towards memorizing answers. (Hood, C 2001 p154)

Children being observant had noted that education did not in most of the cases bring happiness to adult life, to them adults were always busy but this busy life never made them happy. This made the children to want to curve their own channel, they asked themselves why they should follow the adults’ way of life yet they were not happy in life. The education system was much more geared towards making an individual prepared to work and build the nation. This system did not address the concerns where other channels were available for one to become happy and successful. This failure to address such a pertinent issue led to a societal problem which could have been solved by making some minimal changes in the system to accommodate the dissenting views. (Tsuchimuchi, G 1993 p46)

It was common knowledge that the system had failed to produce students who were creative. The general was feeling was that a system should be put in place to check the problems which were affecting the education system in the country. This was a period when the school were facing drop outs, bullying among the students, and violence which were as a result of a bad system which left the students desperate. (Yuri, I 2003 56)

As Japan was being transformed from a n industrial to a post industrial society, its human resource was not well prepared to meet the new challenges that were emerging in the new global economy. This was a direct effect of the education system that was in place. The system was only geared to producing a mechanical graduate, who had been overworked in all levels. Japan was not in a position to compete at the same level with the western society due to lack of creativity among the workforce which was as a product of the poor system. Japan could produce as much computer hardware as possible but for the supply of the software it had to rely on the west which had a more flexible education system compared to the conservative type in Japan. (Beauchamp, E 1991 63)

It seems that all were comfortable with system or were too afraid to bring on board the changes that would see a better approach being employed. For the teachers perhaps they were very comfortable with the way things were done, the system did not require too much input on their part, it was easy to conduct classes and lessons since they had to go through a text book recommended by the local authorities page by page. This does not require much preparation; therefore the teachers might have been comfortable with the way things were done. On the other hand they were no incentives for this lot making them resistant to changes that would see them added workload while their salaries were not improved. At this time the teachers union was weak and could not have had a strong impact when it comes to the representation of the teachers interests. (Mc Clain 2002 87)

The bureaucrats, and the parents were all in the favour of educational reforms but it was obvious that they were all afraid to take the necessary steps perhaps for the fear of unknown. Parents on their part were worried of their children chances which they thought might be affected by the new system. Employers on the other hand wanted workforce which was creative but they were not sure of what they would get, they did not want to loose a virtue impacted by the education system and that is conformity something that was highly valued in the society. Politicians and policy makers supported the system as they were seeking for the elective posts but on the other side they approve the system which had made Japan to be what it is, they kind of education system that had worked miracle s for this nation. For the civil servants and the bureaucrats their hands are tied as they are just mere servants who may be empowered to come up with the policies but when it comes to implementation someone else is charged with that role. (Hoshii, I 1993 p87)

There was a shared view that there was a serious need to reform the education system in Japan. There was a great concern that the system which was geared towards memorization and drilling for the sake of exams was failing to produce students who were creative something which could jeopardize the future competitive nature of the country in the global map. The Prime Minister in 1984 appointed an Ad Hoc Reform committee to look into ways that the education could be reformed to be in line with the changing trends in the society and the world too. While appointing the committee the Prime Minister set it out to come up with the strategies for the reforms which will make the students to acquire education which will make them compatible with the cultural and social changes that were taking place in the country. The prime minister was determined to see the necessary changes made into this system. He wanted a system which will make the society more vibrant and creative as well as one which is relevant to the modern times. (Okano, K and Tsuchiya, M 1999 145)

The conservatives in 2000 initiated some changes in the education system through changing of the law and the introduction of new methods of teaching especially for the history. There were also proposal to introduce voluntary activities for the students and at the same time incorporate moral education in the system. The aim of these reforms was to return the Japanese society to the traditional ethnic ideologies which were largely associated with the system of education that helped in transforming the Japan from an agrarian to an industrial society. The political climate may have changed with having the conservatives on the power but the education system mush remained the same giving an indication that it was to continue breeding the same kind of politicians in the future. Therefore the conservative education that the Japanese society was being subjected to could only give rise to conservative politicians who will not be keen to implement any necessary changes and the cycle will continue. If Japan fails to have some radical changes as afar as its education system is concerned the problems or the challenges facing it will continue to be in place for along time to come since the people and the government may not be willing to bring the changes on board due to the nature of conformity embraced by the society (Kuyama, Y 1971 234)

Just like in other levels of learning, higher education is facing some problems which could be even worse than those of the lower levels. There is a common believe within the student fraternity that higher education is basically a reward of many years of learning in high and primary schools. Students take this period as a time to rest and recuperate preparing for the work ahead of them as they enter the employment phase. It is common to find students missing classes or sleeping during lectures. Examinations are not taken seriously and it common to have everyone graduating despite the performs, this explains the reason why the students take this period as a bridge between the years of hard work and the entry to a level where they will start contributing towards nation building. They do not take university as serious as it should, but the system has allowed them to behave in this manner. Therefore unless an overhaul of the education policies this tend will continue in the years to come where institution of higher learning will continue to lose competitiveness especially on the global platform. This does not auger well for this nation which would like to continue being in the forefront when it comes to economic and technological development fields. (Okano, K and Tsuchiya, M 1999 165)

Japan has university system which can be described as classified; many students usually fight to join some university and not others. This is due to the complex perception that exist among them that there are better institutions than others. Most of the students wish to join prestigious public institutions, those who fail to join these universities are usually bitter for their failure to be among the class that is considered as prestigious. This again brings us back to the issue of conformity, every one including the university students want to fit in the group ,they usually feel very discouraged when the do not meet the group standards. When a student fails to secure a place in the so called prestigious institution they consider themselves as failures something which can have a very negative impact in their education and also in their future life. Scholars have argued that this negative attitude has prevailed due to a deliberate cause by the elite policy makers. They have failed to reform the system to bring it in line with the contemporary Japanese society. They would like the systems which seem to favour a certain group in the society to continue while others continue to suffer due to their inability to bring the required changes in the education system. (Aspinail, R 2001 p234)

One of the major practice that attract a lot of criticism is the basing the education system on merit yet it is known that students are grilled to pass the exams. A student ability to cram and memorize everything will determine his or her performance in school. Therefore it follows that those students who will be admitted in the best elementary schools are those who will have the best ability to memorize rather than understanding concepts. This system follows from the junior schools up to the university and colleges. Public schools are preferred to the private schools, due to the fact that they offer “better education” than their counterparts in private sectors. They are affordable compared to the private schools. It follows that the prestigious universities receive students from the few feeder schools majority of which come within the locality of the university. There are some cases where parents move houses so that they can be within the area where these institutions draw their students. This practice only goes further in ensuring that only the best attend these institutions further eroding the quality of graduates entering into the job market in a given time. (Mc Cargo, D 2000 98)

Admitting students only from a particular region can have a negative effect as far as the quality and affordability of the education is concerned. This can end up favouring a certain group or class of people. For example the prestigious Tokyo University get most of its students from a given number of schools, so if a parent would like his or her child to end up in this university as it often happen he or she will ensure that the child attends one of the fewer schools where the university admits from. What does this do the quality and access to the education for the majority of the students? Access to the so called prestigious institutions remains a preserve of a certain class of people especially the middle class whose parents can be in a position to earn high salaries. (Pempel, T 1975 98).

Looking at the education system from a political angle one will notice that it has a very disturbing implication in the society. When the system leans too much on class there is a danger of leaving out some members of the society. This segment within the community will always be segregated as a result of their inability to raise a certain amount of money. The education system serves this purpose; it is there to ensure that the interests of the elites are well taken care of. These elites are the same conservatives who would like the system to remain as it is so that they can continue benefiting from this skewed system. Any attempt to reform the system has been met with a lot of opposition from the same group of people. The elite would like the system to continue producing docile workforce so that their business interests can prosper and at the same time they continue dominating in the political arena. They will dominate the politics for a long time since they have ensured that democratic and individual liberties or rights are not well emphasized in the course of learning. It is mainly geared towards giving legitimacy to the establishment while at the same time disempowering the citizens. Therefore the conservative education will always give rise to the conservative politicians, who will not be willing to disturb the status quo lest they be swept out of power and find that the privileges they have enjoying have been transferred to others. (Schoppa, L 1993 p 84)

Despite the success that had been registered in the system the problems which can be termed as obvious remained.Rigidity, lack of choices, excessive uniformity and the unwanted influences of the higher education were mentioned as some of the problem facing this important sector. In this period it was reported that the education model was the cause of the problem that were afflicting the society. The social problems registered were largely behavioural due to the student inability to cope with the stresses brought about by the expectations vested upon them by the system. The same problem that was being highlighted in those years still feature in today’s debate on the education. There has been great concern to make the system more responsive to the general needs of the people as well as the new trends that are merging in today’s world

The education system may have been reformed from time to time since 1868 and more so after 1945 but a lot remains to be done to address the real issue which have been raised in from time to time. The kind of education that is provided today and in the recent past only serves the interest of a few who would like to continue benefiting at the expense of the majority Japanese citizens. They want to utilize the inability of the people to question their actions to continue oppressing them through denying them a chance to explore what lies ahead. Censorship of the text books to cushion the society from the real channel our country has taken should not be allowed to continue. Selection of the text books should be done by professional who are well aware of the repercussions of denying people a chance to know the truth. It is only through such efforts that those in authorities will be propelled to move with the times. These and many other reforms will ensure that the education system will address the real issues facing this country while at the same time empowering the citizens.

Bibliography

 Aspinail, R (2001) Teachers’ Union and the Politics of Education in Japan, New York, Suny Press

 Beauchamp, E (1991) Windows of Japanese Education, Westport Green world Press (p51-71)

Hood, C (2001) Japanese Education Reforms, London, Routledge, (p154)

Hoshii, I (1993) Japan’s Pseudo- Democracy, New York, Routledge

Kuyama, Y (1971) Education in Contemporary Japan, International Institute of Japan Studies, Tokyo

Mc Cargo, D (2000) Contemporary Japan, Prince town University Press, Prince town  NJ(151-159)

Mc Clain (2002) Japan a Modern History, WW Norton and Co, New York

Okano, K and Tsuchiya, M (1999) Education in Contemporary Japan, Cambrigde England, Cambridge University Press

 Pempel, T (1975). The politics of Higher Education in post war Japan, Suny Press, New York

Schoppa, L (1993) Education Reforms in Japan Routledge, London

Tsuchimuchi, G (1993) Education Reform in Post War Japan, University of Tokyo, Tokyo

Yuri, I (2003) Development of Education in Japan, London, Routledge

 

Essay Papers

Leadership Traits

March 25, 2019

The traits theory of leadership focuses on the traits of an individual, stating that certain traits are found in leaders and not in those who are not leaders. This theory points out that certain personal characteristics are found in those who lead, and not in those who do not. The theory states that an individual must have a certain set of traits in order to be a good leader. (Robbins, S. P. , & Judge, T. A. pg 377) Traits associated with leadership are being charismatic, enthusiastic, and courageous.

Leaders according the trait theory should be strong willed, enthusiastic, disciplined, and an extrovert, having these characteristics make the person a good leader according to the traits theory. According to Robbins, S. P. , & Judge, T. A. (2007), “Sociable and dominant people are more likely to assert themselves in group situations, but leaders need to make sure they’re not too assertive—one study found leaders who scored very high on assertiveness were less effective than those who were moderately high” (chapter 12).

Assertive behavior and a take charge attitudes are traits deemed to qualify one as a leader by the traits theory standards. There are many different characteristics that leader’s posses, these traits make the person able to express ideas and initiate activities. The strengths of using traits to determine if a person can be a good leader is that even if a person has good ideas and abilities if they do not have an extrovert personality trait they probably will not make a good leader.

Traits play a partial role in being an effective leader; however they are not the only qualities that determine if a person will be a good leader. Leaders need to be extroverted, compassionate, and work well with others in order to successfully lead a group, these traits come second to the knowledge the person must have in order to fully understand the group’s goals. Some weaknesses of the traits theory is that traits are not the only thing that makes a good leader they play a role but just because a person possesses certain traits does not mean they will make a good leader if they do not understand the subject matter.

A quiet individual may make an excellent leader if they have the know-how to run the team, and know how the project should work. It is not always best to choose a leader based on their personality traits but more on a combination of these traits and their know-how. Research has linked many different traits to leaders but not all leaders possess the same traits making it an iffy theory to use to determine leaders (Robbins, S. P. , & Judge, T. A. pg 377).

Richard Branson the chairman of Virgin Group possesses many traits characterized as leadership traits (Robbins, S. P. , & Judge, T. A. pg 378). However Branson’s know-how has also added to his success as a leader, if he did not know how to market and manage the company then his charismatic attitude would not have helped the company become so successful. His traits do help him communicate with others and get others to follow his lead but without the knowledge needed to run a large company he would fail.

Branson has been successful in building Virgin Group because he is an extrovert and he is knowledgeable in the ins and outs of running the company. The traits theory is a valuable resource, as it shows people what behaviors are successful for leadership; however it is only one piece to the puzzle and cannot alone make someone a good leader. Hard work and knowledge of the project are also essential key elements, when picking a good leader for the group.

Behavior and trait characteristics will ensure the leaders ability to interact with those in and outside the company but it will not help with the technical aspects of leadership which must be learned before taking a leadership role. A person’s traits maybe important if a company is looking for someone to take charge of a group that needs more structure however the person still needs other learned skills to be successful. Resources Robbins, S. P. , & Judge, T. A. (2007). Organizational behavior (14th ed. ). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice Hall.

Essay Papers

Contemporary Escapism: Is it Still Possible?

March 25, 2019

Contemporary Escapism: Is it Still Possible?

Introduction

            Escapism, which is an abstract concept, may mean distinctive meanings for different people and various contexts. Some people view escapism as a negative philosophy or principle simply because it urges an individual to neglect facts or reality and believe in something unreal or fantastical. Escapism may further be defined as an act of dismissing the facts to live within whimsical or fancy ideals of life. (Storey, pp. 510-512) This assumption is taken from the context of nature – that is, what are inherent in man and his environment – which is inescapable and unalterable. For instance, one of the primary points of discussion in Tuan’s book is the inherent instincts for survival in human beings, which rationalizes why man cannot possibly survive under situations or conditions that are detached from reality. (Tuan, pp. 5-6)

            However, despite the many criticisms that some individuals and institutions in society have against escapism, it is still an inevitable phenomenon that happens because man is not only slave to his instincts for survival but is also influenced by his ability to think and to act according to his culture. (Tuan, 5-7) Furthermore, due to man’s ability to create and interpret constructs, adhere to distinctive ideas, and so on, he is able to make decisions even if it goes against what his instincts tell him to do. (Storey, pp. 510-512) Under these pretexts, we are able to establish the argument of the possibility for man to escape from modern life, which we call contemporary escapism.

            By and large, contemporary escapism is man’s response to the nerve-racking and demanding nature of modernity, which eliminates our conception of time and breathing space. (Maida, p. 207) The fast-paced transformation of life under the force of modernity and technological development is driving people to escape from the reality they know of and go to places that offer the opposite nature and climate of an avant-garde lifestyle. With this in mind, the remainder of this text shall focus on discussing the possibility of contemporary escapism primarily through man’s own will, with consideration to some texts and real-life events that took place in the past, which ushered the attention of people towards the responses towards modernity and causes of escapism in general.

McCandless’ Journey

            Christopher Johnson McCandless – a man who grew up in a well-to-do family and has accomplished many academic and non-academic achievements in school – may be regarded as one who had everything he needed in life. He had nothing to ask for, and had a bright future ahead of him in terms of personal growth, career, as well as accomplishing anything he might want to achieve. However, after his college graduation, he decided to give away everything he had in order to live a different kind of life. He donated a hefty sum of money to charity and burned up all the money that was left with him, changed his identity, and travelled to the North by hitchhiking. His body was found soon after in Alaska. Apparently, McCandless’ desire to escape led him to his death. (Krakauer)

            In Krakauer’s book, he provided a narrative of McCandless’ journey “into the wild” by basing information on McCandless’ journal. By and large, McCandless’ journal has provided Krakauer with insights on what was going through McCandless’ mind as he travelled away from the life that he knew to live a secluded and simple life. As Krakauer put it, McCandless was mostly a fan of Leo Tolstoy. It was Tolstoy’s idealism, which influenced McCandless to seek a life that was not bounded by extravagance and inconsequentialities but by the fundamental nature of life and genuine meaning of living. Apparently, Leo Tolstoy was one who deserted the good life that he had to become a significant figure that helped out people who were in need.

In addition, through Krakauer’s exploration of McCandless life prior to his quest to the wilderness, he was able to look into McCandless idealistic perspectives. Despite McCandless fortunate life, being raised by parents who were able to luxuriously provide for his needs, he believed in being prudent and unpretentious. It was a difficult struggle for McCandless to live out his ideals in the kind of life and environment he was living in that was why he decided to go on a journey to the wilderness. McCandless’ depicted the “man of means by no means, king of the road.” (Miller) According to Krakauer, McCandless’ ideologies and perspectives in life did not seat well with the challenges, demands, and nature of the modern life that we see today.

