Literary Analysis: The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman Essay

Since its publication in 1892, The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, has generated a variety of interpretations. Originally viewed to be a ghost story, it has been regarded as gothic literature, science fiction, a statement on postpartum depression, having Victorian patriarchal attitudes and a journey into the depths of mental illness. More controversial, but curiously overlooked is the topic of the rest cure’ and whether Gilman’s associations are fact or fiction. Evidence supports Charlotte Gilman may have misrepresented the Weir Mitchell Rest Cure, and pokes more holes in The Yellow Wallpaper.† The story’s female character is suffering from â€Å"temporary nervous depression a slight hysterical(1) tendency,† and prescribed a rest cure. The treatment enforced absolute bed rest, forbade physical, mental or social activities and required total isolation from family and friends. Eventually the lack of stimulation and complete solitude only added to the desolation, and pushed her to the brink of insanity. The Yellow Wallpaper was based on Gilman’s personal experience with postpartum depression and treatment received by Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, pioneer of the Rest Cure. The parallels between her experiences and those of the story are noticeable, as are implications of late nineteenth-century patriarchal and medical attitudes toward women, during that time. As a fictional story, and nothing else, The Yellow Wallpaper depicts a postpartum woman driven to psychosis by an inept doctor who is also her husband. However, as a fictional autobiography, it is read as an â€Å"indictment of the nineteenth-century medical profession and its patriarchal attitudes.† After the 1973 reissue of The Yellow Wallpaper, Gilman directly criticizes Mitchell’s treatment, saying, â€Å"the real purpose of the story was to reach Dr. S Weir Mitchell, and convince him of the error of his ways.† She claimed his rest cure brought her â€Å"perilously near to losing [her] mind.† Mitchell’s â€Å"errors† by many accounts, far surpass his medical therapies alone. A tenacious male-chauvinist, by today’s standards, he was vehemently opposed to women voting, and strongly against higher education. He felt it got in the way of being good wives and mothers, saying â€Å"there had better be none of it.† Women’s â€Å"finest nobleness† according to Mitchell, was â€Å"to be homeful for others.†

Acetate department Essay

1) What were the objectives of the production reorganization at Acetate? The main objective of the production reorganization at Acetate Department was to improve production capacity, to increase productivity. 2) Why do you think the objectives of the reorganization were not realized, even though no employees lost their jobs, and salaries were increased? Even though no employees lost their jobs and salaries were increased, we can note that the productivity of the output productions of the company faced a colossal slowdown in the several months after the construction of work and technical training were completed. 3) Would the company have been better served leaving the production system as it was ? Yes, because if the company didn’t change the organizational structure of the Acetate Department, the firm would not be facing losses as a result of the mistakes made by some of the operators. 4) Imagine you were hired as an external management consultant to come up with a plan to address the problems at Acetate. How would you go about developing a strategy, and what would that strategy involve? Production was almost identical under the old technology, absenteeism had increased markedly, and several judgemental errors by operators had resulted in substancial losses. The principal reason for these is the lack of motivation, as work in this department became a routine for the employees. Even though no one was dismissed, the workforce in the department was reduced. Working became boring, and the department was not a pleasant place in which to work anymore for them. The Acetate Department was completely

Impact of Technology Essay

Every day we cannot live without technology. We wake up in the morning, we take a bath, we have breakfast, we do our daily activities, and all are affected by something called technology. From the simplest form of it until the most complex one, technology filled our daily life. The famous phrase â€Å"Information Technology† of course is one of the forms of technology. Before we continue talking about technology, we must know its definition. Shortly, technology is something related to science and engineering, which is used by the human or other creatures in dealing with their environment, to make their life easier. The technology develops fast. From the ancient age to the modern age, there are billions of its products that have made our life easier. In prehistoric age, the ancient human created the tools made of stone. They also invented the wheel, which is very important to the next centuries. Imagine that there weren’t any invention of wheel. We must give a lot of energy to move our goods from one place to another. Many centuries later, there are a lot of important inventions for human’s life, such as the invention of telephone. Using it, we may communicate through long distances. And the latest technology which has given many changes to the world and is still being developed is the information technology. The development of technology gives some impacts to human beings and the other creatures. The positive impact is, it makes our life easier. Without the inventions of technology, I think we would live our lives just like the prehistoric men did. Technology, just like the other things in this world, also has negative impacts. I’ll give you three examples. First, technology takes out the filters, like social filter, cultural filter, and religious filter. We can see in Internet technology. Internet is a medium in which no filter and censorship. Without parental guidance, your children may consume inappropriate materials from the Internet. The second one is the decrease of your social skills. Too much usage of technology makes you more antisocial. In the past, children used to play traditional games with their friends outside the house. But now they prefer playing video games in their own room, all by themselves. The easy access of technology also makes you too dependent to it. In the past, our people had more memorizing skills. They had to memorize things, because there was no tool to use to record things, except notebooks (the original phrase of notebook, not the portable computer). But nowadays, by using the computer, you can save any information you want in its memory to retrieve it in another day. In advance, by using the Internet connection, you may search any information you need through any search engine like Google, Yahoo, Altavista instantly. Dealing with those negative impacts, what can we do? First, we must be aware of them. We must be aware that technology could also cause bad things. After that, we must give the people knowledge of those negative impacts and how to deal with them. The government also has to do some actions about this. They must give some regulations relating with the press and the media. It is just need to be done to protect our society, not to restrain the press. And then, to increase the social skills, we must create the real community; build the real network, makes friends in the real world, of course not in the cyber world. By doing that, it will take us back to our nature as social creatures.