Although some people were inspired by McCandless’ ideals and story, setting an example for many men on how life should be lived and valued (Brown) some people were irked by what he did. Many critiques have said that McCandless needlessly wasted his life for his impracticable dreams and ideals. For some, his death was caused by his will to escape reality, and because he abandoned reality to believe in something unreal, he ignored everything that he had to do to live (warnings on animal attacks, map directions, weather conditions, etc.) for his flawed beliefs of the kind of life he was supposed to be living. Because McCandless was unable to accomplish his dreams of learning the true meaning of life and becoming something more than a slave to modernity, many people argued that he died in vain. (Simpson, 2002)

            Despite the many arguments not only on the life and death of McCandless but also on escapism, the single idea that remains to be rational is that contemporary escapism represented by McCandless ideologies and decisions, is possible even in the structure and conditions of the twenty-first century. However, the possibility is dependent on the beliefs, ideals, or in general, the culture of man, for in analyzing the life of McCandless and the discussions of Tuan (2000) in his book, we put together the idea that man’s human instincts may be the driving force to face reality, but the ability of man to choose what he believes in and observe a distinct culture propels his actions, way of thinking, and decisions in life. Therefore, if man desires to escape reality and puts his heart into it, the realization of contemporary escapism is definitely possible.

            Furthermore, making sense out of a man’s decision to try and escape civilization and the confines of a modern life is subjective to the culture and ideologies that a man observes and believes in. The value or significance of contemporary escapism may go two ways, that is, for individuals who are threatened by the challenges and demands of the modern life or find no meaning in their present lives, contemporary escapism does make sense. However, they do have to come to terms with what their instincts tell them in order for them to survive despite their quest for a solitary life to avoid the unfortunate thing that happened to McCandless. On the other hand, for individuals who are satisfied with their lives, contemporary escapism is regarded as nonsensical.

Conclusion

            Overall, by examining McCandless life and going over the various factors that support and go against escapism as a phenomenon, we have gained insights on how contemporary escapism is possible. It all depends on the will and motivation of a person to do so, as well as how he takes his instincts for survival in stride. Perhaps, McCandless life is not only an inspiration but also a good example for individuals who believe in the ideals that contemporary escapism presents to them.

Works Cited

Brown, Chip. I Now Walk Into the Wild, The New Yorker, 1993.

Krakauer, Jon. Into the Wild. New York: Anchor Books, 1997.

Maida, Carl. A. Sustainability and Communities of Place. New York: Berghahn

            Books, 2007, p. 207.

Miller, Roger. King of the Road. Mercury Nashville, 1965.

Simpson, Sherry. I Want To Ride In The Bus Chris Died In, Vol. 11, Ed. 6. 07 Feb. –

13 Feb. 2002. <http://www.anchoragepress.com/archives/documentb965.html>

Storey, John. Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: A Reader, 2nd Ed. Georgia:

            University of Georgia Press, 1998, pp. 510-512.

Tuan, Yi-Fu. Escapism. Baltimore: JHU Press, 2000, pp. 5-6.

Essay Papers

Contemporary Ethical Theories

March 25, 2019

Introduction

Structure and agency on an individual idea and behavior is one of the fundamental issues in sociology. In this viewpoint “agency” means the capability of a person to do something separately and to formulate their own free choices while “Structure” means that those factors for example like social class, religion, sex, traditions, and ethnicity etc. which look as if to bound or to control the opportunities that a person encompasses (“Pierre Bourdieu”, 2002).

Cultural Relativism

Cultural relativism is defined as the point or position that dictates that there are no existing absolute moral rights or wrongs as dictated by culture. As a result the correctness of ones action is determined and viewed by the norms in which society accepts them. Depending on the standards sets by our society men’s action will fall to either right or wrong. Proving that through the years, men’s moral have evolved and things such as absolute no longer exist. Since correctness of actions depends on the norms that society requires, ethical relativism allows a wide array and variety of practices, values and cultures. However, it also reduced rights, wrongs and truths as relatives.

Relativism does not allow absolute ethics to exist (Panayot 1989)t. It points out that if majority of the people or a decent number believe that something is right, then it is indeed right. It also states that what may be right for a particular person, may not be right and appropriate to other persons. Since there are no absolute moral truths and ethics that exist, all ethical opinion, lifestyle, points and views are equally right. There are two important classification of ethical relativism: subjective ethical relativism and conventional which is popularly known as cultural ethical relativism.  The first kind of relativism defines truth of moral principles to be relative to individuals. According to this kind of relativism, what an individual thinks that is rightfully correct for him is in fact right and no one can contest and tell him indifferently. What is right for someone is completely left for him to decide and he is independent to choose the guiding principles in which he will live his life.

On the other hand, cultural ethical relativism defines truth of moral principles to be relative to culture (Panayot, 1989). This belief states that what is right for someone depends on what culture he is in and belongs. The principles that guide his culture are also the principles that he employs in his daily life. The culture that is being practiced by the society determines the correctness of actions. It serves as the highest authority in which individual beliefs and principles are way inferior.

A prime example of ethical relativism in effect is seen during the early American History. Two hundred years ago, slavery is acceptable to the society. The nation allows the use of slaves. Today however, slavery is prohibited as it is a mean of racial discrimination. Society today dictates that every individual must be equal, thus slavery is unacceptable in our society. Another primary example that can be observed is the practice made by Eskimos. Eskimos have this peculiar and striking practice in which elder members of the clan are allowed to die from hunger and cold. In our case we believe that this is morally wrong. In fact, euthanasia is a hot topic on debate among individuals which is tied with ethics and morality. The Spartans, which are world renowned warriors and soldiers from the history of ancient Greece firmly believe that being a theft is morally and appropriately correct, however from our practices today we know it is wrong.  Many cultures and tribes from the past up to the present, had allowed practices and methods in which babies are killed. But since, their culture permits killing of babies, no one is punished for murder. However, our laws today and our civilization would not allow such actions. Another issue that is worth taking is the issue on gender.  Some cultures permit homosexual behavior, while others nation condemn it. In Moslem societies, polygamy is allowed to be practiced, however Christian cultures view it as immoral. Thus, right and wrong are dictated by society.

Ethical relativism does support the idea of God, since there is no such thing as absolute set of ethics. Absolute set of ethics can easily be tied up to the existence of God as an absolute divine ruler which tells what is right from wrong. Ethical relativism implies that there is no absolute right and wrong, and no God will determine right and wrong actions. In return the burden of proving if actions are right lies heavily on the shoulder of our society, since our society must determine through integration of observation, logic, emotion, patterns, experience and law the correctness or wrongness of actions.

Subjectivism

Subjectivism is the opposite of objectivism which refers to varying degree on judgment of moral values. Kiekeben argued that the concept of subjectivism gives a “simple, common-sensical” explanation of morality. As human beings, we desire only for things that are good for us and avoid things that can harm us. A person, for example, might say that Stalin is evil, which is an expression of dislike. For an objectivist, this is not true unless Stalin possesses an evil characteristic. However, Kiekeben argued that for a subjectivist it is just an expression, it is not considered necessarily true or false. For him, having different opinions is not a bad thing at all because opinions may be used to influence other people. Kiekeben concluded that being a subjectivist is merely an expression of attitudes and opinions, but studying whether one’s views are factual is meaningless or irrelevant (Kiekeben, 2000).

How is Socrates’ Question from the Euthyphro Interpreted?

            Socrates once asked, “Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is love by the gods?” The question could be like this, “Is an action right because God approves of it, or God approves of it because it is right?” In answering the question, Westacott used the essentialist and relativist approach. In explaining the essentialist view Westacott used the act of hospitality as a reference of essentialist approach. The essence of hospitality is pious itself, pious because of the quality of the act. In Socrates point of view, an action is considered pious as long as it possesses an “essential quality”. In a relativist view, on the other hand, the act became pious because someone labeled it as pious (Westacott, 2003).

The two approaches are confusing, nevertheless, Westacott tried to establish the role of religion on morality. He said, however, that it is only effective to the people with religion or those who believe in God. He mentioned another question: “Do we perceive the world the way we do because that is how the world is, or is the world the way it is because of how we perceive it?’. It is concluded that in answering this and Socrates’ question, the essentialist approach is better used (Westacott, 2003).

Social Contract Theory

Habitus can be known as a structure of dispositions where it needs schemes of awareness, idea, and action. So in order to have an answer in any objective circumstances that may come across, this what they called individual agent develops these kinds of dispositions.  In response to the unusual objective circumstances that they come across, an individual agent develops is the one that develops these kinds of dispositions. Thus, Bourdieu have this idea of the need of changing the objective social structures into the subjective, rational understanding of agents (“Pierre Bourdieu”, 2007).

It all means that the main idea in the works of Bourdieu is mostly the habitus, field, and investment (“Structure and Agency”, 2007). The agent in a field where there is a growing set of roles and dealings in a communal area, where a variety of forms of assets such as the reputation or economic resources are at risk.  As the agent accommodates to his or her location in the field, the agent internalizes dealings and potential for working in that area.

 What Bourdieu want in his work was to reunite agency and structure, as some exterior arrangement are into the habitus while the dealings of the agent focus on the outside interaction that exists between each other into the public relations in the field  (“Structure and Agency”, 2007). Hence, the assumption in Bourdieu’s work is for have a discussion so that the concept of externalizing the internal and vice versa can be resolved (“Structure and Agency”, 2007).

Anthony Giddens is a british sociologists who developed “Structuration Theory” in such work as “The Constitution of Society”, which brought him an international fame on the sociological arena (Wade ; Schneberger, 2006).

For Giddens, the theory of structuration is a challenge to resolve speculative dichotomies of social classification such as agency/structure, subjective/objective, and mico/macro perspectives. It aims to evade limits of structural or agent determinism. Thus, the balancing of agency and structure is known to be as the duality of structure which means that the social structures makes social action possible and at the same time that social action creates those very structures (Wade ; Schneberger, 2006). In other words, the people are the one who makes a society, but are at the same time inhibited by it. Action and structure cannot be analyzed individually, because structures are produced, maintained, and can be altered through every dealings, while actions are given evocative figure simply through the setting of structures. And because for Giddens, his theory gives a recursive concept of procedures inhibited and enabled by structures which are formed and reproduced by that certain deed.

Anthony Giddens call Agency as an individual act, because for him, to be an Agent is to be a human, though not all agents are human beings.  The agency is very much tied up to social structures so that they can work together and can generate society together. These so-called agents have the information of their people and this common knowledge they have will therefore create what they called structures.

            As mentioned earlier, the balancing of agency and structure is known to be as the duality of structure. Here, Giddens departed from the conceptualization of structure as several known or exterior structure because it is known that the rapport linking agency and structure is among the mainly persistent and complex issues to be solved in social premise. These configuration only gives the figure and form to the public existence of everyone but it itself is not the actual design and figure of the structure (Wade ; Schneberger, 2006). Structure simply exists through certain behavior done by individual agents. Likewise, he departed from the initiative that agency is something just restricted within the human being. It does not mean that agency is only for people’s objective in doing things but somewhat to the course or guide of people’s act. So Giddens extremely reformulated the ideas of structure and agency, stressing that action, which has sturdily routinized aspects, is equally accustomed by existing literary structure as well as also makes and remakes those structures all through the ratifying procedure. He recommended that even those structural belongings of the people and social systems are factual; they still don’t have any significant survival. As an alternative, they only vary on the regular action of public imitation. As a result, the essential field of learning in the communal sciences consists of social practices disciplined across space and time (Wade ; Schneberger, 2006).

Egoism

The weak version of ethical egoism takes on the side of the probability of “altruistic behavior”. However, they have specified that although they acknowledge that the person does benevolent actions, nevertheless, they maintain that the action is still in accordance to or made with respect to the individuals’ own interest. One would like to do good because doing good makes him/her feels good. The strong version denies the presence of altruistic behavior. It asserts that in any circumstances, the individual would act in accordance to his/her self-interest despite the fact that it is in the form of benevolence. (Lander University, 2006)

Thus, as presented above, ethical egoism differs from psychological egoism in the sense that ethical egoist incorporates morality as a basis for human actions. It expresses the human self-interest in the sense of the goodness or the rightness of the act. Psychological egoism, do not try to tell us what we should do, but instead states that whatever actions that we have is basically an expression of our self-interest, the individual does not need to be moral.
In ethical egoism, the motivation lies on the person’s desires to do or aspire for something good or right. This is applicable when one is acting in able to help other people because it is in his nature to do so, as explained by David Hume. On the other hand, in psychological egoism, the motivation rest on the person’s or individual’s preference for self-interest. Psychologically egoistic behavior can best be interpreted when the individual is doing something in exchange of something that would benefit or would be in reference to his/her personal interest. Largely, those actions that are psychologically egoistic are selfish acts while those that fall under the ethical egoist are actions from self-interest. (Mosley, 2006)

Selfishness is manifested through personal advantages, mostly sacrificing others in favor of one’s own self. Self-interest is promoting one’s interest either for the benefit of himself or of other people as well. Self-interest differs from selfishness in the sense that self-interest does not necessarily points toward selfishness because certain actions that would benefit one or would comprise self-interest may actually be altruistic actions. There are instances wherein you have to be helpful to other people in order for you to proceed towards your egoistic goals. Also there are some actions whether it is for oneself or for the sake of others that are not relevant basis in suggesting that it is selfish act or a self-interested act. For instance there were actions such as eating or drinking that can be classified as either a form of selfishness or a form of self-interest. As presented, the major key in understanding the points and relevance of each position lies on the individuals understanding of the term selfishness and acting for or out of self-interest. (Mosley, 2003)

References:

Brown, H. (2006). Black Feminist Thought in the Matrix of Domination.   Retrieved July 17, 2009, from http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/252.html

Costello, C. (2002). Altruism: selfless or selfish?   Retrieved July 17, 2009, from http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/neuro/neuro01/web2/Costello.html

Hinman, L. M. (2001). Utilitarianism.   Retrieved July 17, 2009, from http://ethics.sandiego.edu/presentations/Theory/Utilitarianism/index_files/v3_document.html

Jokivuori, P. (2007, January 30, 2007). Track 8: Pierre Bourdieu and Social Capital   Retrieved May 04, 2007, from http://www.jyu.fi/en/congress/soca07/tracks/track8/

Kiekeben, F. (2000). What is Ethical Subjectivism.   Retrieved July 17, 2009, from http://members.aol.com/kiekeben/ethics1.html

Lander University. (2006). Ethics: Psychological Egoism. Retrieved on July 17, 2009. Retrieved from the World Wide Web: http://philosophy.lander.edu/ethics/egoism.html

Matrix Of Domination. (2007).   Retrieved July 17, 2009, from http://www.answers.com/topic/matrix-of-domination

Mazur, T. C. (2007). Lying.   Retrieved July 17, 2009, from http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/iie/v6n1/lying.html

Morality by Design. (2007).   Retrieved July 17, 2009, from http://www.allaboutphilosophy.org/morality.htm

Mosley, A. (2006). Egoism. Retrieved on July 17, 2009. Retrieved from the World                     Wide Web: http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/e/egoism.htm

Panayot, B. (1989). Skepticism in Ethics. Indiana University Press: Indiana.

Pierre Bourdieu. (2002).   Retrieved July 17, 2009, from http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/bourd.htm

Pierre Bourdieu. (2007).   Retrieved July 17, 2009, from http://www.answers.com/topic/pierre-bourdieu#copyright

Rachels, J. (2003). The elements of moral philosophy (4th ed.). New York: McGraw Hill.

Reppert, V. (2006). Lewis’ Three Arguments for Moral Philosophy.   Retrieved July 17, 2009, from http://atheism.about.com/library/FAQs/phil/blfaq_phileth_why.htm

Society Panel. (2007).   Retrieved July 17, 2009, from http://www.sas.upenn.edu/africana/home.html

Structure and Agency. (2007).   Retrieved July 17, 2009, from http://www.search.com/reference/Structure_and_agency

Wade, M., & Schneberger, S. (2006, February 27, 2007). T h e o r i e s   U s e d  i n  I S  R e s e a r c h S t r u c t u r a t i o n   T h e o r y.   Retrieved July 17, 2009, from http://www.istheory.yorku.ca/structurationtheory.htm

Wolfreys, J. (2000). In Perspective: Pierre Bourdieu. International Socialism Journal(87).

Westacott, E. (2003). The Contemporary Relevance of Socrates’ Question to Euthyphro.   Retrieved July 17, 2009, from http://people.alfred.edu/~westacott/Socrates’%20Question%20to%20Euthyphro.pdf

 

Essay Papers

Rational Decision Making

March 25, 2019

Decision Making
•Decision
– Making a choice from two or more alternatives.

•The Decision-Making Process
– Identifying a problem and decision criteria and allocating weights to the criteria. – Developing, analyzing, and selecting an alternative that can resolve the problem. – Implementing the selected alternative. – Evaluating the decision’s effectiveness.

The Situation
• Hamzah is a sales manager whose sales representatives need new laptops because their old ones are outdated and inadequate for doing their job. To make it simple, assume that it is not economical to add memory to the old computers and it is the company’s policy to purchase, not lease.