Dissertation (Distance Learning Of MS Access) Essay

Dissertation (Distance Learning Of MS Access) - Essay Example Furthermore, the more technology is applied in right direction, the more distance learning will get popular. This project would be yet another step into that progress. The aim of this project is to develop a database of tutorials for the distant learners. This database tutorial is a web-based tutorial. The user of this database will be provided with the user interface in order to fetch the information through queries and add, edit or delete the tutorials. A reporting module will also be added into the database. The necessity of the vision and plan for the implementation is emphasized in the works of many authors. (Aoki & Pogroszewski, 1998; Hache, 2000; Miller, 1998; Moore, 1994, Richart, 2002; Saba, 2000) Likewise, it is also asserted by many authors like Hache (2000) that various stakeholders of the proposed online distance learning system should bear in mind that when such a system would be implemented, the organizational change is bound to happen. In such scenario the change management strategies of the project executives, project sponsors and other higher managers' change management strategies come into play. The better they are at change management, the higher would be the acceptability of such system. It is so because of the reason that the existing campus based models existing in the universities are not sufficient to accommodate the online distance learning systems. (Miller, 1998; Saba, 2000) Moreover, these models are usually meant to facilitate the on campus students. (Aoki & Po groszewski, 1998; Moore, 1994). It is therefore essential for the system analyst to not only analyze each of the portion

Child abuse as a social issue Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Child abuse as a social issue - Essay Example A child can develop well only when he gets proper education and health care facilities. Well-being of children can be assured only when the society has the ability to protect the rights of its children and safeguard them from injury and abuse (Jack & Gill, 2010, p.82). Child welfare agencies are formed for protection of children and their all round development. These agencies make their decisions regarding their child protection policies about permanent well-being of children. These decisions are based on interviews taken of children and families who have been reported for child abuse or neglect. The efficiency of child welfare policies depends on the ability of the agencies to conduct proper investigations of the mistreatment received by the child. Only precise conclusions about safety of children derived from the information collected from such investigations can build effective case plans. Workers of these agencies who take the responsibilities of taking interviews of children mus t have the knowledge and skills to make emotional inquiries in a sensitive manner. The agencies should be able to impart necessary values and knowledge to their workers through effective training in order to fulfill their child safety missions (Pence, 2011, p.50). Over the past three decades the philosophy and strategies of determining whether intervention is necessary in situations where a child is abused or has the potential risk of being harmed or injured have altered. The traditional method of child maltreatment investigations which involved participation of criminal and juvenile laws has evolved. Now, there are more â€Å"understanding of risk and safety, political pressures, implementation of evidence-based and research-supported interventions, philosophical shifts, and other variables† (Pence, 2011, p.51). Where traditionally the agency workers used to take action based on complaints of abuse, now take necessary steps to collect correct information regarding the truth and extent of maltreatment and what case plans should be made to ensure the safety of the children and promote protective behavioral patterns in the caretakers (Pence, 2011, p.51). There are many factors that determine the shape of child welfare services – the number of children in a population who are abused or are at risk, the social and economic conditions of the families and their technological advancement, prevailing ideologies concerning the children and the other members of their families, political pressure from different groups, and the principal views about reasons behind poverty, illness and crime. One criteria that is a permanent issue of child welfare agencies is to find solution to problems of those children whose parents cannot provide proper care. Although the proposed solution is â€Å"permanency planning†, history suggests that such planning cannot abolish the need of wide-ranging public provisions for children who are poor, neglected or disabled (Mal lon & Hess, 2005, p.10). The rate of child abuse has grown significantly all over the world and is essentially evident in North America and Western Europe. Between the years 1980 to 1993, the number of children who have been subject to mistreatment has doubled. This is a grave matter which has imposed great strains on the child welfare age

Journal 1 and 2 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Journal 1 and 2 - Essay Example In my mind, the concept of human security was shaped by the ideas and concepts from presidents and the media. It is not only about military power and being protected from other nations, as we should not trust the authorities. After reading the first section, I began to view the concept of human security in a different way. Indeed, most security issues nowadays come from domestic groups rather than outsiders. In fact, it is groups of people who are being ignored by the government or not taken seriously that are causing chaos and conflict in the state. For example, the main cause of the Arab Spring revolution was because the people wanted a change to their system and regime. They wanted a change that would provide them with all their basic needs, such as safety and respect. When this change did not happen, or was not accepted by their leaders, people started to rebel against their leaders and this created conflict in the country. In addition, as I included in my QIP reflection of secti on 1 of the book, the author indicated that to achieve human security patriarchy should be replaced with gender equality. For example, this means allowing women to get involved in making security decisions. Also, the institutions of war must be destroyed (Reardon and Ash Hans 111). ... However, the discrimination against women is not about men and women but it is about the roots of each person's origin. In other words, people who don't have Arab roots might be involved but not as deeply as the local people, where they get the chance to be ambassadors and take higher positions in the political field. In fact, the reason why people who have Iranian roots are not involved in the political system is because of distrust and suspicion that those people may cause conflict in the state. This discrimination increased a lot after the involvement of Iran in the revolution in Bahrain between the Sunnis and Shias. This also caused tension between the Sunnis and Shias in the most of the Gulf countries as well. Not involving women in the political sphere is not only about the idea that men are more powerful than women, it is also about other concepts, such as religion and trust. Moreover, women can find jobs in any other field easier than they do trying to get a job in politics. The teaching notes, A Gendered Analysis of Women, Power, War and Peace, written by Professor Barbara Wien, presented five feminist schools of thoughts: eco-feminism, liberal feminism, post-modernism, radical feminism, and difference feminism. I always heard about feminist schools of thought but I did not know what each one was called and what each stood for. The teaching notes helped me to understand the different feminism schools clearly, and I was impressed by many of the concepts that the schools stand for. For example, when it comes to the liberal feminist school of thought, it supports the fact that women are neither peaceful nor softer than men, but it also says

Equal Importance of Reason and Emotion in Justifying Moral Decisions Essay

Equal Importance of Reason and Emotion in Justifying Moral Decisions - Essay Example However moral values are always theoretical. Consequently, there had been a difference of opinion among the scholars and philosophers, while defining moral values. In addition, there had been widespread debate over the applicability of reason and emotion to justify moral decisions. One such philosopher, David Hume argued that reason can be construed as a slave to the personal emotions. In contrast to this, Kant addressed the importance of reason in the process of taking moral decisions. Antonio Damsio, the author of Descartes’ Error, had maintained that the theories of Hume and Kant cannot be correct, because reason and emotion do not oppose each other diametrically. He also stated that the processes that take place in the brain were intertwined and complicated (Ingham). The human brain plays a key role in the moral decision making process, whenever the situation warrants such a decision. The brain acts according to the situation in which the moral decision had been taken. In situations, where it is necessary to take some action with regard to a moral dilemma, several factors have to be taken into consideration, before arriving at a correct resolution for the moral dilemma. Furthermore, it is important to apply the highest possible rational deliberation (Moral Judgment Fails Without Feelings). In certain situations, there could be a need to take immediate decisions. In such circumstance the emotions would take an active part in resolving the issue on hand.