The Decision-Making Process

Step 1: Identifying the Problem
• Problem
– A discrepancy between an existing and desired state of affairs.

• Characteristics of Problems
– A problem becomes a problem when a manager becomes aware of it. – There is pressure to solve the problem. – The manager must have the authority, information, or resources needed to solve the problem.

Step 2: Identifying Decision Criteria

•Decision criteria are factors that are important (relevant) to resolving the problem such as: – Costs that will be incurred (investments required) – Risks likely to be encountered (chance of failure) – Outcomes that are
desired (growth of the firm)

Step 3: Allocating Weights to the Criteria

• Decision criteria are not of equal importance:
– Assigning a weight to each item places the items in the correct priority order of their importance in the decisionmaking process.

Criteria and Weights for Computer Replacement Decision

Criterion

Weight

Memory and Storage Battery life
Carrying Weight Warranty Display Quality

10 8
6 4 3

Step 4: Developing Alternatives
• Identifying viable alternatives
– Alternatives are listed (without evaluation) that can resolve the problem.

Step 5: Analyzing Alternatives
•Appraising each alternative’s strengths and weaknesses
– An alternative’s appraisal is based on its ability to resolve the issues identified in steps 2 and 3.

Assessed Values of Laptop Computers Using Decision Criteria

Step 6: Selecting an Alternative
•Choosing the best alternative
– The alternative with the highest total weight is chosen.

Step 7: Implementing the Alternative •Putting the chosen alternative into action – Conveying the decision to and gaining commitment from those who will carry out the decision

Evaluation of Laptop Alternatives Against Weighted Criteria

Step 8: Evaluating the Decision’s Effectiveness

•The soundness of the decision is judged by its outcomes
– How effectively was the problem resolved by outcomes resulting from the chosen alternatives? – If the problem was not resolved, what went wrong?

Managers Making Decisions
• Decision making is part of all four managerial functions (next slide). In fact, that is why we say that decision making is the essence of management. • And that is why managers ? when they plan, organize, lead, and control ? are called decision makers.

Decisions in the Management Functions

Essay Papers

How Far Do the Sources Suggest That the Uprisings of 1536 Were Motivated by Religious Grievances?

March 25, 2019

Source 1 is a primary source which clearly demonstrates the religious reasons based on the uprisings. The petition which was presented to the king at York (demonstrates its reliability as it’s derived directly from the demands of the rebels in the Pilgrimage of Grace) highlights their key requests: “the service of God is not well performed. ” This quote highlights the frustrations as well as disapproval for the way the church’s direction has been altered and disrupted the divine way of God: “Bishops who have recently been promoted by the king have subverted the Faith of Christ.

” Other demands detailed within the petition demonstrate the rebels’ further frustrations in regards to the “suppression of so many religious grievances. ” This demand is the first stated in their demands, which shows that this religious grievance is in fact the primary cause for the uprising (Pilgrimage of Grace in the eyes of the rebels). The suppression of the religious houses are creating issues as well as directly effecting the way that the message of God is being spread among the people; not only those partaking in the Pilgrimage of Grace.

A report made by the Imperial Ambassador to Charles V supports this, as it states that “the rebellion may be the way of stopping…the changes in matters of religion. ” Due to the fact that this source may overall be un-biased (as it is simply a report and interpretation of events from the Ambassador to Charles) and neutral in its motivation within the matter, this proves to be a reliable form of evidence.

Due to Charles V’s overall opposition to any changes within the Catholic church, as well as Henry’s need to break with Rome, highlight a general feeling shared between Charles and the rebels against reformist ideas and actions supporting it; shown through “the demolition of the churches” and “suppression of so many religious houses [source 1]. ” It supports the idea that the rebels actions were as a result of religious grievances. However, source 3 contradicts this entirely.

Source 3 is a call to rebels to join the Pilgrimage of Grace- it’s an Oath- trying to persuade others to act out against the new orders set by the king through a ‘Pilgrimage of Grace. ’ It’s an oath that portrays the uprisings as an act that was not solely based on religious distresses: “Do not join our Pilgrimage to harm any individual, nor to murder…” Its aim was supposedly supposed to be an uprising against policies through stating their demands- “The Act of Uses restrains the Liberty of the people [source 1].

”- Yet without any form of violence to accomplish their ambitions. The ‘Pilgrims Oath’ was a peaceful protest which is what the quote substantially defines as a key component of the Oath itself. Compared to Eustace Chapuys report however which state that “a great multitude of people rose against the king’s commissioners, who levied taxes…” It can be argued that the risings were actually motivated by financial grievances as well and essentially being angry at the king’s commissioners rather than King Henry himself: “To our sovereign lord [source 1].

”- “the rebels attach the blame for everything to Cromwell and demand his head. ” Additionally, both sources connote a great deal of tension in relation to the newly imposed taxes, which clearly aggravated the rebels despite pledging not to “harm any individual. ” In addition to this, the Oath perhaps connotes that a minority of people did join the Pilgrimage of Grace for personal and financial reason instead of the main religious aims; just like the Lincolnshire uprisings which were motivated by economic grievances.

In conclusion, the sources have demonstrated that the majority of rebels joined the uprisings due to religious grievances. However, the sources also showcase that there were a select few who fought for personal and financial gain e. g. lower taxes. Predominantly, the uprisings of 1536 took place with mixed motivations, both religious and economical.

Essay Papers

Contemporary Ethics

March 25, 2019

Contemporary Ethics

            Jefferson theory of revolution follows John Locke’s theory of government in concept and underlying philosophy.  It depicts a direct derivative that indicates close similarities in the various scenarios and the models of addressing them. However, in some aspects, it also concurs to Hobbes theory in the governance of the society.

Jefferson theory of evolution and Locke’s theories of government.

Liberty and Pursuits of happiness

            Like the Locke’s philosophy and belief that structures and systems must ensure happiness to the people that live under it, the Declaration of independence emphasizes that the people’s opinions and rights must be respected at all the time (Ferling, 2003).  Both theories are based on the natural law that establishes God as a divine supreme being whose will is to see all the people live in peace and harmony without oppression.  Therefore, in its principles Jefferson insisted that people must be given their rights to seek justice when it is violated by the governance.  With Locke arguing that people should have the right to seek their justice done by punishing those who have committed crime, Jefferson insisted that people had the right to remove from authority the administration that was oppressive to them (Marc et at, 2008).

Governance and checks.

            Jefferson indicated that all the rulers must be accountable to the people and the driving force must be derived from the people’s needs as opposed to their individual gains.  Following the Britain’s insensitivity to the people’s suffering in America, the declaration was therefore point specific and unit directed towards future prevention of such situations that would oppress the people (Wilson, 2006).  Locker’s before him had asserted that the most important reason for having the government was to support the ruled and therefore the ruled had to set the stage which all the governance activities would be operated from.  Therefore both theories address the need to have institutions that protect the people’s interests.  The declaration of independence amplified the need to have people representatives and top to bottom structure that would see all the people’s issues were addressed (Alan, 2008).

Jefferson theory of evolution and Hobbes theory of government.

            Though these two theories are very different in approach and orientation, the declaration of independence agrees with the Hobbes theory that whatever the state does is correct by definition in that the same government has been chosen by the people and ruled by the people (William & Murray, 2001).  Though the declaration of independence is very specific in approach as to give the power to majority of the people, it is however clear that if any aspect is wrong then it is the will of the same people as they are in all parts, sections and levels of the same governance.

Conclusion.

            Jefferson theory of revolution followed the Locke’s theory of government in many aspects relating to the manner of applying the power and authority to the people.  The declaration of independence acts to empower the people and encourage them to take active roles in checking it (Wilson, 2006).  Besides, both theories establish the people to be the center and most important part of the governance systems.  However, it differs strongly with the Hobbes theories major aspects except by argument that once the people assume power should be fully responsible for the decision they make.

Reference list.

Alan, M. (2008). Finding Jefferson: A Lost Letter, a Remarkable Discovery, and the First            Amendment in an Age of Terrorism. New York: John Wiley ; Son.

Ferling, J. (2003).  A Leap in the Dark: The Struggle to Create the American Republic. New       York: Oxford University Press.

Marc, K., Landy, M. ; Sidney, M. (2008). American Government: Balancing Democracy and   Rights. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

William, K. ; Murray, M. 2001. America: Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence”. New York:            Sage.

Wilson, H. (2006). Lincoln’s Sword: The Presidency and the Power of Words. New York: Sage.

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Essay Papers

The Limitations of Secrecy

March 25, 2019

The Limitations of Secrecy

Epictetus once said that “the key to happiness is knowing that some things are within your control”. Keeping a secret has been asserted by Epictetus as the most obvious exercise of free choice since the choice of whether to reveal the secret is within your power. But is the decision of keeping a secret, though it manifests your power in exercising free will, makes you free? Free choice in order to attain its fulfillment must be enjoyed. It must be exercise with peace and without fear that would not destroy something. People’s innate capability to recognize the morally right and wrong, their innate conscience, their culture or sense of spirituality and the idea of cause and effect are the major factors that will determine whether an action or decision, just like keeping a secret, is justifiable or not. Though Epictetus asserted that keeping a secret reflects man’s power of free will but does the effects and consequences within yourself and others makes you free?

Human beings keep secrets for many intentions which will either be for a selfless good advantage or for selfish personal gain. But there are others who keep secrets because they are being threatened by something or someone more powerful. Some people keep secrets because the more they are being asked, the more they feel powerful and special. They apparently enjoy the privilege of being peculiar and authentic. While some keep secrets about themselves to prevent dealing with the problem at hand, to prevent embarrassment and eventually rejection. They are afraid that in revealing a secret, the enemy may retaliate or revenge. By nature, secrecy separates the secret keeper to those who don’t know the secret. This separation may result to feeling of loneliness and putting some restrictions in social interaction. Apparently, keeping secrets for the secret keeper becomes problematic and unhealthy.

Our human freedom in keeping secrets is actually self imposed. We keep secrets in accordance to our beliefs and attitudes. Our spiritual world, upbringingness, tradition or any other forms of social orientation gives human beings unlimited possibilities in action and in words. To conform in keeping a secret depends on our beliefs or mind pattern which will be manifested in actions. There is no such thing as absolute freedom since everybody creates their own individuality according to their own standard and orientation. However, to keep a secret that will defile someone the right to live and the right to choose is another story. Though people have conflicting ideas about many things but everybody desires to experience life and exercise their free will. Keeping a secret is a choice but to defile the basic human rights of a person in keeping a secret is a crime. There is no freedom in defiling the life of another for selfish interest since at the end it will only create unhappiness.

In keeping a secret, you stop to be free when you are not already acting according to your innate virtuous, that is when your intentions are not good. When a person is happy, that is keeping a secret for a good cause, he will fully exercise his free will without fears.  Plato and Aristotle believe that a person, in order to be happy, must choose to act according to his reason and knowledge. Basically, both believe that men as rational beings have the choice to act according to their will. Virtue leads to happiness, and man should act according to this knowledge (Maher). Plato views happiness as a path and as direction. Plato affirms that in attaining happiness, one must exhibit love and lack of desire. One must realize that the nature of goodness is innate, and when this nature is revealed, he or she will consequentially be happy. Moreover, Plato claims that true happiness is achieved only in the performance of one’s own duty, especially the duty of exercising justice as the highest form of virtue. (“Plato and Aristotle”). Thus, in Plato’s view of happiness, individual happiness is sacrificed for the good of the community. Secrecy, though may force you to lie at times, becomes good when you exercise it for the sake of duty with humanity. However, following Plato and Aristotle view to happiness, a secret must be revealed when someone will be negatively affected. In order to fully experience man’s power towards keeping a secret, it must not negatively affect him and other people twisting the real sense of goodness which are innate.

Reference:

“Ancient Landmarks: Plato and Aristotle.” Theosophy 27.1 September 1939: 483-491. 21

November 2008 from ;http://www.blavatsky.net/magazine/theosophy/ww/additional/ancientlandmarks/PlatoAndAristotle.html;.

Maher, Michael. “Happiness.” The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 7. New York:

Robert Appleton Company, 1910. 21 November 2008 ;http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07131b.htm;.

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Essay Papers

Can contemporary fashion photography merge into art and fashion?

March 25, 2019

Can contemporary fashion contemporary fashion photography merge into art and fashion?

Introduction

Contemporary Fashion Photography is traditionally regarded positioned at the lightweight end of photographic practice and on the fringe of a true art-form. “Its close relationship to the economic imperatives of turnover makes the fashion photograph the transitory image par excellence.” (JOBLING, Paul p. 1) However Contemporary fashion photography has emerged as a ubiquitous representational form, “with us from sunrise to sunset, in the privacy of our homes and on public streets, in a format we can hold in our hands and one that towers over us on billboards the size of buildings.” (SCHROEDER, Jonathan E. p. 15)  Early criticisms of Contemporary Fashion Photography as an art form described the new technique as one that directly reproduced reality. “However, the disparity between the photographic record and perceptual experience reveals the artistic, political, and representational potential of Contemporary Fashion Photography.  The photographic image maintains a privileged place in the pantheon of visual consumption.” (SCHROEDER, Jonathan E. p. 15)

The material under discussion in this study has been organized to present an open discussion format. Each point presented has its own position supported by opinion and research and diverse sources perspective.  Yet there is a relationship, in loose and un- constructed manner, to the opposing others in a wider argument concerning the construction of the body in word and image in contemporary fashion Contemporary Fashion Photography. “It takes as a ‘machine for making Fashion’ while examining the social, economic and aesthetic factors that have been instrumental in forging an identity for fashion Contemporary Fashion Photography since 1980.” (JOBLING, Paul, p. 9)

Chapter I

Historical Comparison

The argument is ever present that the entire history of contemporary fashion photography has been the chronology of a medium at the secondary border of art. Nineteenth-century amateur photographic societies and contemporary fashion photography journals were arenas for protracted debates between those committed to Contemporary Fashion Photography’s status.  As a scientific recording tool and those determined to establish Contemporary Fashion Photography as a fine-art form, the opportunity existed for accomplishment and establishment.   Certainly gender and sexuality have been implicated in fashion Contemporary Fashion Photography since the early twentieth century. But during the 1970s there was a marked shift of emphasis in the way that the female body was represented as a fetishistic object of desire in the work of photographers like Helmut Newton, Guy Bourdin, Chris von Wangenheim and Deborah Turbeville. “Nudity became more common, and fashion Contemporary Fashion Photography also took on connotations of lesbianism, as in Newton’s infamous image of two models smoking a cigarette in a hotel lobby for French Vogue.” (JOBLING, Paul p. 10)

The comparison of Victorian “pictorial photographers” to legitimate photographic art alongside painting, sculpture, and printmaking has been an ongoing debate.  “The continuing tussle in the twentieth century to position Contemporary fashion photography within the institutions of the fine-art world has constituted a central theme for photographic history.”  (Sieberling, 1986) Referred to this as “the aesthetic of the picturesque,” the unparalleled numbers of people engaged in some form of photographic production.  The long struggle to establish Contemporary fashion photography as a legitimate art form still continues today.  There is a clear and obvious tendency of the art establishment to exclude and to narrowly restrict the boundaries of admissible photographic art.   “The established arts have all contributed to the formation of peripheral spheres of photo activity on the margins of art.” (GROSS, Larry p.184)

Contemporary Fashion Photography is entering into the commercial galleries and, most recently, the fashion business is a growing source of economic aid for the arts. The burgeoning crossover between the worlds of fashion and art is increasingly apparent – contemporary work is instill with concerns about gender identity, Since the beginning of the “contemporary age,” there have been countless major Contemporary fashion photography exhibitions at New York City’s Guggenheim Museum alone, as well as other international events that interweave fashion and art.

Advertising agencies, Contemporary fashion photography studios, and design firms are full of people with art history training. Furthermore, the world of advertising represents a popular art form that is often represented in fine art museums. (Schroeder 1997). “Thus, it seems reasonable to turn to art history – a field that has been analyzing images for hundreds of years – to expand our knowledge of advertising images.” (SCHROEDER, Jonathan E. p.137)

The expansion of the new media has provided more space for arts and culture pages and programs and alongside this there has been enormous growth in both the production and the consumption of various forms of culture. Fashion design fits well into these developments in a number of different ways: the history of fashion, as well as the history of fashion contemporary fashion photography.  They all now are the position of it self as the central subject of gallery exhibitions and retrospectives.  “The young designers showing their work at degree shows are treated by the press and television companies in the same respectful tones as their counterparts in fine art; and knowledge of, and familiarity with fashion design culture has entered into a more popular vernacular and has become something that almost everybody knows something about.” (MCROBBIE, Angela p. 183)

In each stated or written position on the issue, an interesting point is elaborated between the form and content of the photographs and the pieces of writing cited that has implications for the meaning of authorship and originality. In addition, with their nostalgic emphasis, contemporary photographs envision an artistic attempt in which the past and present appears to collapse into each other.  “It is not surprising, therefore, to find that several critics have drawn historical parallels between the classical, statue men of contemporary fashion Contemporary fashion photography and earlier manifestations of muscularity in terms of what has come to be commonly known as body fascism.” (JOBLING, p. 147)  Contemporary fashion photography’s ambivalent status as both scientific record and a new art form generated an uncertainty as to what has been described by the established as “legitimate Contemporary fashion photography,” and equally important to those in the industry, who had the right to practice it.  For example, reviewing the controversy over the portrait photographs by Antoine Samuel Adam (1818 – 1881), as the debated started over a century ago.