Managed Healthcare Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Managed Healthcare - Essay Example It is under such circumstances that the role of a care-giver becomes all the more important. While on the one hand, the care-giver has to take care of the organizational goals and the profitability aspects, on the other hand the care-giver is supposed to provide the best care and guidance to the customer. Once, such arrangements takes cues from corporate management, the healthcare too becomes 'managed healthcare'. From the point of view of a consumer, the pros of such managed healthcare are; v. At times, in situations like the consumer is on tour to place outside the native place, then the tie-up between caregiver companies helps the consumer in getting a good care from some affiliated company as well i. The consumer gets tied up with a particular company for longer time and even if there are better alternatives, he/she cannot go for a change, because of the agreement between the consumer and the healthcare company But entering into a managed healthcare plan with consumer also involves some risk for the company. For example, in these inflationary times, when costs are rising up, the company finds itself unable to charge higher prices, because of the agreement done with the consumer. Some of the well known managed healthcare are plans are, Health Maintenance Organization (HMO); Preferred Provider Organizations (PPO) and Point-of-Service (POS) plans. These plans have evolved over the years and have taken care of some of the deficiencies that included in the traditional insurance covers. While the traditional insurance covers used to take care of limited aspects of the healthcare, the managed healthcare plans are comprehensive in nature and try to include some modern day health hazards like long sitting in front of the computer screen and its ergonomic impacts on our body parts.

Racial Profiling Questions Coursework Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Racial Profiling Questions - Coursework Example Why hasn’t it been solved before? Unfortunately, the approach taken and being taken is to place a band aide over one problem and has never been to address the core of the problem. By educating the youth and impressing upon them the importance of equality and shared values we will see changes in the future through these younger generations. Why are the obvious solutions inadequate? By itself the education of the youth still leaves an entire generation (generation Y and X) without the benefit of understanding why racial profiling is wrong. As a result we must educate them as well, through job seminars and similar. What are the consequences of not solving the problem? The problem will cycle to another race with time, as it has throughout the history of the United States. 5. We should use education because the use of education will lead to understanding, equality and a truly blended society. By better understanding each other and our differences and learning to embrace those diffe rences we are better able to accept each person’s approach and less likely to use our lack of understanding to supplement our approach within the law.

Real Estate Business Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3500 words

Real Estate Business - Essay Example me scholars gave that the word real property coinage came from a Spanish word real which means a king it puts that all the land belonged to the king and the people using it had to pay taxes to the king for its use either directly or indirectly. Real estate has become one of the biggest aspects in recent times and owing to the ever increasing interests in private property ownership it is known as commercial real estate. The required substantial investment in real estates and the unique nature of each has necessitated the development of key distinct fields in development of its industry (Rees, and Hayward, 2000) some of these are; Valuation and appraisal -services offered by experts in this sector Development -fixing or replacing investments such as buildings on land to increase its utility. Corporate real estate- achieving the goals of a corporation by managing its real estates Property management-controlling and organizing the functions of a real estate for a given party Brokerage- effecting or facilitating real estate business transaction through mediation. Net lease-the tenants of a real estate sharing the property among themselves A business entity can deal with one or more of the above fields in a certain kind of real estate business such as commercial, residential or industrial property. It is clearly evident that almost all businesses in construction relate to real estate (Isaac, 2002). Real estate valuation and appraisal is development of market value opinion of real property in business concept. Different property investments are usually distinctly identical given the fact that even if they are of the same model they can never be in the same location at a time, this situation shows the significance of the need to make appraisals and valuations of real...The author of the research essay "Real Estate Business" begins with short introduction of the subject. He assumes that a real estate that is synonymous to real property or realty is a word used to describe land and or with its developments like buildings or any other development that lay on it. Its aspects are well stipulated in the law of many countries in the world. In law the real property is clearly distinct from personal property. A real property is immobile, that is any investment whose title is only transferable along with the land such as the land itself and any thing that is permanently fixed to it for e xample minerals, buildings trees among others on the other hand personal property is movable with the owner retaining title not necessarily along with the land. Although it is believed to be not true theory some scholars gave that the word real property coinage came from a Spanish word real which means a king it puts that all the land belonged to the king and the people using it had to pay taxes to the king for its use either directly or indirectly. Real estate valuation and appraisal is development of market value opinion of real property in business concept. Different property investments are usually distinctly identical given the fact that even if they are of the same model they can never be in the same location at a time, this situation shows the significance of the need to make appraisals and valuations of real estates to determine their nature as an investment.

What Should Medicine Do When It Cant Save Your Life Essay

What Should Medicine Do When It Cant Save Your Life - Essay Example Atul Gawande sees hospice as a morphine drip. It serves as a way to minimize the terminally ill patient’s anxiety on death and provides the family with opportunities to accept and seize every important moment that can make it easier for the patient and family to accept the natural course of faith resulting from the disease. I do believe that hospice care has relatively high importance with the families of patients suffering from terminal illnesses, not only that it addresses the sufferings that are bound to be experienced by the patient but also some observations indicate that hospice care prolongs the survivability. Creed refers to patients that are in a situation in their life wherein they have already understood that they have a have a fatal illness however they do not fully consider it as a condition which will end up in their demise. There are various approaches, some of which may not be applicable to other patients. This is primarily due the differences in the character of each individual. However, Dr Creed is able to effective apply this approach to patients. Instead of explicitly conveying a notion of being sorry for the condition of the patient, Creed says to her patients that she there to make their life better and that they have a lot of time to waste, given such condition. Dr Block focuses more on helping the patients identify what is most important to them and provide them with information and advice on the best approach that could help them address the salient activities that would the most impact on those important matters that the patient pointed out.  