Chapter II

International Perspective

Antoine Samuel Adam’s portraits, such as that of the French writer and journalist, Alphonse Karr, described as “the finest photographic portraits in the world” However, some found Antoine Samuel Adam’s achievement suspicious and asserted that they must have been retouched by the artist. Needless to say, painted portraits were continually reworked so as to flatter the sitter but retouching seemed to contradict the very nature of Contemporary fashion photography as the record of a particular instant.

In direct opposition to traditional art and design history and literary criticism methods, cultural studies offers a way of studying objects as systems rather than as the simple product of authorship. Borrowed from European structuralism, the theory of language “loom as the most essential of cultural studies concepts, either in its own right, or through being appropriated as a model for understanding other cultural systems” (Turner 1996).   The structures of language, deployed through speech or text, have been shown to reveal those mechanisms through which individuals make sense of the world: “Culture, as the site where that sense or meaning is generated and experienced, becomes a determining, productive field through which social realities are constructed, experienced and interpreted” (Turner 1996).

Saussure and later Roland Barthes,  offered a more refined mechanism for applying the structural model of language across the wider range of cultural signifying systems, allowing the scholar to examine the social specificity of representations and their meaning across different cultural practices: gesture, literature, drama, conversation, contemporary fashion photography, film, television and, of course, dress. (BARTHES, Roland 1973.)  Punk anti-fashion was an unstable constellation of various signifying elements and insignia derived from the repertoire of postwar British street styles. It was also decisively influenced by art school experimentation in fashion and design. Punk stylists like Johnny Rotten selected specific motifs and garments from the wardrobes of teds, rockers, mods, skinheads and glam rockers and combined them into iconoclastic and anarchic sartorial assemblages.  By the 1980s models had become household names, often better known than the designers of the clothes they wore on the catwalk. “Each supermodel had a particular look which concurred with the fashion moment and epitomized the dominant characteristics of the contemporary western feminine ideal.

Accordingly, “…the influence of the supermodel in the formation of gender identity was fiercely debated; never more so in the 1990s with the introduction of the waif look through the new realist contemporary fashion photography.” (CHILDS, Peter p. 514)   “One enduring feature of glamour is its identification with fashion. In a recent analysis of contemporary fashion photography, Clive Scott contrasted ‘glamour’ with ‘sophistication’. Even though he found that in the fashion press glamour was still considered down-market, the low scale of the retail market while just as pronounced was found on the side the sophistication was seen as up-market or up scale.” (SCOTT, Clive p. 156)  Fashion journalism and contemporary fashion photography are unique in the field of mass communications and traditional art.

The fashion pages show clothes available for consumption and list or they talk about designers and retailers and report on the new collections, but these pages do not have to sell the clothes. Because they are neither advertisements nor reviews in the traditional sense, nor simply consumer information, they occupy a vague and of art form. “It is precisely this that licenses the move into the field of fantasy and sexuality. The photographers and stylists welcome the creative freedom provided on the fashion pages.” (MCROBBIE, Angela p.164)  These constructions of identities through the body of art and its affiliation often carry powerful political and economic implications. Papers demonstrated that in contemporary Western contexts, allusions to other influences, i.e. Africa, through adornments and images such as those found in colonial-era postcards and contemporary fashion photography still carry the weight of colonization and its aftermath. The African body has for centuries been an object of much fascination to Western observers, who framed it to fuel many misconceptions about the continent’s peoples and cultures. The colonialist image of the “naked savage” long poisoned the relationship between African and Western peoples; the forced or coerced abandonment of indigenous attire in favor of Western dress was for much of the past two centuries a symbol of the “civilizing” process. Throughout Africa today, deliberate revivals of “traditional” forms serve as symbols of political and cultural movements, often coexisting with Western styles that have been modified to suit local tastes.” ADAMS Sarah, p. 1

Creativity and commerce in contemporary fashion photography,” accordingly, a great deal of what “Fashioning Fiction” attempts to demonstrate in its mix and match of art and fashion Contemporary fashion photography has already been demonstrated, if largely unanalyzed. “Generally speaking, the exhibition catalogue proposes a decisive change in the look and content of fashion and style Contemporary Fashion Photography occurred in the 1990s, during this period art and fashion Contemporary fashion photography increasingly suggested narratives of greater or lesser ambiguity, alluded to various film genres and even documentary Contemporary fashion photography, and evoked “personal” or “lifestyle” projects from the art side and from the fashion side, and this cross-fertilization between artistic and commercial Contemporary fashion photography affirms the vitality and creativity of both practices.” (SOLOMON-GODEAU Abigail, p, 192)  This genre emphasizes the contradictions inherent in contemporary fashion photography, which hinge upon the coincidence of seemingly inconsistent terms such as ‘street’ Contemporary fashion photography and high fashion; spectacle and activity; provocation and commercialism.

Unlike art, fashion obviously functions primarily within a marketplace that serves to sell clothes. Only belatedly does contemporary fashion photography sell itself as art, almost as an afterthought. The boundaries between art Contemporary fashion photography and contemporary fashion photography have always been blurred – photographers themselves crossing easily between genres. “Institutions such as Condé Nast, a major publishing house that specializes in magazines and women’s fashion magazines in particular, were among the first to promote art Contemporary fashion photography as such in the twentieth century.”  (ENTWISTLE, Joanne p.187)  Although a great deal of work has been undertaken in recent years on consumerism, fashion, contemporary fashion photography and the media, there is not as yet any theory of glamour. Contribution, by fashion sociologist and historians, is important because they were writing about luxury, fashion, conspicuous consumption and cinema towards the end of the moment that has been identified here as having witnessed the birth of glamour. “Perhaps the most important starting point, however, is the concept of the decline of the aura of art in the age of mechanical reproduction.” (BENJAMIN, Walter 1973)  Contemporary Fashion Photography’s fascination with the ordinary is nothing new, but the crystallization of this fascination into a curatorial and editorial aesthetic is a relatively recent development.

However, with all these advantages the fashion media remain none the less unadventurous and trapped in a format which came into being when fashion was an exclusively female and ‘society’, or upper-class, interest. The history of Vogue magazine reveals a lineage of grande dame editors most of whom were unashamedly elitist in their desire to create a luxury magazine for well-to-do readers. These editors did a great deal to bring fashion design into prominence as an art. “They achieved this partly by treating key fashion designers as creative geniuses; they also provided the space in which contemporary fashion photography was able to establish itself and this, too, was celebrated as a branch of modern art. Since then this tradition has been taken as the canon of fashion journalism.” (MCROBBIE, Angela p.173)

Chapter III

The Science of the Art

If advertising is not an official or state art, it is nonetheless clearly art. The development of painting, Contemporary Fashion Photography, and prints in the fine arts has been intimately intertwined with the development of commercial art for over a century. “While few American writers have joined Malcolm Cowley in exclaiming that literature should borrow a little punch and confidence from American business,” (SHI, David E p. 172.  Artists and photographers from Toulouse-Lautrec on have frequently done commercial art or been influenced by it. The difference between contemporary fashion photography and Contemporary Fashion Photography as art is subtle, if it exists at all, and certainly the techniques and innovations in contemporary fashion photography influence Contemporary Fashion Photography as fine art as often as the other way around. In recent years, television commercial techniques have influenced film and commercial directors have become makers of feature films. (BARNICOAT, John, p. VI-I)  The photographic print, of course, could be treated as a precious work of art, whereas the printed page could not, but for Penn, art was not the main point: “The modern photographer does not think of contemporary fashion photography as an art form or of his photograph as an art object . . . . In modern contemporary fashion photography that which is art, is so as the by-product of a serious and useful job, soundly and lovingly done.” Penn is quoted in “What Is Modern Contemporary Fashion Photography?” (EISINGER, Joel p.117)

Needless to say, most advertising is dull and conventional, as creative workers in the business are the first to point out. “But there is no question that advertising shapes aesthetic tastes, and at least occasionally educates the eye in ways serious artists can applaud. Critics quick to attack the “desires” advertising promotes are apt not to notice, or having noticed, to reject, the visual tastes advertising shapes. One can gaze, as literary historian Leo Spitzer observed, “with disinterested enjoyment” at an advertisement whose claims for its product do not seem the least bit credible.” (SCHUDSON, Michael p. 222)

One enduring feature of glamour is its identification with fashion. In a recent analysis of contemporary fashion photography, artists contrasted ‘glamour’ with ‘sophistication’. This format found that in the fashion press glamour was described as youthful, dynamic and pleasure-seeking, On the other hand sophistication is seen as: mature, poised, restrained and introvert. (GRIFFITHS, Ian p. 37)  “It is no accident that they have coincided with the revival of figurative painting and the rise of conceptual art, of what is called photography as a high art forms, of video, alternative film practices, performance art – all of which have worked to challenge both the humanist notion of the artist as romantic individual ‘genius’ (and therefore of art as the expression of universal meaning by a transcendent human subject) and the modernist domination of two particular art forms, painting and sculpture.” (HUTCHEON, Linda p. 139)

As a comparative method, one can study other art forms that feature the observation of body language and motion and also how the camera presented them to the spectator. The movement arts, i.e. ballet include among its characters a cinematographer who directs the others in their poses. Current studies are deliberately selective, and do not make any claim providing an exhaustive chronological survey or history of fashion contemporary fashion photography.

HISTORY

As in any theoretical disposition that sees history as progressing toward a particular point or goal as a matter of necessity is called a study of causes or teleology. “In the history and criticism of art, a particularly good example of teleology can be found in Clement Greenberg’s understanding of art history, which he presents as gradually progressing toward “pure” modernist painting. The development and eventual dominance of abstract painting, then, is not simply a choice or preference of artists, but is seen by Greenberg and others as a matter of historical necessity.” (MCLERRAN, Jennifer p. 91)

When the public first encountered Contemporary Fashion Photography in 1839, they were not at all certain what kind of neither invention it was nor how it was to be used. Was it to be a source of scientific information, an aid to artists, an art form in its own right, or a medium of totally unforeseen consequences? To many people, Contemporary Fashion Photography appeared to be a nearly miraculous, automatic, and literal system for recording appearances. Photographers were simply operators of the system, and photographs were pure traces of nature. “Early commentators described Contemporary Fashion Photography as “a chemical and physical process which gives Nature the ability to reproduce herself,” as “Nature herself reflecting her own face,” “perfect transcripts of the thing itself,” or simply “Nature herself.”

This view of Contemporary Fashion Photography as a purely natural and automatic phenomenon was not, especially in the nineteenth century, conducive to the development of theory and criticism of Contemporary Fashion Photography as art. “Photographic art theory and criticism could only arise from a vision of Contemporary Fashion Photography as a process that transforms the world rather than one that merely traces it directly, and this process of transformation had to be seen as subject to the deliberate and expressive control of the photographer.” (EISINGER, Joel p.13)

“By 1943, the art direction of American Vogue was taken up by Alexander Liberman, who continued to occupy the post until 1961, and the work of a new school of indigenous photographers, including chiefly Irving Penn, Jerry Schatzberg and William Klein, began to appear in its pages. In Britain also, the post-war period witnessed the revitalisation of contemporary fashion photography in Vogue by a younger generation of photographers.” (JOBLING, Paul, p. 21)  Moreover, in reworking the idea of the turn of the century the piece appears to correspond to ‘Veiled Threats’ from The Face, but in many respects the links between them are superficial.

As we have seen, although the latter has historicist connotations, it does not simply romanticize the past as a fashion statement or as an ideologically safe haven, but rather uses the past as a masquerade to suggest what is wrong with the present. (JOBLING, Paul, p. 54)  Many artists never constructed a rigorous critical theory, but many practice a form criticism toward the art form. The rejection of academic, as was put during the time, didactic criticism that is concerned with laying down universal rules for an art form, there was no open objection to such criticism in principle, but the prevailing thought of the day was contemporary fashion photography too young an art for such universal laws to be apparent. (EISINGER, Joel p.44)

Since 1964, Britain has been a hugely influential force in global popular music. Being a small country with a centralized music and the tendency to experiment and innovate in the areas of youth interest particularly music fashion has resulted in a large number of sub-cultural developments of a specifically British nature achieving widespread attention to the Bristol-based ‘trip hop’ culture of the early 1990s. (CHILDS, Peter, p. 411)

Fashion photographers capitalized on the 1960s spirit. The photographers who were intent on creating social statements that rejected the structures of contemporary fashion photography and reflected women in these ‘disturbing times’ Some  incorporated ‘a range of poses and gestures’ from the American Ballet Theatre into his Contemporary Fashion Photography which created new conventions of gesture and display. (CRAIK, Jennifer, p. 106)  Art historian Martin Harrison made the observation contemporary fashion photography undergoes a transformation during the 1960s in terms of both its subject and its style.

Chapter IV

Impact of a Generation

Like many phenomena associated with the 1960s, these changes do not occur without transforming social discourse; they are symptomatic of larger and gradual mutations in culture during the post WWII era. ‘New wave’ Contemporary Fashion Photography freed the women from a domestic position from the studio. It emphasized fluidity and movement, a certain style rather than a set of commodities. Harrison refers to this photographic mode as ‘outside fashion’, a mode that he sees as a representation of a new feminine ideal grounded in activity. These aesthetic and social issues were associated with economic changes in major consumer industries, clothing in particular, as well as such diverse events such as the shifts in Hollywood that resulted in a fragmentation of the film industry and the rise of the independent film. This new cinema, characterized by young European film-makers, for example, had a marked influence on contemporary fashion photography and its reception. (ENTWISTLE, Joanne p. 185)

Contemporary fashion photography in the 1960s offered a new ideal for women, one in which she is represented as autonomous and as democratic. Models were no longer anonymous and as household names were able to assume control of their careers. Nonetheless, the body that these photographs privileged was that of an adolescent. The adolescent body was freed from the constraints of previous fashions that controlled the feminine body through external means; however, these external constraints were replaced by strict regimes of diet and exercise.

This paradox should lead us to question our notions of ‘freedom’ and its possibilities. “The development of contemporary fashion photography in the 1960s as a means of embodying a new mode of femininity illustrates the problems posed by the representations of freedom and action in consumer culture.” (ENTWISTLE, Joanne p. 183)  It was in the 1980s when many mainstream fashion magazines supported the crossover activities of artists and art photographers. Yet the redundant and simplistic terms in which the fashion catalogues referred to the art work or pictures, whether those produced by art photographers or those produced by fashion photographers, fail to address the substantive issues raised by the photographs themselves. For surely contemporary fashion photography’s various plays with sex and gender, race and difference, are among its most significant elements.

And surely another significant aspect of the genre is its ideological address, its complex orchestrations of spectator desire, projection, identification, fetishism, voyeurism, and all the other psychic mechanisms that account for the power, the influence, and indeed the pleasure such pictures produce. Last, but hardly least, there is the question of how such photographs–paradigms of the simulacra–impact on social reality, including the self-images of actual women, men, and adolescents.   (SOLOMON-GODEAU Abigail, p. 192)

Because the phenomenon of fashion Contemporary Fashion Photography in the museum virtually by definition celebrates the photographer/author, it produces the illusion that his or her imagery is individually rather than culturally generated and often collectively produced. While this authorial emphasis obviously elides the role of the stylist (a professional routinely credited in editorial style Contemporary Fashion Photography who often scripts the shoot, scouts locations, and dresses the models), so too does it obscure the web of visual influence of all forms of visual culture. Although MOMA credits fashion editors and stylists in the catalogue checklist, few outside the professional field of fashion Contemporary Fashion Photography will likely be aware of their central role in producing the exhibited photographs. Accordingly, the act of de-constructing photographs by isolating, framing, and mounting them on walls effectively flattens their specificity, their instrumentality, and their original mode of address, and thus the consumer or audience targeted by the photographic work is obscured. (SOLOMON-GODEAU Abigail, p. 192)

The fashion magazine and the fashion photograph tend to be regarded by many historians and critics as ephemeral and exiguous forms of cultural production. Hence, in 1979 Nancy Hall-Duncan commented that, ‘Fashion photographs are ostensibly as transitory as last year’s style or this month’s magazine issue.’  While in 1991 Eamonn Mc Cabe, picture editor of The Guardian, declared in somewhat parallel terms: ‘contemporary fashion photography is like its models, nobody wants it for very long.’ However, such statements tend to sound overly analyzed, and although we all wear clothing or fashion on our bodies, there are significant differences between how actual garments and representations of them are both produced and consumed.