Radio-Frequency identification technologies Essay Example for Free

Radio-Frequency identification technologies Essay REID technologies Introduction   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   RFID is an acronym that stands for, Radio-Frequency identification. This refers to a small devise that has a small chip and antenna. This chip can carry at most 2,000 bytes of data. This device mainly serves the same purpose as the bar code or a magnetic strip at the back of an ATM or any other credit card and provides a unique identifier for the said object. Just as the magnetic strip is always scanned to gain information, the RFID must also be scanned so as to get the saved information (Angell, I. ; Kietzmann, J. 2006). There is a significant advantage of RFID devices over the barcodes because this device does not require to be precisely positioned relative to its scanner. The RFID devices do not have to be in contact with the scanner itself as we have witnessed in many instances in the case of barcodes. One may be able to count all his/her purchases by just collecting all of them into one bag which is placed over the scanner. The scanner will read all the RFID without having to manually move these products across the scanner. For high frequency scanners it could be able to read up to 20 feets above it. (Angell, I.; Kietzmann, J. 2006) argues that these devices are also very minute and they could be embedded in the product labels, the environment and other strategic sites so as to track the movement of the holders. They are activated by receivers and they transmit a lot of information which ranges from product information like the purchase location, manufacturer’s date and the route of delivery, the credit history of the person who is holding the card along with his/her the address. The active RFIDs are very capable of data transmission even if they have not been activated by any receiver. They could be linked with inbuilt sensors so that they can continuously monitor the conditions of the environment and the applications that are of interest to the US military and the environmental groups. The information amount that is accessible and also generated through the RFIDs is so big the it may overwhelm all the data sources that is in existence and also become from the humans view point as infinite. So in a society where every individual is embedded with an RFID chipset, they will always be under a constant surveillance as it was put forward by Cloud Atlas with the resistance taking the form of a struggle to transmit  the information to the present and also the future stakeholders in the globe in case of any catastrophe. Hayles PropositionHayles (2009) argues that that the RFID issues should not be used to beat a retreat to the liberal humanism but on the other hand sees it as RFIDs are just like the human cognition that is multi layered and context aware which is capable of generating novel meanings along with interpretations just like the RFIDs. He continues his argument by adding that consciousness should not be taken just as being the only arbiter of meaning and hence gives non-human agents a room to contribute to the cognition of the humans. And in this view, the RFID technology therefore ceases to be part of the distributed cognition system which have for a very long time been extended and amplified human cognition (Hayles, 2009). Arguments   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   (Galloway , 2004) argues that the calm technology concept emanated from cultural and political-economic environment that reflected on the researcher’s own desire for minimalist, high technology living and aesthetically pleasing living in the work places and this does not change the fact that the seamless computing concept are so much inherent in the present day computing technologies. Also the central thing in the ubiquitous and pervasive technologies is the ability of the computer to have the capability of perceiving, interpreting and reacting to the information that has been fed into it. The information infrastructures also must be able to shift from the periphery into the centre and hence to be able to recognize and also respond to the actual context of use. The context computing will therefore rely on two types of information namely: physical location and user identity, where both require very big data acquisition and also stora ge and delivery mechanisms. The GPS or the Global Positioning systems are now familiar locations awareness technology. Galloway being a sociologist is always very keen to make it clear that the technologists always work on bridging the sociology into the Ubiquitous computing framework and sees it as a very good idea that collaboration between the sociologists who are concerned on how people lead their lives on a day to day basis and the innovators of technology is something that needs to be encouraged (Galloway, 2004). He is keen to put it that the use of RFID technology could be very useful to the supply chain but on the other hand it can be used to collate and gather information behind the scenes from some of the desperate sources. The Data matching that comes with these technologies, along with personal identification and the information from locating sensing abilities; once they are combined they could pose a very big problem to the citizen’s ability to act in the world. This concept of a utopian or dystopian future which is created by these technologies comes from a technological determinist view that the society is shaped by technologies. But (Hayles, 2009) on the other hand was trying to show that the distributed cognition model that could be identified as ubiquitous computing could change the environment to pave way for a utopian or dystopian world is not just a new development that has cropped up but something that has existed for long. I think the epistemological or the ontological distinction could be of a great use in this context. Hayles (2009) points out that the epistemological question is where we could and should discuss the privacy issues as it gets the same sort of things in the data or information distinction, which is that something very fundamental than disclosure of the data could be at stake. My thinking in the way that Hayles (2009) formulates the question as one that changes the way that we think of human subjectivity could be basically useful; which is the general direction as she indicates. On this point, I would like to notice one part of the argument; the RFID tags on what she portrays exist as both virtual presences and devices negotiating the boundary through the transmission of data from the things world to the information world. In my argument, they are just active participants in what could be seen like informatics of subjectivity, taking subjectivity as the primary informatics as being the product of or by constituted by the information. (Gordon Hull, 2014)One thing that is worth noting about this is that the formula here is directly bio-political, as far as subjectivity is neither Cartesian (being generated and also guaranteed by something which is besides the material world interactions) nor is it Juridical (in a sense that Locke applies in Essay 11.27 in opposition to Rene Descartes and in which Foucault means the term) but just an emergent product of the interactions of the environment and the humans. The informatics of subjectivity brings into account general biological information in bio-politics understanding. The next implication of this formulation gives one the freedom to address the question of resistance and also how we should work to ensure that the RFID technology will form a part of a better world but not lead the worsening of it. As she put forward, resistance in the etiological register is so much understood even though not all that effective with the ontological things being more difficult. â€Å"Epistemological issues lend themselves to strategy and tactics (from sophisticated counter-surveillance techniques to brute force methods like smashing RFID tags with a hammer or frying them in a microwave), but how do we understand the ontological effects of animate environments† (49-50). The reading from Philip K. Dick’s Ubik (1969) stresses that capitalism on itself could not be the only trusted to come up with salutary results (65) and she also closes the argument by saying that, â€Å"The idea that meaning and interpretation can occur across and between human and mec hanical phyla contributes to an expanded sense of ethics necessary when the contexts for human actions are defined by information-intensive environments and include relational and context-aware technologies such as RFID† (69). Conclusion   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   To me, it seems as far as RFID tags settle the boundary between the informatics and the objects and the transition in between those, they should be seen as sites for the primitive capital accumulation. This is to mean that they are places where the objects becomes subsumed into the capitalist structures of the market as they are dispossessed of whatever the value they might had before. So when RFID technologies contribute to this process as for instance when they are utilized in generating revenues in case of metadata processing for the huge corporations through consumer purchases tracking is the time that they should be carefully scrutinized, with their political and economical subject to the highly careful critique, specifically as it is at this moment that they make up us as the subjects of global capital, and or where the resistance of the constitution is needed or called for (Gordon Hull, 2014). References Gordon Hull, (2014). RFID Tags, Informatized Subjects and Biopolitics. A group blog with people from all over the map. HYPERLINK http://www.newappsblog.com/ New APPS: Art, Politics, Philosophy, Science.11 September 2014 Galloway, Anne. ‘Intimations of Everyday Life: Ubiquitous Computing and the City’, Cultural Studies, vol. 18, nos. 2/3, 2004 Hayles, Katherine, N. ‘RFID: Human Agency and meaning in Information-Intensive Environments’, Theory, Culture Society, vol. 26, nos. 2/3, 2009. Angell, I., Kietzmann, J. (2006). RFID and the end of cash?. Communications of the ACM 49 (12): 90–96. doi:10.1145/1183236.1183237. Retrieved 9 November 2013. Philip Dick Ubik (1969). One of Time’s. Mariner book. Library of congress cataloging in publication data Source document

Inditexs Zara: An Analysis

Inditexs Zara: An Analysis The overall focus of this dissertation will be the Spanish organization Inditex, in particular its clothing brand Zara. More specifically it will concentrate on Inditexs past and current performance and its unique business model. In order to effectively write this dissertation it will be split into five sections. In the second section a brief overview of the company, operational and financial performance will be described as it is vital to establish an understanding of Inditexs background before commencing on further analysis. The third section will provide an industry analysis in relation the organisations business environment which will include a PEST analysis and Porters Five Forces model analysis. This will allows for an understanding of Inditexs external business environment which can then be used to analyze the marketing strategy (PEST) and an understanding of the industry in which Inditex is located (Porter). The next section involves an evalutation of Inditexs business strate gy through all stages of business process; design, manufacturing, distribution and marketing stages. The fifth section consists of the business model analysis and a SWOT analysis of Inditex. The business analysis explains why Inditex use a vertical integration model and the SWOT analysis allows for clear evaluation of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of the organization. The final section offers a series of recommendations that I will put forward based on my research and analysis carried out in the preceding sections. The company overview 2.1 The company profile Inditex ( Industria de Diseno Textil) is a global fashion retailer and has expanded rapidly to become one of the largest fashion retailers in the whole world. The company designed, manufactured and retail apparel, footwear and accessories for women, men and children through its seven apparel retail chains: Zara, Bershka, Stradivarius, Massimo Dutti, Oysho, Pull and Bear, Skhuaban. Each of these brands targets varied market segments in terms of age and disposable income. The group owns more than a hundred companies involved in different textile, manufacturer, infrastructure and distribution businesses. At the end of the 2009, the group operated 4607 stores around the world. At the beginning, Inditexs operations were mainly focused on its domestic market in Spain with the first Zara shop was opened in 1975. Following on the company has expanded internationally quite quickly within clothing sector. History of Inditex In 1963, Amancio Ortega Gaona, Inditexs founder, founded confecciones Goa to manufacture products such as housecoats. As the demand increased, the company integrated forward into retailing, then the first Zara store was opened in 1975. Zara stores expanded quickly within Spain market. In 1985, Inditex was founded as the holding company of the group of businesses operating at the time. In 1988, Zara opened its first store outside of Spain and began to expand internationally. In 1991 , Pull Bear was founded, and Inditex bought 65% of the Massimo Dutti Group in 1991. Shortly afterwards, Inditex acquired 100% of Massimo Dutti Group and launched its first shop in 1995. Inditex launched the Bershka chain and then acquired Stradivarius respectively in 1998 and 1999. Soon after, the group launched Oysho chain in 2001 and Zara home in 2003. Zara home was introduced as Inditexs first online store in 2007. Exhibit 1 Timeline of Inditex Picture 1.png 2.3 Products Mix Over past few decades, Inditex has built its own multi-brand portfolio, which has allowed Inditex to target various market segments more effectively. The group uses a multi-brand name strategy to diversify their seven endorsed brands and one extended brand. Zara is the flagship brand of Inditex . Although Pull and Bear and Massimo Dutti are both fashion brands for women and men, their target market is different. The former brand targets a younger group with more leisure and sports based design, while the latter one targets men and women from 24 to 45 providing a higher quality. Bersha and Stradivarius provide elegant and latest fashion for only young woman. Exhibit 2 Inditexs brand portfolio 2.4 Financial Performance and comparison Exhibit 4 Total revenue Exhibit 5 Net profit margin Operating profit margin and return on capital employed  ¼Ã‹â€ ROCE ¼Ã¢â‚¬ ° are two indicators used to evaluate profitability of the firm. The comparison of net profit margins between Inditex and its main competitors over the same period is another indicator to show how effective a company is at cost control and profitability. Net profit margins are calculated from the Net profit divided by net revenues. The net profit margin is a good measure to compare companies in the same industry due to similar business environment all companies confronted. The higher the net profit margin is, the more profitable the company is. To put it in another way, the more effective the company is at converting sales into profit . According to exhibit 4, we can see that HM have strong capacity to consistently convert around 22% of its total revenue into profit; Inditexs net profit margin is similar. However, when compared with Inditex and HM, GAP has lowest net profit margin. Exhibit 6 Return on capital employed Exhibit 6, above, demonstrates return on capital employed (ROCE) demonstrating how much profit a company can earn from the investments of its shareholders have made in their company. It basically is used to show how much a company is gaining from its capital. In figure 6, GAP underperforms in this measure, not just due to low profit levels, but also because of huge amount of capital in order to generate profit. However, GAPs return on capital employed ratio is increasing gradually. On the other hand, Inditex requires higher capital per unit of profit than HM. there has been a decline in its ROCE ratio since 2007. HM vastly outperforms all other firms. Inditex invests more than HM in fixed assets dues to its vertical integration. Inditex has 5371 million euro in assets, plants and equipment ¼Ã‹â€ Inditex Annual Report, 2009 ¼Ã¢â‚¬ °, while HM only has 661 million euro. This is the main reason that HM has much more higher ROCE ratio than Inditex. Inditexs business model focuses mai nly on vertical integration and in-house production. While at the same time outsourcing is becoming a popular trend in clothing industry. Inditexs closest comparable competitors had narrower vertical scope than Inditex but outsourced all productions. In todays competitive business environment, more and more companies choose to send out non-core operations or their manufacturing sections to a supplier in order to reduce the cost by specializing and making the firm focus purely on its core operation. This is due to the low labor cost in some developing countries such as China and Vietnam. On the other hand, there are some companies that constantly try to gain control over as many sections as possible within entire value chain, usually by in-house production. 3. Industry Analysis The culture of fashion has been changed from haute couture and ready-to-wear to fast fashion. Generally, fast fashion retailers do not heavily invest in the creation of fashion trend and designs, but instead are inspired by the most attractive and promising trends spotted at fashion shows and by cues taken from mainstream consumers (Agins, 1999; Reinach,2005). They are able to keep up with these new fashion trends and add them into their products that can be provided on the market almost immediately with relatively lower price. Fast fashion is dominating the industry on the premise of several conditions. Firstly, short lead times and life cycles are two of key precondition of fast fashion. Secondly, considerable number of retail stores can reach potential customers. In addition, a very fast supply chain is required to connect customers demand with upstream operations from design, manufacture to distribution. Nowadays, more and more fashion retailers across the world engaged in this kind of fast fashion race. They make every effort to minimize the time in which they respond to fashion trends and the speed of their supply chains. For examples, Spanish Inditex (Zara), US GAP, Swedish company Hennes Mauritz (HM). British Topshop and Next, all focus on a fast fashion model. This fast fashion retail can be divided into two categories: some with factories to produce its products represented by Zara (Inditex); some without manufacturing competencies of their own such as HM and Gap, which therefore means they outsource production to labor intensive countries. 3.1 PESTEL Analysis Political factors Since 2005 the global system of quota has phased out, textile and apparel industry entered the global free market. In the meanwhile, the textiles and apparel market has become more competitive than before and has also become more intense for the small and marginal players due to such intense competition. It seems that large fashion companies such as Inditex, HM, can dominate the fashion industries due to economy of scale, which gives big companies lower cost per unit resulting from increased production. Also, the remove of all import quotas in clothing industry gives Indiex access to a larger market to operate with greater geographical reach and then generates more sales. Economic factors The world is facing global economic recession. Consequently, the business environment is difficult to operate within, which in turn has a huge influence on textile industry and fashion industry. This due to rising unemployment, the so-called credit crunch and reduced disposable income forcing changes in consumers spending habits. Many consumers have become more price-sensitive and cautious. Consumers are more likely to cut budgets on apparel and fashion accessories. Such a change allows Inditex to attract more consumers shopping at its chain stores. Social factors Strong brands play a significant role in sales, because consumers prefer branded products as oppose to generic products. Most consumers value highly good branded products or services. Even though many companies went to bankruptcy in economic recession, most Brand fashion retail still managed to remain profitable. In the international fashion retail market, strong brand identity is very important. This is not only a precondition to attract customers, but also is a foundation of