Indeed, the fashion magazine is a prime motivator in helping us to assess the meaning of clothing, of determining what is in fashion and what is out.   Fashion Contemporary Fashion Photography is in the company of a long history of colonial civilizing projects. The link between local and transnational images of objects, events, and discourses of dress and adornment is evident. Women’s circulation practices are critical to these linkages. Like fashion, Contemporary Fashion Photography has been amenable to women’s strategies of self-representation, diversification of wealth forms, and status advancement. Rather than assimilating Africans to Europe, Contemporary Fashion Photography reinvigorated long-standing local contests for prestige and respectability. To be worthwhile, the dress and conduct of the civilized must be recognized in collective efforts such as social events, visual records, and gossip. (KASPIN, Deborah D. p 178)

Recognized in the museum’s canon of Contemporary Fashion Photography, the question is raised of what makes a photograph a work of art. Artists acknowledged explicitly that John Szarkowski, (influential photography curator, historian, and critic former Director of Photography at New York’s Museum of Modern Art) inclusiveness, and the inclusiveness he wished to promote on behalf of mass media Contemporary Fashion Photography, ignored the photographer’s intention as the factor that determines which photographs are art. Contemporaries had no qualms about this, “Obviously art is in need of a new definition that will bypass the question of the artist’s intention.” If the artist’s intention is not the factor that determines which photographs are art, then what is? Art and Fashions contemporaries grappled with the question in a review of Szarkowski’s Looking at photographs.

The foundation for the world-wide quest of art and fashion in merchandise has been transformed stores into museums and expositions freely open to the enjoyment and education of the people.  Here an example of the step ahead of retail merchants who were still buying from importers, or through foreign commissionaires.

ART FORM

“As a result, the elements were taken as seriously as the photographs, and fully integrated with them to produce a holistic piece of design. In addition, the idea of creatively styling each fashion feature according to a particular theme so as to optimize the types of fashion represented was also increasing in importance, and with the advent of Ray Petri in the summer of 1983 seemed to become an art form in its own right.” (JOBLING, Paul, p. 38)  With regard to its fashion content, photographers who had already contributed to The Face graduated to Arena, include Juergen Teller. (JOBLING, Paul, p. 53)  There have been an elaborate number of the identifiable themes and chief ideas that have emerged in fashion Contemporary Fashion Photography since 1980. This has entailed making certain strategic choices – which kinds of fashion magazines to include, for instance, and how many of each type. Traditional or high-fashion magazines whose readership is predominantly female, style periodicals for youth culture and, finally, magazines designated for men who are interested in fashion. (JOBLING, Paul, p. 6)

Colored photographs occupy an undeservedly questionable situation: the artist curls his lip at them, and the photographer regards them with a sneer. The one says they are no paintings, the other that they are no photographs; thus the art of photographic coloring, unrecognized by either, must seek consolation in the fact that it is embraced none the less eagerly by both. At exhibitions of paintings colored photographs are peremptorily refused, and it is very frequently advised that they should not be received for photographic exhibitions.   An example of normalizing discourse is contemporary fashion photography, which “…operates through images of women that produce a normative femininity to which subjects feel constrained to conform.” (PATIN Thomas, p. 91)

There are fashions and fashions. While western elite designer fashion constitutes one system, it is by no means exclusive nor does it determine all other systems. Just as fashion systems may be parodied from the late Middle Ages until the present (rather than assuming an unfolding teleology), so too contemporary fashion systems may be recast as an array of competing and inter-meshing systems cutting across western and non-western cultures. (CRAIK, Jennifer, p. 6)  It is not only through the costumes worn during her operation-performances that cross over from the art world to the world of fashion and style. The blurring of boundaries between these two domains has recently begun to stimulate a lot of debate, and in this case, the visual artist has begun to demonstrate many of the complexities typical of the new crossovers between art and fashion.

In many cases museum curators justify their position on photography and art claiming that the “fashion world has turned to current trends in art Contemporary Fashion Photography,” despite their talk of the multiple cultural intersections running through ’90s fashion Contemporary Fashion Photography. Almost every detail of the exhibition colludes to support this view, especially their inclusion of six “art photographers” as half of the show. Perhaps this should be expected at the Museum of Modern Art, which is, after all, an institution devoted to the legitimacy and importance of art as a cultural practice. Yet since its founding in the ’30s, MOMA has promoted broadening the self-conscious criticality of modern art to include practices previously considered degraded by their commercial economies, such as Contemporary Fashion Photography and design. The Modern was the first institution to propose that Contemporary Fashion Photography need not reference painting for legitimacy and that design could be viewed in terms of its own formal and functional conditions.  “Fashion education, for example (and fashion designers themselves) sometimes displays a remarkably imperialistic attitude in their uncritical plundering and eroticization of other cultures in search of new fashion ideas. Geography is as rich a resource in this respect as history, contemporary fashion photography as a genre is steeped in notions of ‘exotic locations’.  But the significance of fashion oriental requires much more work than a simple reference can do justice to in this context.” (MCROBBIE, Angela, p.11)  The representation of clothing produces a contemporary image of ‘what looks natural’: ‘In order that the look of the body might always be beautiful, significant, and comprehensible to the eye, ways developed of reshaping and presenting it anew by means of clothing’ contemporary fashion photography introduced new codes of ‘naturalism’ and new ways of thinking about fashion. Previously, conventions of portraiture structured the depiction of fashion. “Mirrors were often used as props to show the face of the sitter while the rest of the painting showed the details of the clothing and toilette.” (CRAIK, Jennifer, p. 93)

Chapter V

Technique and Style

As already noted, techniques of dress and decoration in non-western cultures are distinguished from fashion. They are regarded as traditional and unchanging reflections of social hierarchies, beliefs and customs. Non-western dress embodies meanings of spirituality, religiosity and fertility while also encoding power relations. Occasionally, dress is also acknowledged as an art form with aesthetic meanings. For western observers, the idea that non-western dress does not change is central to establishing its difference from western fashion, which is predicated on regular and arbitrary changes. (CRAIK, Jennifer, p. 18)

The involvement of connections between bodies and clothes and between clothed bodies and their social impact, have inflected changing conventions of fashion Contemporary Fashion Photography over the years.  From the classic formal poses of early Contemporary Fashion Photography; to the use of gestures and location shooting and indiscernible clothing in ‘a pleasing blur. “In the 1980s, fashion Contemporary Fashion Photography dispensed with tableaux (formalized settings and possibly implied narratives) replaced them with the imperatives of video through the use of moving images Fashion Contemporary Fashion Photography faces another cross-roads.

On the one hand, fashion Contemporary Fashion Photography has become a respectable art -form, represented in galleries and museums and celebrated in retrospective exhibitions which: invite us to look in a different, more thoughtful, more abstracting way. Time has changed them, too. “Seen in this retrospective form (compiled in a book, on the walls of a museum), images that started out as fashion photographs become a commentary on the idea of the fashionable.” (SONTAG, S. p. 174)  The images might be designed to shock, but the text remains culturally reassuring. On these pages fashion reporting and writing conform to a pattern wherein no real offence is ever spoken and no rules appear to be broken.

The ‘shock of the new’ remains carefully contained within the legitimate avant-gardism of contemporary fashion photography (for example, the ‘dirty realism’ of grunge) and the fashion media regulates itself with a system of informal censorship. Of all forms of the consumer culture, fashion seems to be the least open to self scrutiny and political debate. This is because the editors deem that fashion must steer well clear of politics, and fashion journalists are expected to go along with this. With Vouge acting more or less as a universal benchmark of quality, fashion-as-politics is only conceivable as a catchy idea for a ‘fashion story’. (MCROBBIE, Angela, p.153)

Another way to understand this fragmentation and reconstruction all forms of Contemporary Fashion Photography as conventional and rule governed and who argued that values and attitudes held by different types of photographers are socially determined. Part of a sociological study done in late 1980’s of Contemporary Fashion Photography claims to have established how each group or class regulates and organizes the individual practice by conferring upon it functions attuned to its own interests.

The interests of middle-class amateurs are served by legitimizing Contemporary Fashion Photography as an art form, thus distinguishing their practice from “ordinary” Contemporary Fashion Photography. “That the meaning Contemporary Fashion Photography has to the middle class “conveys or betrays” its relationship to culture; “that is, to the upper class (bourgeoisie) who retain the privilege of cultural practices which are held to be superior, and to the working classes from whom they wish to distinguish themselves at all costs by manifesting, through the practices which are accessible to them, their cultural goodwill.

It is in this way that members of photographic clubs seek to ennoble themselves culturally by attempting to ennoble Contemporary Fashion Photography, a substitute within their range and grasp for the higher arts. (GROSS, Larry p. 178)  The most obvious procedure for this art that plumbs the dark secrets of the photographic question, the public trace of a submerged memory, would be to make use of the photographic media themselves, isolating pieces of information, repeating them, changing their scale, altering or highlighting color, and in so doing revealing the hidden structures of desire that persuade our thoughts.

And indeed, it has been this kind of practice, the practice of such artists working with video, film, and contemporary fashion photography, And yet despite the success of this approach, it remains, in the end, too straightforwardly declarative. What ambiguity there exists in the work is a given of its own inner workings, and can do little to stimulate the growth of a really troubling doubt. (WALLIS Brian, p. 163)

After contemporary fashion photography had served its function of selling clothes, it remained a delightful and charming evocation of a world of dreams. Photographers are indignant that fashion photographs and mass media photographs in general were treated as second-class work and not given the serious attention that art Contemporary Fashion Photography received; just because commercial Contemporary Fashion Photography is made for money and to satisfy a client rather than the artist’s personal interests does not mean it cannot be art. (EISINGER, Joel p. 240)

“If such results could be obtained by retouching, I should be disposed to exclaim, Let it be as lawful as eating.” (JANET, E. 1989) The confession that most are a little amused, in common with correspondents and how deeply injured photographers have felt because contemporary fashion photography has been denied the recognition of a fine art, and yet when results beyond challenge, on art grounds, are produced, photographers are the first to exclaim that such results are due to extraneous means, and not to legitimate contemporary fashion photography. (MIRZOEFF, Nicholas p. 67)  This all seems to be compatible with the fact that contemporary Fashion Photography is indeed examples of mass and fine art.

That we treat such specimens as so-called high art due to their scarcity and/or their beauty does not preclude their status as early mass art. “Maybe some of our contemporary fashion photography will be treated with the same esteem in the twenty-fourth century. And, in any case, where I invoke the notion of ‘high art’ in the sense of contemporary high art, I mean it to be understood primarily in terms of the avant-garde. So even if we honorifically treat some popular, pre-industrial, Japanese woodcuts as high art today in the somewhat dubious, honorific sense of high art.” (CARROLL, Noël p. 208)

One obvious feature of the approach to the philosophy of art is that it is historical. Certain art-forms exemplify certain stages in the development of consciousness for a time, and then things change. Consciousness changes the art that externalizes or embodies it changes in concert. Thus, art that is appropriate for one epoch is not necessarily appropriate to another. Art evolves over time. So, the criteria for art (and, presumably, even art status) that are fitting at one point in history, may not be appropriate at a later point in history.

Chapter VI

The Innovations

The matron of all arts, dance drew upon contemporary fashion photography and illustration. Boris Kochno, who oversaw this ballet about a competition between tailors, was a confidant of Coco Chanel. Even though the ballet was set in provincial France of the late 1890s, it really reflected urbane fashion feuds of the early 1930s, calling to mind the battles we now witness between designers like Giorgio Armani and Gianni Versace. (ADSHEAD-LANSDALE, Janet, p. 113)  Where Vogue Italia used gangster-style cross-dressing in an all-male ensemble, a few months later British Vogue featured a gangster spread (top left) by the same photographer (Peter Lindbergh) that involved a clearly gendered couple: Bonnie and Clyde. “However, while the theme of criminality remains, the loss of the sexualized Italianate cultural influence and gritty, sweaty realism leaves these images clearly framed (literally) and containable as innocent charades. That the same photographer produced two so very different gangster spreads may be in part explained by the different editorial policy of the two magazines: Vogue Italia is widely recognized as being at the cutting edge of contemporary fashion photography, while British Vogue has undergone a transformation to (safer) American standards (Coleridge 1988).” (HORNE Peter, p. 185)

The (post)modern destruction of reality is accomplished in everyday life, not in the studios of the avant-garde. Just as the artists who lean toward “situation” art collected examples of the bizarre happenings that pass as normality from the newspapers, so can one now see the collapse of reality in everyday life from the mass visual media? In the early 1980s, postmodern photographers like Sherrie Levine and Richard Prince sought to question the authenticity of contemporary fashion photography by appropriating photographs taken by other people. This dismissal of contemporary fashion photography’s claim to represent the truth is now a staple of popular culture. (MIRZOEFF, Nicholas p. 17)

The important figures from the fashion world Orlan, (French multimedia/performance artist, the creator of Carnal Art, and a first person who used plastic surgery as a medium of artistic expression) has worked with, in addition to Issey Miyake and Paco Rabanne, are the photographer Jurgen Teller and the designers Jeremy Scott and W<. The working aesthetics of each of these figures reveal different dimensions of Orlan’s 1990s artistic productions particularly well. Teller, for example, is best known for his aesthetic of ‘imperfect beauty’ – black and white images, ill-fitting forms, and the cultivation of a ‘flawed’ look – a style obviously in sympathy with Orlan’s distorting reshaping of her facial features. Jeremy Scott, the young American designer who arrived in Paris in 1995 after training in New York and catching the attention of Donatella Versace, produced a first collection in October 1996 that included medical imagery – silhouettes made of hospital sheets – and a second in March 1997 called ‘Body Modification’ (INCE, Kate p.22)

The work examined reflects a more prosaic approach to photographic seeing–a fascination with the everyday, a preoccupation with the vernacular, an “ordinary,” rather than an “extraordinary” vision. Rather than simply dismissing this as “bad Contemporary Fashion Photography,” however, to examine the banal as an aesthetic category, as a motif and a mode of reception, and to look critically at the embodiment of the ordinary that lies at its heart.

Such recent exhibitions as Reality Check at the Photographer’s Gallery and Cruel and Tender at the Tate Modern introduce to a larger public a number of aesthetic preoccupations that have been visible in exhibition practice for the past decade. Grounded in the allied motifs of boredom, repetition, and inertia, these concerns are also evident in current critical writing on Contemporary Fashion Photography. “Banality” and “the banal” show up frequently in accounts of the work of Thomas Ruff, Martin Parr, Richard Billingham, and others; they also feature thematically in the retrospective attention paid to photographers like Robert Adams, William Eggleston, and Stephen Shore.

Fashion and advertising have been quick to take up the mass appeal of the banal image, it surfaces in the “snapshot aesthethic” of photographers like Terry Richardson and Jeurgen Teller, and to push its boundaries; arguably, heroin chic was born out of the morbid allure of drug culture as seen through the eyes of photographers like Corrine Day, Davide Sorrenti, and Nan Goldin. (SHINKLE, Eugenie p. 165)

Popular critics advanced a simplified mixture of the values of documentary and straight Contemporary Fashion Photography. These critics were at the service of the photographic industry, both the equipment industry and the picture magazines, and their aim was to convince a mass audience to consume Contemporary Fashion Photography. One of their strategies was to glamorize the medium through the creation of stars: fashion photographers or photojournalists wrapped in cults of personality. Edward Steichen and Margaret Bourke-White are notable examples. Another strategy was to engage the amateur audience in photographic practice by selling the illusion of empowerment through the command of fancy technology.

The popular press also sold comfort and distraction from turmoil through the promise of a facile engagement with social and psychic reality–formulas for understanding the world and the self through Contemporary Fashion Photography. As more serious criticism emerged in the fifties, popular critics either scoffed, thus revealing the intensity of their anti-intellectualism, or they attempted to assimilate simplistic versions of the new critical ideas.

Chapter VII

Commentary from the Field

In general, they reacted with fear to what they perceived as a threat to their hegemony. (EISINGER, Joel p. 8)  It is fairly standard to regard works of film art as types. But if the preceding comparison with theatre is persuasive, then we can characterize films in a more fine-grained way, namely: a film is a type whose token performances are generated by templates that are themselves tokens. Our next question, then, is whether this pattern of analysis can be generalized to other forms of mass art, including contemporary fashion photography, radio, telecommunications, music recordings, and best-selling pulp fiction. (CARROLL, Noël p. 214)

In this moment, it is becoming clear that a new pixelated mode of global individuality is being formed that is distinct from the cinematic assembly line image and from the simulacrum of 1980s postmodern culture. In the nineteenth century, contemporary fashion photography transformed the human memory into a visual archive. By the early twentieth century, Georges Duhamel, (French author, born in Paris, trained as a doctor, and during World War I was attached to the French army) complained that: “I can no longer think what I want to think, the moving images are substituted for my own thoughts.”