global expansion. Inditex not only provides fast fashion with relative lower price, but focus on brands building as well. Technological factors Technology is not only limited to companies within the software and computer industry such as Microsoft and Intel. Currently, technology plays a very important role on the fashion industry. With the increased competition, companies are taking advantage of IT to improve its Supply Chain Management (SCM) and using it to ensure a competitive advantage is gained. Many fashion companies are relying on the technological capabilities to add value to their products. More and more companies have adopted an online shopping platform to enhance their service and increase sales. Legal factors The fashion industry has been calling for stronger worldwide copyright protection and intellectual property protection for fashion designs because they fear major losses to their competitors. Fridolin Fischer pointed out that a dynamic interaction between innovation and imitation can be seen as a competition. Indeed, new innovation creates superior products; imitation makes these products more available to a greater number of consumers. Therefore, a lively imitation process is crucial for dynamic competition. It is true in reality, but it is not fair to the designer. At present, more developed countries expand their copyright Law to include fashion designs, fashion design owners would be granted the exclusive right to place their design on the marketplace. These copyright Act will limit the development of some fast fashion retailer, such as Zara. Environmental factors The environmental impact of the textile and apparel industry stems from its consumption of energy and toxic chemicals. The apparel industry contributes to climate change indirectly through the burning of fossil fuels to create electricity which is used to produce chemical materials which are then used as raw material to take place of cotton. Other major energy consumed involves using fuel for agricultural machinery and for distribution. Toxic chemicals are used widely in cotton planting and in many manufacturing stages such as pre-treatment, dyeing and printing. The volume waste from the fashion industry has become higher because of the advent of fast fashion. It is undeniable as regard to the current situation that the Fast fashion is causing a pollution issue due to shorted clothing life cycle, which has more negative impacts on environment. 3.2 Five Force Analysis Fashion apparel is a highly competitive business industry that is completely internationalized and posses no boundaries to its operations. The fashion retail industry is a large, mature and highly competitive industry. The annual growth rate of the market was about ** in the past decade. In 2009, total apparel sales were 362 billion. However, high fragmentation gives rise to intensive competition and price pressure in this market. Porters Five-Forces Model will be used to illustrate business environment of apparel industry. Threat of entry The apparel industry has very low entry barriers. Entry does not require huge amount of capital, workshops can be set up with workers with relative low skills. However, the economy of scale in production has significant impact on the entrant. It forces the entrants either to accept cost disadvantage or produce in a large scale. On the other hand brand identification and production differentiation plays the significant role, because brand identification creates a barrier to entry. Threat of substitutes The threat of substitution in this market is very high. The threat comes from other apparel retailers, designer retailers and tailor houses. On the other hand, Generic substitution is more likely to present a threat by offering products at lower prices. Power of buyers Todays buyers have more purchasing power than ever before. Customers demand high quality, a large variety and more frequent changes in the choice available to them. They want the exact garment they require when they want it and accessories in their preferred color and size in same store. This is the reason that retailers differentiate its product in order to satisfy the consumers needs. This is done by ensuring there are alternative sources of supply available for consumer and the cost of switching is almost zero. Inditex exactly meets the these customer demand by offer most fashionable clothes to cover various target markets at inexpensive price. Power of suppliers Power of suppliers in apparel market is low because most of fashion retailers outsourced the production section to developing countries, switching costs are low, buyes brands is powerful enough to get strong bargain power. There existing fashion retail brands command strong enough bargaining power to attain low costs. Therefore, the possibility of forward integration and suppliers customers are not fragmented. One the other hand, Inditex has more bargain power due to its vertical integration business model. Competitive rivalry The apparel industry, due to its low barriers of entry and declined obstacles to trade among nations, is one of the most highly competitive industries in the world. Hennues and Mauritz (HM) and Gap are Inditexs major competitors in terms of size and sales. Hennes and Mauritz ( HM) Hennes and Mauritz, was founded in Sweden in 1947, is another high performing fashion retailor. Today HM has expanded to 2000 stores acorss the world with more than 76,000 employees(HM Annual report,2009). HM offers similar product mix with Inditex in the same market, such as clothes, accessorise, nightwear and underwear to women, men and children. While HM is considered as the closest rival to Inditex, there are many key differences. First of all, HM outsourced all its production section. Moreover, HM tends to offer prodcuts at a slightly lower price than Zara by outsourcing it production. Beyond store-based retailing, HM also ventured into online shopping and Internet retailing. Inditex has been relatively slow to develop its online selling. However, HM has relied almost exclusively on only one brand. Inditex has broader brand portfolio, which is made up of eight brands in order to reduce risk and refine the companys targeting of specific consumer groups Gap The second biggest clothing retailor, Gap, is American fashion retailer founded in 1969. The company has five brands: GAP, Old Navy,Banana Republic, Piperlime and Athleta. At the beginning, Gaps merchandise consisted of other brands such as Levis and LPs. After Gap continuing to expand rapidly across the United States, Gap started to sell its private label products in its stores. Gap is a famous fashion retailer with a distinct marketing campaign consisting of mainly primetime television adverts which target the fashion conscious 15 to 35 age old women and men. The company operates over 4000 stores all over the world. Gap was well known for extensive collections of T-shirts and jeans which is simple but stylish. However, since 2001 the pace of development became slow due to lack of a clear fashion positioning and failing to meet consumers fast fashion demand. More than 90% of its products are outsourced, which has meant the supply chain is too long and they have therefore a slow resp onse to fashion. Also, Gaps core customer base has aged. Gap needs a reposition for its brand and design, but the chain has struggled to attract a younger generation to its stores. The company lacks an effective approach to deal with it. Gap is suffering from a plummet in sales and its competitors such as Zara and HM have consequently profited from Gaps downfall. In 2008, Inditexs fashion chain Zara overtook Gap to become the worlds largest clothing retailer. Inditexs Business Strategies 4.1 Design-Fashion follower, industry leader The process of Inditexs product development design programme is constantly working in order to adapt to new fashion trends . Designers and managers attend high-fashion fairs and exhibitions to obtain fashion information and then convert the latest fashion trends of the season into their designs. Other sources of design inspiration come from TV, Internet, film content or trend spotters. product development teams focus on venues such as university campuses and clubs around the world to capture fashion trends and customer preferences. Zaras product development teams have frequent dialogue via their internal IT system. Inditex gave significant autonomy to each store manager in deciding the quantity of product needed by each store. Moreover, the store manager is able to decide which product to display in their stores and which product is to be sold at a reduced price. The managers responsibility is to make these decision based on market research and sales trends. Moreover, by employing yo ung and fashionable member of staff ensures that employees also contribute by helping to report the sales analysis, the product life cycles, and the store trends to the designers. There are specialized teams in headquarters to analyze feedbacks and information from each store, then design and produce their products. These sales analyses allow the designers to develop the right products to meet consumer Demand. Design team issues up to approximately 12,000 new design styles per year. Such a design concept obviously depends on the regular creation of new design. For example, Zaras designer team came up with approximately 40,000 new designs per year, from which only slightly more than one-quarter of them for production. Zara often follows the fashion trends of the high-fashion houses and offers similar products at much lower prices by using less expensive fabric. It also attempts to offer more colors and larger range of sizes to meet the need of consumers. After a prototype of new design was selected, a computer-aided design system is used to refine colors and textures. Limited number of new items were produced and presented in certain stores for a trial period and large volumes of the product are produced only if customers reaction is positive. As a consequence, failure rates on new products is only 1% which is less than the average rate of 10% of other fashion retailers. 4.2 Manufacture process Inditex has been able to obtain excellent financial record due to its vertical integration and fast fashion business strategies which provide Inditex with a competitive advantage over traditional fashion retailers in the industry. Generally speaking, apparel retailers always try to keep slower costs by outsourcing production to developing countries where the lowest labor could reduce its manufacture cost. On the other hand, Inditexs subsidiary retailing chain adopted a successful diverse method of doing business by working through the whole value chain. Highly capital intensity and vertical integration is a distinctive feature of Inditexs business model. From the upstream value chain, a subsidiary of Inditex company, Comdietel, funnels fabric and other input supplied by external suppliers. More than half of the fabric was undyed which provide maximum flexibility to produce in-season clothes. Comdietel is able to dye and process gray fabric into certain pattern within only one week to meet the requirement of downstream value chain. Inditex has 20 fully owned manufacture factories across the Europe. These factories use capital intensive production processes and provide cut garment and semi-manufactured products to approximately 500 in-house workshops. The relevant cutting machines and other systems produce semi-manufactured items and cut garments which will be transited directly into workshops. The progress looks rigmarole, but it is quite efficient because bar codes track the cut pieces through the every production steps. Workshops are located in labor-intensive areas across Europe such as Spain and northern Portugal. These workshops manufacture clothes in small scale to offer specialization in product type. The sewn clothes were sent back from these workshops to various product line under different brands. The center will inspect, iron and fold before sending finished garment to distribution center. The secret of Inditexs success is that vertical integration leads to short turnaround times and great flexibility. By implementing in-house production, inditex has obtained high level of variety, quantity and frequency of new styled clothes. Inditex adopts market orientation by reducing lead-times and increasing flexibility. Zara is able to upgrade products in its stores within 10 to 15 days from design to stores. Vertical integration decreased Inditexs stock to a minimum level and reduced fashion risk. In the mean time, providing small amount of products in a great variety of styles rendered Inditex shorter lead times and high level flexibility. As a consequence of offering fewer amount of product more often, Indite obtains larger percentages of the full price due to in-season sell and thus achieve higher net margins on sales. By focusing on shorter response times to fashion trends and keeping up with fashion. Inditex made efforts to make sure that its stores are able to offer latest fashion items that consumers desired at a given time. Inditex can move from coming up a design to having clothes in its stores within 2 weeks. Short lead times is Inditex one of the most important competitive advantages over its competitors. When Inditexs retail stores provide consumer with latest fashion items and gain huge amount of sales, its competitors have still struggled to catch up. In comparison, HMs lead time is more than 20 days. Traditional retailers use 4-6 months . 4.3 Distribution A more systematic approach to inventory distribution is another feature of Inditex. Each retail chain has its own centralized distribution system. Distribution center is located in Arteixo and small satellite centers across the world. In order to keep its stores refreshed with new merchandise every two weeks, the warehouses of Inditex is simply a place to transfer merchandise rather than store them. Under Indetexs distribution system, most of merchandise stayed at the distribution centers for only few hours. Products are inspected and shipped immediately in distribution center. Store managers can check lists of items available to be shipped to their stores. Based on their store inventories, they can request quantities and type of products. However, Inditexs international expansion required constant adjustment on distribution. Zara schedules the shipment by time zone to make sure distribute effectively. Inditex uses this method to gain a competitive advantage by minimizing the lead ti mes. 4.4 Marketing mix Placement Inditexs marketing strategy is very effective because its marketing policy involves zero advertising. Inditex invest in selecting locations for its subsidiary retail chains and the presentation of those stores. For example, products in Zara are relative inexpensive, but shopping in Zara shores does not feel cheap. Zara stores are centrally located with spacious and nice interior. The clothes were presented very tide and upscale. There is a big difference between Zara stores and the store of some upper scale stores. Product Inditex constantly changes its products. Therefore, customers are never sure what is going to be on Zaras shelves the following week. Zara designs apparel to meet consumer demand, attempting to pull customers in by producing small amount to create a fear that if customers do not buy immediately, the product will soon be out of stock. There is not any other company that can produce high fashion clothes faster than Zara, which positions itself as high fashion at cheap prices. Although Zara has been accused of copying the design of other upscale fashion retailers, the prime difference is the price, which allows high fashion to be affordable for average consumer. Price The pricing strategy chosen can affect revenue. The price of a product is very vital for a company to get back all its effort. The other three elements of marketing mix are costs. Thus, no matter how good the garment is. How efficient the supply chain and how creative the promotion, unless the price covers cost, the company will not make profits. Clothes might suffer from prices that are too low among competition. Pricing is very important since it often send quality cues to customers  ¼Ã‹â€ Jobber, 2007 ¼Ã¢â‚¬ °Inditex does not compete on price because they know their customers are more sensitive to fashion instead of the price. Inditexs subsidiary brands follow a market-based pricing strategy. Inditex sets price in line with its marketing strategy with reference to other marketing decisions such as position, strategic objective, promotion and value to customers. Therefore, Inditex sets price differently on different brands. Zaras prices are very reasonable. Its objective is to set price as cheap as possible to allow people to have fast fashion clothes. Inditex will adjust its price for certain product to keep low inventories if the company overestimated the demand. Promotion The fact that there is no advertising promotion strategy is another effective cost cutting approach for Inditex. Other fashion retailers spend 3.5% of their revenue on advertising, while inditex only spends 0.3% on promotion. Advertisement is carry out only at a new store opening. But that does not means Inditex make less efforts on promotion. Zara does not engage in large advertising campaigns on television and magazines. It just adopts a different approach to promote its products. It invests its money on location, Zaras stores are situated at commercial center. The company believes that their shop windows presentations are all the advertising it needs and its sores only opened in the most fashionable district. 4.5 International Expansion Inditex has become possibly the most internationalized fashion retail chain. Zara operates 2707 stores in countries outside its home market Spain. By 2010, its has 1900 stores in rest of Europe, more than 150 stores in Asia, 366 in America, 485 elsewhere in the rest of world. Inditex generates 68 percent of its total revenue from oversea markets. Zara contributes most of international sales and revenue to Inditex. Zaras international expansion started in 1988 with the opening of store in Portugal, when Inditex found that the company has dominated domestic market and abroad market was very profitable. Since then, Zara entered into one country per year until it opened stores in 7 European countries. After that, the pace of Zara expansion has speed up more rapidly. Zara has successfully entered 74 countries. On the same period, HM expanded its retail network to 36 countries, and Gap entered into 30 countries worldwide. .( Indetex Annual Report, 2009 ) SALES 2008 2009 Spain 3.730.099 3.708.967 Rest of Europe 4.809.263 5.221.491 America 1.038.065 1.096.709 Asia and rest of the world 829.333 1.056.347 Total 10.406.960 11.083.514 5. Business model Analysis This section will further analyze the reasons why Inditex, who are competing in the same business field and under the same conditions as rivals such as HM, next, Gap and Mango, choose different business models. It describes exact competitive advantages that have derived from Inditexs business model and the negative sides of business models. According to Inditexs financial ratios and business models, we can conclude that Inditexs higher income result from its business model of vertical integration which keeps costs and operating expenses much lower than Gap and HM. In-house production allows Inditex have little transaction costs. In light of the transaction cost theory, Madhok said that manage business activities inside the company is direct way to diminish the transaction costs. The costs of managing upstream or downstream of business activities within an institution will be much lower than through the market. Meanwhile, vertical integration gives a firm more control and flexibilities to operate directly. Forward integration can provide product differentiation advantages that are difficult to imitate as well as superior design intelligence. Potential advantage from integration is the degree of value added at the throughout all stages of the business. The group has authority to operate directly through designing, manufacturing and distribution. Due to vertical integration, the group gains a better po sition in the purchasing of raw materials, controlling the manufacturing process and obtaining better lead time to market. Decreased Cost does not only derive from lower transaction cost but also comes from waste reducing. This happens by designing and cutting its fabric in-house and it acquires fabrics in grey to keep costs low. Zara dyeing and printing fabric until close to manufacture to acquire more flexibilities in order to meet various design requirements, thereby minimize raw material waste and rendered Zara great flexibilit