Confronted with the question of whether contemporary fashion photography was art, Marcel Duchamp said that he hoped contemporary fashion photography would “make people despise painting until something else will make contemporary fashion photography unbearable.” The pixilated image has made contemporary fashion photography unbearable, both literally as Princess Diana’s relationship to the paparazzi attests, but also metaphorically. In the work of contemporary photographers like Cindy Sherman, David Wojnarowicz and Christian Boltanski, contemporary fashion photography is unbearable in the sense that it is sublime. (MIRZOEFF, Nicholas p.30)

“Orlan’s involvement with these major figures from fashion and design is entirely in keeping with the appeal she has begun to have for the style magazine that can be seen as an area ‘where the cultures of art and fashion appear to be most inextricably interfused.” (Radford, p.153). The mutual cross-fertilization of art and fashion is observable throughout the twentieth century and particularly strongly at certain moments, such as in the Surrealist movement, but as a phenomenon it has begun to gather pace in the 1980s and 1990s.

Amidst highly significant acknowledgements from art critics about art’s gradual ‘retreat’ from the values of endurance, permanence, and transcendence, and the observations by both art and fashion writers of the increasing interpenetration of their respective domains, clear differences can still be identified between art and fashion art and fashion.

Considering Orlan’s recent art practice in the light of these two enduring differences between the fields of art and fashion shows yet again how difficult it is becoming, in contemporary postmodern culture, to arrive at hard-and-fast ‘essential’ distinctions of quality between different cultural domains. Orlan is not bashful about the financial viability of her artistic projects, and a 1991 article in the French medical journal declared that money was a ‘major preoccupation’ of hers.

Chapter VIII

Final Impressions

There have, of course, always been relationships between art and fashion, as there have been between other fields in design, architecture, literature and music. Where such links have existed, it has often been in the economic interests of fashion to make them visible, and the original motives for such associations may occasionally or often have been calculated to this end. As Radford writes: ‘Certainly a cadre of designers have had their work exhibited in specific contexts that identify their products as art rather than designed commodities … recent cases of using artists for modeling or engaging them to design the fashion show may be taken as instances of an attempt to procure the potency of status by this magical association’. Despite the obvious and frequently cited arguments placing fashion in a different sphere from art on grounds of its economic motives and its persistent denial of recently past styles, there appears to be confusion in academic circles, amongst designers, and in style magazines, where art and fashion have become ‘inextricably interfused’, according to Radford.   Art or the sake of it has been argued for many decades. Since then, and following endless discussion and debate, a ‘critical’ dimension has found its way into other forms. There are many who wish to challenge this judgement.

The word “art” has many different meanings. Sometimes people tell you about their philosophy on art. They usually mean something like their deepest and most abiding description ob f beauty. This is certainly an acceptable usage of the word in ordinary language but it is a broader conception of art. Hence the art form has generally referred to a certain discipline.   This is still not yet an adequate definition of art for an obvious reason. Suppose that a painter receives an eviction notice while you are visiting his studio. He takes a can of red paint and splatters it on the wall, cursing profusely while he hurls it. He’s angry, and his anger is pretty specific— he’s defacing the wall, which is a well-chosen tactic for hurting his landlord, and the expletives he’s shouting about the landlord’s weight, sexual proclivities, ethnic background and so on are all tailored to the landlord, and not just anyone. Imagine that we are infected with the painter’s ire toward his landlord. Is this episode one of the painter’s artworks?

Over the course of this paper, An attempt was made to outline and develop a perspective on the debate in American and European philosophy and position regarding the issue of contemporary fashion photography and its relation so status in traditional art forms. In effort to demonstrate that this perspective is fundamental and insightful, the debate reveals a division between two approaches to the question of art’s definition—the functional and the procedural.

Conclusion

The functionalist believes that, necessarily, an artwork performs a function or functions (usually, that of providing a rewarding aesthetic experience) distinctive to art. By contrast, the traditional procedural types beliefs that an artwork necessarily is created in accordance with certain rules and procedures. At first sight these views appear to be complementary rather than exclusive. Where something is manufactured in response to some particular need, will it not be both (and inseparably) functional and procedural in its nature? Nevertheless, it is believed that there are circumstances under which this question is to be answered in the negative, and that the argument that the concept of art operates under just such circumstances. The relevant circumstances arise where the procedures under which a thing is created part company from the point of our having such things, from the functionality of the thing in question. I take this to be precisely the state of affairs with respect to much of the art (so-called) of the present era. When such a separation occurs, one might expect that the function, rather than the procedures designed originally to serve that function, would carry the day in determining the extension of the concept. Nevertheless, the traditional argument taken that this is by no means inevitable and that some of the accepted ideas are essentially procedural, rather than essentially functional.   The question becomes, then, whether art is to be defined functionally or procedurally. Further, what differences are revealed by a commitment to the one view rather than the other?

The fashion magazine and the fashion photograph tend to be regarded by many historians and critics of cultural production.  In short, it can be argued that photography is not necessarily for people who want to know what clothes really look like, for example the fashion buyers of large stores and their customers which supports the notion of the art form less than true to the discipline.  Rather, much photography beckons viewer into a world of fantasies by placing fashion and the body in any number of unrelated to the issue contexts. Thus it would be narrow to argue that such imagery is innocent or without deeper ideological signification. Indeed, on many occasions fashion photography has either little or nothing to do with clothing, or else clothing itself seems to become an alibi for the representation of other contemporaneous issues and ideas.  Clearly, the expression of a popular position taken such as this bears witness to support that fashion photography can both make a profound impact on the social and cultural scene, and have the potential to make a lasting rather than fleeting impression on the consciousness of any individual.

The aesthetic theme of Art and contemporary fashion photography has constructed a history of the creative genius of photographers/artisans and of a shift towards conventions of ‘naturalism’ and explicitness in technique. Decisive moments and turning points in art have been identified as successive styles reflecting new techniques. Fashion photographs have been celebrated as capturing the spirit of an era. The relationship between successive techniques of contemporary fashion photography and techniques of traditional has been integral to the ways in which the contemporary fashionable body as an art form has been shaped through the 30 years and well into the 21st century.

Reference(s)

JOBLING, Paul Fashion Spreads: Word and Image in Fashion Photography since 1980 Publisher: Berg. Place of Publication: Oxford. Publication Year: 1999. Page Number: 9.

Peter Childs, Encyclopedia of Contemporary British Culture. Mike Storry, Publisher: Routledge. Place of Publication: London. Publication Year: 1999. Page Number: 514.

McLerran, Jennifer, A Glossary of Contemporary Art Theory. Thomas Patin, Publisher: Greenwood. Place of Publication: Westport, CT. Publication Year: 1997. Page Number: 91

KASPIN, Deborah D. Images and Empires: Visuality in Colonial and Postcolonial Africa. Paul S. Landau, Publisher: University of California Press. Place of Publication: Berkeley, CA. Publication Year: 2002. Page Number: 178.

CRAIK, Jennifer, The Face of Fashion: Cultural Studies in Fashion. Publisher: Routledge. Place of Publication: New York. Publication Year: 1994. Page Number: 6.

MCROBBIE, Angela British Fashion Design: Rag Trade or Image Industry?Publisher: Routledge. Place of Publication: London. Publication Year: 1998. Page Number: 11. (6)

GROSS, Larry, On the Margins of Art Worlds. Publisher: Westview Press. Place of Publication: Boulder, CO. Publication Year: 1995. Page Number: 178. (7)

WALLIS Brian, Art after Modernism: Rethinking Representation. Publisher: Museum of Contemporary Art. Place of Publication: New York. Publication Year: 1984. Page Number: 163.

EISINGER, Joel Trace and Transformation: American Criticism of Photography in the Modernist Period. Contributors: – author. Publisher: University of New Mexico Press. Place of Publication: Albuquerque. Publication Year: 1995. Page Number: 240.

CARROLL, Noël A Philosophy of Mass Art. Publisher: Clarendon Press. Place of Publication: Oxford. Publication Year: 1998. Page Number: 208.

ENTWISTLE, Joanne Body Dressing. Elizabeth Wilson – editor. Publisher: Berg. Place of Publication: New York. Publication Year: 2001. Page Number: 183.

ADSHEAD-LANSDALE, Janet, Dance History: An Introduction. June Layson – editor. Publisher: Routledge. Place of Publication: London. Publication Year: 1994. Page Number: 113.

HORNE Peter, Outlooks: Lesbian and Gay Sexualities and Visual Cultures. Reina Lewis Publisher: Routledge. Place of Publication: New York. Publication Year: 1996. Page Number: 185.

ADAMS Sarah, The Cultured Body. Victoria Rovine – author. Journal Title: African Arts. Volume: 35. Issue: 4. Publication Year: 2002. Page Number: 1+. COPYRIGHT 2002

SOLOMON-GODEAU Abigail, Modern Style: Dressing Down, Contributors: Peter Halley – author, Magazine Title: Artforum International. Volume: 42. Issue: 9. Publication Date: May 2004. Page Number: 192+.

SCHROEDER, Jonathan E. Visual Consumption. Publisher: Routledge. Place of Publication: London. Publication Year: 2002. Page Number: 15.  (18)

BARNICOAT, John, A Concise History of Posters ( New York: Oxford University Press), on the intertwining of art history and advertising history.” Los Angeles Times, September 9, 1983, p. VI-1.)

SCHUDSON, Michael Advertising, the Uneasy Persuasion: Its Dubious Impact on American Society. Contributors: – author. Publisher: Basic Books. Place of Publication: New York. Publication Year: 1984. Page Number: 222.

SCOTT, Clive, The Spoken Image: Photography and Language, London: Reaktion, 1999, p. 156.

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GRIFFITHS, Ian The Fashion Business: Theory, Practice, Image. Contributors: – editor, Nicola White – editor. Publisher: Berg. Place of Publication: Oxford. Publication Year: 2000. Page Number: 37.

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Essay Papers

Contemporary Foreign Government

March 24, 2019

Contemporary Foreign Government

India

Since the end of the cold war, many countries have continued to align themselves with the nations they perceive as friendly.  Such regional realignment is influenced by amongst other factors; geographical factors, strategic reasons, trade needs as well as ideological reasons.  India is a former colony of Britain and is the largest democracy in the world.  Traditionally, India has been a key ally of Britain and the United States of America.  The west and especially the United States of America views India as an important partner in the war against terrorism considering the fact that, the country is strategically located in a region considered hostile to the west.

Despite the fact that India is engaged in nuclear development which is clearly against the United Nations nuclear treaty on disarmament to which it is a signatory, the country has continually enjoyed warm relations with Washington (Kesselman, Krieger, Joseph, pg. 162-189 ).  India has traditionally aligned itself with the western states and organisations such as the IMF and the World Bank than it has with the Asian economic block.  India is also a member of the common wealth countries and is actively involved in the affairs of United Nations where it participates in a number of ways such as contributing troops to peacekeeping missions undertaken by the United Nations in several troubled parts of the world such as in Liberia.

India embraces United Nations’ efforts especially through efforts geared towards achieving the United Nations’ millennium development goals.  India has one of the highest growing economies in the world supported by a vibrant youthful population.  However, a social issue such as a highly socially stratified society is a thorny issue for the government.  The country is of late engaged in several legislation amendments aimed at achieving a more equal society.  Sour relations between India and Pakistan especially the nuclear arms race are another issue which has influenced India’s contemporary policy as well as the political developments in the country.  The unfriendly relations with Pakistan imply that the country has to maintain war m relations with the west and also a denoted membership to regional subsystem such as the common wealth.

Japan

Japan’s political discourse has been largely shaped by the effects of the World War II in which it actively participated.  Before the world wars, Japan was largely a country, which enjoyed a booming trade and did not command a wide presence in world politics.  Unlike countries like Britain, Belgium and France, which had colonies, Japan enjoyed a booming economy and its interests and influences were limited.    However its growing interests in global trade occasioned by the need for a greater international influence contributed to its involvement in the World War II.  After the World War II Japan’s foreign policy largely shifted towards non-alignment although it has always shown signs of greater cooperation with the United States of America (Pyle, pg.57-89).  Therefore Japan has major trade ties with the U.S and its foreign policy is largely bent on seeking greater positive relations with the US.

 Both countries cooperate on areas such as military, technological cooperation, as well as bilateral trade ties.  Japan maintains warm relations with most of its neighbours although it occasionally differs with North Korea and China, two nations it accuses of aggression.  Japan also commands a great international presence especially through agencies such as Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).  This has seen Japan become an international development partner with many countries specifically in Africa.  Its economic models of the 1980’s were largely responsible for its economic boom and a high GDP.

Works cited page

Kesselman, Krieger, Joseph. Introduction to Comparative Politics. 3rd ed.2004 NAIROBI MUNICIPAL COUNCIL NBNHFNHH HHBHRHRG OF KHNFHGGH HNFFH RN

Pyle, K.  The making of Modern Japan.  Pittsburgh, PA:  University of Pittsburgh Press. 1993.

Essay Papers

Contemporary Heroes and Heroines

March 24, 2019

Contemporary Heroes and Heroines

The concept of heroism has, changed over the years. From being predictable – portrayed as someone who has fought and died for the achievement of common cause of his people, it has transformed into something that unpredictable – which is quite diverse. Campbell thinks that nowadays, heroes are considered to have many faces. They are no longer the typical type like what was portrayed in the past. There are many modern day heroes that dwell anywhere in our societies, in our communities, or in a national sense. Their roles are now becoming more influential in our modern world for their own heroic deeds by responding to the society’s call into an exciting world of adventure and challenges. Every hero has his own journey and that is what Campbell is trying to tell us.

The most intriguing part of the essay is the portrayal of the modern day heroes. It is what must be taught to people especially at younger ages. At my young age the only heroes I know were those who were mostly presented in many mythology and historical books as. In many books they are subjects of many stories of effective leadership, courage, bravery, and sacrifices characterized as brave, wise, strong and always ready to fight for their cause. In stories where the hero’s perception depended on my own imagination, I used to visualize them as someone who stood tall, with bulky muscles holding a sword, a rifle, or a flag that signified their cause. Let us not include mythological figure as they are unreal and most of their super strength characteristics doesn’t even exist. I often end up thinking that most of them look very frightening and very strict. When you read through their biographies and writings portraying their heroic deeds you can find the real essence of their heroism. Most definitions of a heroic figure boil down to this one – “Anybody admired for his achievements and desirable qualities”.

From the definition written above, anybody can be a hero. There is however, a distinctive feature of how we recognize heroes. There are modern day heroes that we easily bypass and fail to recognize. Anybody in the community that is showing desirable qualities is a hero. A friend, our family, a community leader, law enforcers, teachers, preachers, and anybody who has consistently showed remarkable effort towards the welfare of his fellow people, they are all heroes. Our level of recognizing a hero has been blinded by the characteristics that we have seen from heroes in the past. They are very different compared to us today. Heroes in the past were talk of the town for their successful conquers against foreign people, for their successful crusade against those who took away their rights. But none of us have seen the negative effects of their deeds. Many lives were lost and blood was shed before they were able to achieve what they wanted. We seldom see that type of heroism these days. We no longer need to fight and kill because we are now protected with systems of laws that are already established and accepted. And imposing these laws is always based on other laws that protect the rights of any individual in the community.

We just have to change our perspective about heroism for us to be able to consider anybody around us a hero. For example, I consider my family as my heroes. I have been through difficult situations and they have never parted from me. My parents showed so much care since the first day I was born. On my first day to school they went inside the classroom with me to make me feel safe. They have provided me with everything and more than I ever wanted. Outside my family I also consider bus drivers, pilots, and other transportation vehicle operators as my heroes. They drive me safely back and forth to our home. Law enforcers are also my heroes as they risk their lives for the sake of keeping me and many like me safe from bad elements in the society at all times. All my teachers and professors at school are also my heroes as they taught me basic, specialized, and advance knowledge that I use to tackle day to day challenges and plan for a stable life in the future. Preachers at church constantly develop my faith through their teachings and encouragements so that I’m spiritually safe as well thus I consider them my heroes too. My friends and colleges have always been there for me in the most torrid times and in the most fun times thus I regard them as my heroes too. My pet dog, Leo, is my hero too. He has loyally served me till now, wakes me in the morning, fetches my shoes, walks me to the bus stop and listens to all my fuss whenever I feel low. This list continues on and on since there are so many people what we interact with or are indirectly related too because they touch our lives without us getting to know; thus I consider all of these people as my heroes as they have made my live easier, more entertaining, safe and fulfilling due to their sincere efforts to help anybody around them. May god bless my heroes!

Essay Papers

Contemporary HR Issues: Absenteeism

March 24, 2019

Contemporary HR Issues: Absenteeism

            Throughout World War II (1941-1945), psychology have been applied to address to different industrial concerns at that time. The applications include the use of employement tests, techniques on selection, training and design. One of the evident issues of that time was absenteeism. Absenteeism became one of the major problems in the workforce and psychologists were asked to help lessen this case (Muchinsky, 2006).

            As Muchinsky continues, absenteeism causes decreased efficiency equivalent to companies’ increased payroll costs and benefit payments (2006, p.19). As a bigger effect, employers lose billions of dollars which could have been used for larger investments and improvements. The causes of absenteeism have been found to have social, organizational and personal sources and affects industries, organizations and labour force.

            Organizations have specific allotted time for an employee’s absence from work. However, excessive absenteeism, may it be personal problems, family issue or health related, is always perceived as negative. Although excused absence is allowed, employees often conceal and deviate from the original reason for their absence and tend to give more socially acceptable explanations (Muchinsky, 2006 p. 128). Consequently, self-reports on being absent can be highly inaccurate. During these situations deceptions and lies are used (e.g. making up stories to uplift self-image during interviews) as excuses for absenteeism and to avoid any possible punishments (Hart, et. al., 2006).

            Absenteeism is one of the most commonly used indices to gather information for accomplishing performance appraisals (Muchinsky, 2006). It is also considered the most sensitive measure of performance. An employee can be judged with poor performance because of excessive  number of unexcused absences. However, the measurement and interpretation of absenteeism tend to be vague. In some cases, a person with many unexcused absences would be rated higher in performance appraisal than a person with fewer absences. This may be affected by factors such as seniority and job level (Muchinsky, 2006).

            Muchinsky also considered absenteeism as a temporary withdrawal behaviour (2006, pp. 222). This reflects the employee’s avoidance or temporary abandonment of his current employment condition. Research shows that people who don’t have high preference for their jobs are more likely to have unexcused absences. However, this reason shares the list with other unavoidable situations which can come across the employee at any random time (e.g. family and road emergencies). Pelted ; Xin (1999) have found mood can affect withdrawal behaviour and that positive affect can reduce absenteeism.

            In relation to occupational health, flexible working hours has also been found to reduce absenteeism (Muchinsky 2006, pp. 368). Flexible working, or famously called flextime, creates an alternative to employees’ fixed working schedule by giving them freedom to choose the time of their  arrival at work. It has also been found that flextime reduces rates of tardiness in employees.

            Aside from flextime, compressed workweek has been shown to have positive results in reducing rates of absenteeism (Muchinsky 2006, pp. 369). Compressed workweek involves increased work hours per day and fewer days per week (e.g. ten hours per week instead of eight and five days of work instead of six).

            Experts have attributed 50% of employee absenteeism on drug and alcohol abuse (Muchinsky, pp. 319). This cause of lower job performance is also the leading cause of accidents, theft and skill decay in the workplace. Hollinger (1988) concluded that job dissatisfaction causes individuals (specifically men under 30 years old) to resort to alcohol and drug use during the time of employment. To resolve this, another research by Wrich (1988) discusses how Drug Testing Initiatives (DUI) can help drug users be productive in their jobs and further reduce absenteeism in the workplace.

            Different scenarios in the place of work like accidents and harassments are usually very traumatic in the case of the employee involved. These negative experiences can lead to the absence of an employee to evade disturbing flashbacks and possible unhelpful outcomes. According to a 2007 issue of Occupational Health, institutions offering post trauma management have been found to decrease absences from employees who have experienced trauma.

            However, as much as organizations make an effort in trying to minimize absenteeism, most companies have been found lacking measures for the reduction of absenteeism. One article from Occupational Health (2007) states that bosses of the said organizations, who spoke in defense, believe that employees themselves don’t put much significance on their wellbeing and cared more on other benefits.

            The Equity Theory of Motivation describes that when an employee experiences underpayment inequity or a feeling of being unfairly paid, this can eventually lead to job discontent. Increased job dissatisfaction as a result of underpayment inequity would also increase absenteeism (Muchinsky, 2006). This is explained by the mentality that it is better to be absent than do one’s job and get less of what one deserves to get.

            These information on the major causes of absenteeism in organizations would provide bases for managers in devising measures to reduce the increasing rates of non-attendance by employees. It is important to know how other organizations have successfully dealt with this issue and how others lack preventive measures and resolution techniques towards absenteeism. It should also be noted that welfare of employees should be a priority because they are the frontliners of the organization.

            Managers should be aware that absenteeism is a sign that something is wrong (Bluedorn, 1982), whether it be on the individual’s part or the organization itself. For this reason, solutions should be formulated in order to get to the bottom of the problem, keep a healthier work environment for the employees and get the industry going.

Bibliography

Bluedorn, A. 1982. ‘Managing Turnovers Strategically’, Business Horizons, vol. , no., pp., viewed 25 May 2007, Business Source Premier, EBSCOhost.

Hart, C., Hudson, L., Fillmore, D., and Griffith, J. 2006. ‘Managerial Beliefs about the Behavioral Cues of Deception’, Individual Differences Research, vol. 4, no. 3, pp. 176-184, viewed 25 May 2007,Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost.

Hollinger, R.1988. ‘Working Under the Influence (WUI): Correlates of Employees’ Use of Alcohol and Other Drugs’, Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, vol. 24, no. 4, pp. 439-454.

Muchinsky, P. 2006 Psychology Applied to Work: An Introduction to Industrial and Organizational Psychology. Wadsworth: North Carolina.

‘Organizations lack policies to cut absence’, 2007, Occupational Health, vol. 59, no. 1, pp. 4-4, viewed 25 May 2007, Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost.

Pelted, L. & Xin, K. 1999. Down and Out: An Investigation of the Relationship between Mood and Employee Withdrawal Behavior, Journal of Management, vol. 25, no. 6.

‘Prompt trauma management can reduce employee absence’, 2007,Occupational Health, vol. 59, no. 2, pp. 5-5, viewed 25 May 2007, Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost.

Wrich, J. 1988. ‘Beyond Testing: Coping With Drugs at Work’, EAP Digest, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 55-63.

 

Essay Papers

Is China now an enemy of the United States? A Trading partner?

March 24, 2019

1. Is China now an enemy of the United States? A Trading partner? Or both? How can you tell?

The normal China and United States relationship shows that they are neither enemies nor allies. In the near future, China could be an enemy of United States, as China can pose a threat to United States’ ‘power’ over other countries; thus, China being an equal competitor in many aspects similar to political influence, military power or security, and economic status. But instead of raging war against China, United States casts friendly approach towards China; moreover, making a cooperative atmosphere over China thinking of making connections with China as a very important strategic plan. As of now, China can be a possible partner of United States, with China showing good economic status, making China the best target.

What pushes the relationship of the two countries forward is the increased economic and trade relations between them. With this increased bilateral trading relationship, which could further develop, will eventually benefit both sides. But on the other hand, if both sides fail to stabilize their relationship, it is possible that the China-United States relationship will go down the drain; furthermore, if predicted correctly, a war could emerged between the powerful countries.

2. Who are the four Tigers of Asia?

            The Four Tigers of Asia/ Four Asian Tigers are also known for its other names like East Asian Tigers or Asia’s Four Little Dragons. These terms indicates the economic status of Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan. The four countries have territories that are noted to have considering their high growth rates and their fast industrialization between the early years of 1960s to 1990s. On the early stage of the 21st century, the four tigers are found to be near their fully developed stage and the attention was then shifted, preferably to other Asian economies that are now experiencing increased economic transformation.

3. Could war between the United States and Japan been avoided? Could it happen again? Why? Could the economic success of the East Asia be copied elsewhere?

            The question ‘could the war between the United States and Japan been avoided?’ have answers with different interpretation. Different historians have tried to answer this question in different ways with their different point of views.

            According to George Morgenstern, a historian, there existed two parties in Japan, the peace and war party against China. Before the war, instead of United States aiding the peace group in Japan, United States ignored the fact that the peace group exists and operates; moreover, United States eventually imposed the sanctions against Japan. If the United States had chosen to support the peace group in Japan, there could have been a possibility that instead of creating Japan as an enemy, Japan could have been their powerful ally instead; thus, preventing the war between United States and Japan and preventing damages the war have caused.

            This war could happen again if China, as a possible big competitor of United States, could acquire advanced technologies and firearms like nuclear missiles, and flaunts its powers to their neighboring Asian countries. Instead of China conquering other countries, they will use their power to intimidate, coerce or deny accessibility to obtain specific goals. With this kind of power China can encompass, the other neighboring countries would seek its power than of that United States, including Japan. Because China would then be more powerful than United States, and in turn, United States would loose its Asian allies. With this possible twist of events, there could probably war among worlds.

The first economic system that is put together in the former Soviet Union which is anti-market, state-commanded economies was copied around the world; thus countries like Cuba, Albania, Tanzania, India and China applied this kind of economic system which latter have negative outcome. On the other side, the economies in East Asia like Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and other countries have positive outcomes. Other countries can copy the success of the East Asian countries by applying East Asia’s economic system. The countries that would copy this kind of economic system, like countries in the Middle East (for example, the Arabs), the countries found in the West and the Third World countries, should first have an economic reform; thus opening their country to the world, having information accessibility and modernization and development of business class. The implementation of new economic system should be intellectually thought of thoroughly, with considerations of all aspects like how to implement, the people involving the implementation and dealing with the responses of people. There are also things to be considered like cultures and societies, because different kinds of societies need different kinds of economic system framework that would be suitable to them. Even if the implemented economic framework is considered good but the framework is not fully understood, wrongly implemented, or not developed fully, then all of the efforts will be gone to waste. Lastly, cooperation and acceptance from the people as a whole and killing (if not, lessen) corruption will also help the chosen economic framework to work and be a success.

References:

Parpart, U. (n.d.). Bush’s lone military superpower vision Part 2: The enemy is China Asia Times Online. August 21, 2007 from http://www.atimes.com/editor/CB17Ba01.html

Morgenstern, G. (1947) Pearl Harbor the Story of the Secret. New York: The Devin-Adair Company.

 Sarel, M. (1996). What we can and what we cannot infer. Growth in East Asia. (n.p.). August 21, 2007 from http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/issues1/index.htm

Zakaria, F. (2003). Illiberal democracy at home and abroad. The Future of Freedom. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, Inc.

Essay Papers

Contemporary International Problems

March 24, 2019

Contemporary International Problems

            National Security is the need of the country or the nation to maintain a peaceful, sovereign state for the sake of the people. This is through the use of various powers of the nation which includes economics, the military, and politics and to be able to exercise diplomacy in all its undertakings. In indoor to maintain national security, there are several measures being made. This includes using diplomacy to help allies and do away with possible threats to the nation’s security. Another is maintaining effective armed forces and being able to implement civil defense and emergency preparedness measures, especially when the need arises.

            Détente is a French term which means to ease or to relax, and was used on previous international politics, wherein it refers to the instance wherein there was a relaxation in international affairs (Trueman, 2000). This is different from Entente, since entente means a diplomatic understanding between nations, or putting it in a different context, means the existence of an international affairs agreement.

            Détente has been agreed by both superpowers at that time because they are both having economic problems, and they sought to expand the government welfare state. They are also worried with what they can do to each other, because they have stockpiles of nuclear weapons that could bring destruction to both nations. Successful Détente cases were with the USSR and with China. USA realized that there are other means to contain communism that be fighting and preparing, like what the country did years ago. Détente’s negative or unsuccessful moments where when the two superpowers, USA and the USSR backed up wars in the Third World. South Asia and the Middle East saw great hostilities when the superpowers backed them up, funding their war through material, financial and diplomatic help and guidance.

Reference:

Trueman, C. (2000). Detente.   Retrieved July 14, 2007, from http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/detente.htm

 

Essay Papers

Contemporary international problems

March 24, 2019

Could the white regime of old South Africa, by offering major reform earlier, have set up a prosperous democracy?

It is possible that had major reforms been offered earlier, a prosperous democracy would have been set up in South Africa. The apartheid regime only served to make the black community more antagonistic as the whites grew more dependant on them for the growth of the economy.
How did U.S. leadership influence the Mideast peace process?

The US leadership has consistently sided with Israel even as they seek peace in the Middle East. However, the US president Obama has tried to alter this perception by showing both sides that he is offering a peace deal from which both sides will benefit.

.3. Have Afghanistan and Iraq achieved stable democracy? No.

Why not?

 Iraq and Afghanistan are basically Muslim countries with different perception of governance from the West. Governance is equated to political legitimacy which must go hand in hand with religion, local politics and nationalism. This is in contrast with the West definition of democracy.

Is democracy feasible in such countries?

Although it will take time to gain ground, democracy in such countries is feasible. The people at the grassroots level should be empowered through civic education and the civil society be strengthened.

Are there grounds for hope for Latin America? Can you point to progress so far?
Latin America has had relative success in the process of election since 2005. However, the state of democracy is still not assured because of various factors such as, rampant violence and corruptions.
All is not lost though, since there is political pluralism, relative press freedom and most importantly, the military   control has been considerably reduced.

If nuclear deterrence worked during the Cold War, should it not become a policy for many nations in the post-Cold War era?
Iraq is just one of the nations that have shown interest in accumulating nuclear weapons. In view of political instabilities worldwide, nuclear deterrence might seem like a good idea but the potential for misuse by terrorists is too real to ignore.

How can leaning too hard on a Muslim government harm our struggle with terrorism?
6. When leaning too hard on a Muslim government, the Muslims view this as an attack against their religion. This creates an opportunity for terrorists to whip up support and carry out terrorist attacks in the name of Islam.

 7. How have American images of Asia changed over the decades?

America’s view of Asia has changed over the decades. For a long time Asia has been viewed a communist stronghold where individual’s right to own property is denied. However, the last three decades has seen a reversal of this view as Asian countries especially China, Japan and Korea have experienced immense economic and technological growth.

Have we ever had a clear picture of Asia?

 Due to cultural and ideological differences, America has long viewed Asia as having oppressive government but the recent turn around in fortunes might be a vindication for Asia.

Essay Papers

Death Penalty

March 24, 2019

The death penalty has been a punishment under the criminal justice system for capital offences. However, several human rights bodies argue that it infringes on the rights of human beings and are of the opinion that this penalty should be abolished. In the light of this, this essay will focus on the issue of death penalty through history, the present and future implications as relates to the criminal justice system.

Death penalty dates back to 1800 B.C when King Hammurabi of Babylon codified the death penalty for 25 different crimes. Death sentences were done by such means as crucifixion, impalement, drowning, burning alive, and beating to death. Hanging was the usual mode of carrying death penalties in Britain in 10 A.D. William the Conqueror, later abolished execution of people except during wars in 11 A.D.  In the sixteenth century however, around 17 000 people were reported to have been executed. The reasons for the executions were mainly as a result of treason, inability to confess a crime and intermarriage with Jews.  By 1700, around 222 crimes were punishable by death in Britain.  Later, reforms in Britain led to abolishment of death penalties for more than 100 crimes (Randa, 1997).

The use of death penalty in America was mainly influenced by Britain. Captain George Kendall was the first person in history to be executed in America. Daniel Frank was the next known person to be executed. He was killed in 1622 for stealing Laws on death penalties differed between colonies. The Massachusetts Bay Colony held its first execution in 1630. The New York Colony instituted the Duke’s Laws of 1665. These laws punished those guilty of beating one’s either parent, or denying the “true God,” (Randa, 1997).

A first attempt of reforms on death penalty in the United States was when a bill by Thomas Jefferson was introduced to revise the death penalty laws in Virginia. The bill sought to limit capital punishment to treason and murder charges only. Pennsylvania repealed capital punishment for all offences except first degree murder in 1794 (Randa, 1997). The movement that championed for the abolishment of death penalty gained momentum in the nineteenth century. During this period, many states reduced the number of crimes punishable by death and also built state penitentiaries. Pennsylvania started carrying their executions in correctional facilities away from open places accessible by the public.  Later in 1846, Michigan reduced crimes punishable by death to include only treason. Later, Wisconsin and Rhode Island abolished death penalty for all crimes.

Though many countries like Venezuela, Costa Rica, Portugal and Netherlands, Ecuador and Brazil abolished death penalties in the nineteenth century, most states in the US have however retained capital punishment laws. Laws against mandatory death penalty were passed. These laws provided for guided discretion to impose death penalty. This was seen by the abolitionist movement as a very great milestone towards the end of the death penalty. Opposition towards the death penalty however reduced during the civil war as much of the attention was shifted to the movement against slavery. After the civil war, the execution method was modified to an electric chair. Between 1907 and 1917, six states had outlawed the death penalty. Some of the states however reinstated the penalty in 1920.

In 1924, the cyanide gas was the desired method of executing inmates considered as humane by Nevada. The death penalty later resurged in the 1940s when criminologists were of the opinion that death penalty was a rightful social measure. The public began to shun capital punishment in the 1950s which led to a dramatic drop in executions from 1289 in the 1940s to 715. A poll conducted by Gallop suggested that only 42% of the entire US population supported the death penalty.

The legality of the death penalty was challenged in the 1960s. The Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty constituted a “cruel and an unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the due process guarantees of the Fourteenth Amendment”.  Later, states enacted legislations in accordance to the Supreme Court’s objections. These developments led to a rise in a number of executions. The laws providing for mandatory death penalty were declared unconstitutional in 1976 after which the death penalty was struck off in 21 states. Those who were sentenced under the mandatory death penalty saw their charges changed to life imprisonment.

New laws on death penalty took place in 1977. This was when Gary Gilmore was killed by a firing squad. Some other executions were reported in 1981, 1982 and 1983. As from 1984, the executions increased dramatically. 1984 alone had 24 executions. Thereafter, averages of 10 were reported each year. A new federal death penalty law was enacted in 1988 for murder in the course of a conspiracy of a drug-kingpin. Six people have since been sentenced against this law. None has however been executed. President Clinton signed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act in 1994. Responding to the Oklahoma City bombing 2 years later, he signed Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (Bohm, 1999). This Act restricts the review of the federal courts.

The United Nations Human Rights Commission passed a resolution that supported worldwide moratorium on executions in 1999, a move that was opposed by 10 countries including the United States, China, Rwanda and Sudan. This resolution requested countries which had not abolished the death penalty to restrict the use of the penalty. The Illinois Governor also declared a moratorium on executions in January 2000. The resolution was later supported by 76 UN states in April 2004 (Amnesty International, 2004).

Several recent developments on death penalty world over have taken place.  In June 2004, the New York’s death penalty was declared unconstitutional by the high court. In March 2005, the US Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty to minors was a “cruel and unusual punishment”. In December 2007, the New Jersey General Assembly abolished capital punishment. The Nebraska Supreme Court ruled electrocution, the sole method used for execution as “cruel and unusual punishment” thereby freezing all executions in the state. In Kennedy v. Louisiana (2008), the US Supreme court held that “capital punishment can not apply to those convicted of the rape of a child where no death occurs”.

The recent development on capital punishment puts doubt to the future of death penalty. The Supreme Court recognizes that someone who proves innocence will not be executed. Similarly, the stances held by religious movements mostly are of the opinion that death penalty should be abolished. Public support has also diminished dramatically from as high as 61% in 1936 to 46% (Gallup Poll News Service, 2004). These in addition to the global human rights groups which are opposing the death penalty seem to put more doubt to its existence in future. According to the research done, it is evident that those facing death penalties should have their sentences converted to life sentences since it is a “cruel and an unusual punishment”.

References:

Amnesty International. (2004). List of Abolitionist and Retentionist Countries. New York: Amnesty Interanational.

Bohm, R. (1999). Deathquest: An Introduction to the Theory and Practice of Capital Punishment in the United States. New Jersey: Anderson Publishing.

Randa, L. (1997). Society’s Final Solution: A History and Discussion of the Death Penalty. New Jersey: University Press of America.

 

Essay Papers

Contemporary issues in aviation security

March 24, 2019

Contemporary issues in aviation security

Profiling

Introduction

Profiling is a selective risk investigation of a person which is carried out by trained personnel to air passengers before they are allowed to board on their flights in aviation industry. Just like the stop and frisk rule which is applied in the streets, when conducting a profiling operation, passengers are analysed according to their behaviour and appearance alongside their travel documents and come up at a decision if these people meets the expectations of international travel requirements. If proven otherwise, the selected passengers are put through a thorough security check. The aim of this exercise is to reduce the risk involved due to the recent upsurge in terrorism activities involving people who pose themselves as passengers. It is a preventive as well as a precautionary measure which has had a lot of success and some drawbacks due to criticism from individuals and various civil rights groups. Behavioural profiling aims at separating the passengers with potential to cause harm from those who are not. Profiling aims at separating the passengers who have the potential to pose threat from others who have no potential to cause danger to other travellers.

Background information

The initial profiling of passengers in aviation industry was carried out in 1994 when the Computer –Assisted Passenger Pre-Screening System (CAPPS I) was still on the development stage. The routine profiling got as recommendation after the crashing of

TWA flight in 1996 was suspected to have been as a result of bombing activity (Karber, 2002). The use of profiling in Airports has been motivated by the increase in terrorism threats especially after the 9/11 attacks where hijacked airplanes were used to execute terrorism activities. Profiling of passengers was initiated as an additional measure to screening that is normally carried out on the baggage of every passenger. This was necessitated by the concern of the security experts who argued that there is need to scrutinise passengers more than their baggage. However, this has made the air travel become more and more unattractive to most of customers who feel that their privacy is not being respected. The Computer-assisted Passenger Profiling System (CAPPS) was developed to counter the effects of criticism due to profiling of people on the basis of their origin, race or even colour (Young, Hicks, 2002). According to most of security personnel, the most significant indicator that can be used to identify a terrorist includes characteristics such as nationality, religion, ethnicity, language and sex of the passengers

Profiling process

Any person identified by the SAPPS is taken through an additional security check which includes the following procedures; matching of their luggage, which means that the luggage is flown only when it is evident the person who checked in with the luggage has boarded the plane. This is aimed at reducing the chances of a baggage that may contain explosives which might be harmful to other passengers when he himself remains safe by boarding another plane. Inspection of the contents on the baggage is carried out using a certified system for detecting explosives or sometimes simple check using other sophisticated technologies among them the trace detectors or devices that are capable of detecting explosives. CAPPS bases its selection on a number of data which constitute the pre-boarding information randomly and specific basis (Johnson, 1994). This information is used to select passengers who should be subjected to increased security check ups. The basis of this information is maintained at a confidential level.

In addition to the details that are applied by CAPPS I, the CAPPS II requires for the validation of the identity of passengers using commercial airlines. This includes the counterchecking of the full name of the passenger, residential address telephone numbers and even the dates of birth against those contained at the database of the government for any necessary security assessment. After completion of this clarification, the CAPPS II system carries out a review of the passenger’s identity against those of the intelligence and law enforcement agencies databases.

For those passengers whose identity passes without any matches with the one contained in the law enforcement and intelligence database, they are allowed to proceed boarding the flight. However, for the passengers with more identifiable profiles have to be subjected to an increased search or even lawful action. CAPPS II aims to act as a bridge between the profiling systems applied by the airline and the intelligent and law enforcement database (Tsang, Vidulich, 2003). The CAPPS I was faulted for the 9/11 attack as it did not help to prevent the attack even though it had positively selected six of the suspects for further screening. If CAPPS II was in application by then, it would have notified concerned authorities when these passengers were selected for screening.

Success of profiling exercises

            Profiling of passengers using their certain characteristics such as behaviour pattern has a greater potential of preventing terrorism related activities in the airline industry. This is similar technique that has been used with great success to identify travellers using fake identity documents to carry out drug trafficking and escape from other crimes in airports. The inclusion of this technique to the current screening done on luggage will ultimately increase the success of preventing such crimes.

            The greatest advantage of the profiling passengers according to their behaviour pattern is that, it has the capacity to decrease the notion of profiling done on passengers as being subjective or racial based (Sarsfield, et al, 2000). The best way to protect acts of terrorism is to identify them before they carry out their plan and profiling provides the best way to carry out protective measures.

Profiling has had a lot of success in country like Israel which has been a target of many terrorism attacks. After the hijacking of an Israel based flight from Rome in 1968, Israel instituted strict profiling measures and traffic security measures which have prevented any other successful trafficking of Israel planes. Any passenger boarding an Israel flight is thoroughly screened before boarding the flight. Even though the measures have been perceived as discriminatory, their success is averting any possible flight based terrorist activity has been evident.

            Many advocates of constitutional order argue that, there is need for this information to be made public so as to remain legal. However, such approach would negate the usefulness of the process. The criteria used to select passengers for further screening involves but not limited to the aspects of the process by which the purchase of the ticket was made. Most of terrorists are known to prefer purchasing their tickets on cash basis. This reduces the chances of them revealing their personal information which can be used to track their movements. The timing of the purchase of the ticket is also applied to identify a passenger to be subjected to increased screening (Ruwantissa, 2002). This is based on the aspect of whether the ticket was purchased just be fore departure or it was an advance purchase.

The identity of travellers also plays a significant role in selection of passenger under SAPPS. This includes the details of the person the passenger is travelling with. Other details include the activity which the traveller has identified as the purpose of his travel and the means of transport to be used after reaching his destination. Other details about the flight schedule such as the origin of the flight and the destination. Specific travel arrangements and the final destination of the passenger are also given important consideration if they differ from those of the flight (Batteau, 2001). The travel pans of the passenger includes whether the passenger intends to make round trip depending on the purpose of his trip. The success of the 9/11 terrorists laid on the fact that though the CAPPS selected some of them for profiling but their personal information was not counterchecked with any existing data about existing terrorist records.

Case against profiling

From a critical perspective, the profiling of passengers using a computer based profiling system goes against the basic principles of personal privacy. The current CAPPS II intends to use the information collected for the purpose of admission into a flight for other purposes of checking the recorded criminal behaviour of a person. The use of such information without the consent of the person it relates to is one of the contraventions of his rights to privacy. When a passenger gives their private information to a flight or even gets enrolled into a certain flight is because he wants to fly with because he wants to fly with the greatest freedom possible (Tsang, Vidilich, 2003). The increase in freedom to a passenger widens their security in a flight than when they are subjected to rigorous security check up system. There is one very important aspect of protection of personalised information that is being breached by the exposure of such information for other uses.

Even though many tend to come to a consensus that behaviour based profiling will have capacity to counter terrorism, these efforts might end up not achieving their target. This is because, terrorists are in most cases trained for a long time and might also be trained on how to control their behaviour and go pass the screen without being detected. Since there is no existing profile on the behaviour of terrorists, it surpasses logic on how this profiling can work without a preconceived notion about a given individual.

            There is also a very high possibility that the intended profiling has the capacity to form an extension of ethnic, religious and racial witch-hunt which might jeopardise the integrity of the aviation industry. In a similar scenario, the application of human profiling by British authorities was met with criticism from Muslim community who saw it as a single stereotyped form of profiling which was targeted at a single religion (Johnson, 1994). The intention of the US authorities to institute similar profiling mechanisms might end up damaging the already shaky relationship that exists between this administration and Islamic community.

In Israel, the Supreme Court ruled the profiling measures applied by the Israel aviation industry as discriminatory against Israel Arabs. This was after a legal suit was filed by the Association of Civil Rights in Israel against the airport security procedures due to their discriminative nature. In the new technology, the application of advanced technologies in profiling of passengers in the basis of their personal information is seen as a greater form of violation of privacy. The greatest of it all being the use of this commercial based personal information for law-enforcement purposes.

            The concerns relating to racial profiling of passengers in the airports was raised by delegates from 154 countries who met in 2002 and showed their commitments towards ending any discriminatory profiling. They committed themselves towards implementing their security measures in an objective manner without any discrimination on the grounds of race, nationality or gender. However, things tend to have moved in the other direction than what they promised (Ruwantissa, 2002). Even though someone might not end up being regarded as a terrorist, the actual profiling and being subjected to countless screens due to suspicion causes great psychological damage and trauma to a person.

Current trends

Criticism of CAPPS II has led to major amendments being carried out on its use in profiling and as a post data. There has been agreement on the need to get rid of any data stored by the transport associations after a limited time once the passenger has reached his or her destination. There have also been some mechanisms put in place for passengers to appeal against increased secondary level screening which could have been carried on them for security reasons. This intends to create a balance of fairness where one may be exempted for such higher level security checks during his or her travel. Measures have also been put in place limiting the use of personal information collected from commercial airlines to compile a security profile of a person (Tsang, Vidulich, 2003). The transport system has also managed to restrict the use of personalised information collected only for reasons of confirming the identity of a person. Those requiring such information such as the commercial flight attendants would only get it in order to carry out an evaluation of whether the person who is travelling is actually the one who was presented during the flight reservation.

The secure flight strategy is a measure to address concerns raised from the CAPSS II profiling system. As a part of continuous security efforts, the systems will pass the responsibility of passenger screening from the hands of the commercial airlines to the government. This will help a lot in a preventing the airlines accessing information contained in government databases. By use of the present profiling systems, the airline attendants have the access to the lists of the people who are in the government terrorist watch lists (Sarsfield, et al, 2000).  Even though this  methods of profiling is seen as a one sided which presents the government with one single duty, the problem lies in the capacity of the government security agents becoming more invasive in using this system.

Conversely, even though profiling of passengers in search of terrorists with the  highest degree of certainty might be next to impossible thing, there is need to rely on the information that can help us identify if such person has in the past been identified as a  terrorist or not.

Recommendations

Regardless of much resistance that has faced it from civil rights activists, there is a great need to continue carrying out profiling of passengers. It is the only way that can help in reducing the size of the sample being analysed on the basis of facts. Profiling is the only way that can help the aviation industry players to be sure of the safety of the passengers travelling on their airlines rather than be sorry after a terrible terrorism incident has happened. If the computer bases profiling system is being accused of being susceptible to erroneous judgement, passengers should then contend with the human based profiling which will be carried out by trained personnel (Karber, 2002). Such personnel should be in a position to identify the unconventional behaviour in passengers without raising the eyebrows of race, religious or ethnic discrimination. If it has become evident that the largest proportion of passengers who behave in disorderly manner ends up extending their behaviour in flight with ill motives, then there is need to isolate them out before they can cause disaster to others. This system should enhance collection of broad based information by the airline for other reasons in addition to passenger records which will make profiling exercises more open and efficient.

Conclusion

            One of most unfortunate fact about the issue of aviation security lies in the notion that has been levelled against profiling of passengers. The measures being employed to make the airways safe for travel by preventing present day and future terrorist activities has ended up creating a civil objection on top of making air travel more expensive for passengers. It is however a common agreement that, the only best form of selection that can work well in identifying and deterring terrorism activities in the aviation industry is the profiling of passengers. This is especially so now that terrorism activities have increased in frequency and intensity.

Reference

Batteau, A. (2001). The Anthropology of Aviation and Flight Safety. Human Organization, Vol.60, pp.70-80

Johnson, D. (1994). Just in Case: A Passenger’s Guide to Airplane Safety and Survival. London: Plenum Press

Karber, P. (2002). Re-constructing Global Aviation in Era of the Civil Aircraft as a Weapon of Destruction. Harvard Journal of Law ; Public Policy, Vol.25, pp.1-12

Ruwantissa, A. (2002). The Role of Civil Aviation in Securing Peace. International Journal on World Peace, Vol.19, pp.56-67

Sarsfield, L. et al, (2000). Safety in the Skies: Personnel and Parties in the NTSB Aviation Accident Investigations: Master Volume. New York: Rand

Tsang, P. ; Vidulich, M. (2003). Principles and Practice of Aviation Psychology. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates

Young, K. ; Hicks, L. (2002). The Far-Anchor Effect: Errors in the Perception of Motion and Implications for Aviation Safety. Human Factors, Vol.44, pp.90-105

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Essay Papers

Contemporary Issues in the Education System

March 24, 2019

Contemporary Issues in the Education System

The education system has undergone much progress in the past decade from the aspect of breadth and liberty of topics being made available to students, the facilities provided for the faculty and student body, and even in the role that it plays in the environment, politics, and society in general. It may be said that the education system in various parts of the world  has undergone a revolution. However, it cannot yet be said that it has perfected its craft for the education system still faces various issues at the present and it would need the cooperation of the society, its faculty and student body, as well as the education board of each country for it to overcome the many challenges that it faces. This paper shall illustrate the contemporary issues of the education system during these times.

In 2005, Preston discussed in his work the contemporary issues in education. One of the issues that he highlighted is that the education system itself has no single sense of direction. This applies to several aspects, one of which may be the field in which universities aim to specialize in. With the aim of catering to a larger part of the student market and widening its influence and further establishing its stature in the community, universities tend to be a jack of all trades but master of none in terms of the discipline that it wants to specialize in. Because of this, the resources with which it provides facilities and benefits for its student body have become so stretched and spread so thinly that more may have been accomodated in terms of headcount but the benefit and gains of each one turns out to be so minimal and insignificant. This may specifically refer to the types of research technology it employs in its laboratory classes, the infrastructures that it builds for classes and conventions, or the scholarship it provides for individuals who have high potentials but lack in financial resources. If each university could find in themselves the determination to stick to one forte, whether the sciences, business, law, arts, or another discipline, this renewed focus on which field to allocate their resources to would allow them to maximize the contributions to the facilities, infrastructures, as well as to the financial assistance provided for individuals with high potentials in their field of specialization.

Preston (2005) even mentions in its book the concern of academic authorities over the growing trend of schools being “bazaar universities” because they have been so fractured and fragmented that any organizing principle necessary for their united operations is lost. It must be understood that there is a great concern over the fragmented status of the universities because this predicament brings forth other problems for the education system as a whole. In fact, research shows other related problems in the system, such as “neglect of undergraduate teaching by research universities in favor of inconsequential research… garbled education purposes, trivialized scholarships, improper accounting techniques, falsification of experimental results…” (Preston, 2005). Such concerns about the manner by which universities conduct their operations, manage their resources, and implement their objectives have attracted critics to point a finger at schools for being self-indulgent and self-serving.

The concern over the contemporary issues that the education system faces is not limited to the quality of education that it provides for the student or their ability to make their alumni attractive in the job market. The concern over contemporary issues involving the current education systems is just a part of the bigger picture where society expects universities to be able to produce generations of youth that are well rounded on global issues and capable of doing their part to improve their respective communities. This, however, would not be possible if universities continue to be self-serving and oblivious to their role as formators in society. In a way, the universities themselves are expected to be role models for their student bodies as well as to open doors for such a revolution in education’s role in the global community.

REFERENCES

Bantock, G. (1981). The Parochialism of the Present: Contemporary Issues In Education. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd.

Ehrenberg, R. (1994). Choices and Consequences: Contemporary Policy Issues In Education. New York: Cornell University Press.

Preston, D. (2005). Contemporary Issues In Education. New York: Rodopi

 

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