The Definition Of Globalization Education Essay

The Definition Of Globalization Education Essay Globalization has brought about many changes in human lives. Globalisation, which started off in the West, was brought about by many factors. Some of it is the the emergence of the information technology and also the economic competition between different countries (Jarvis, 2007, p. 44). Here, it is obvious that globalization was about the economic benefit at first and later had also impacted many others categories of human lives such as education and environment. The impacts and effects of globalization could be seen everywhere, from the food industry to the music that one listens. Some would argue that globalization benefitted the mass, and therefore it is something good. However, some would refute by saying that globalization has also had some negative impacts. Therefore, I would like to find out and discuss the effects of globalization specifically in education. This paper would examine closely the effects of globalization in education in terms of commodification, internationalis ation, citizenship and also accessibility of knowledge. This essay would argue that although globalization brings some positive effects, it also brings some negative effects that sometimes could be considered to outweigh the benefits of it. The arguments will be put forward by first defining globalization and then highlighting some of the different types of globalization. This will be followed by discussing the impact of globalization in education in terms of commodification, internationalisation, citizenship, and accessibility of knowledge. Last but not least, this essay will discuss the implications for teachers in a Malaysian secondary school classroom. Defination of Globalization There are tremendous amount of literature on the definition of globalization. Globalisation seemed to an easy word to define at first. However, there are many definitions of it where each and one of these definitions are looked from various different perspectives such as social, economy and political perspectives. From an political point of view, Beck (2000, p. 11) defines globalization as a process through which transnational actors undermine sovereign national states with varying prospect of power, direction, identities, and network. From a communication point of view, globalization as a concept refers to both to the compression of the world and the intensification of consciousness of the world as a whole (Robertson, 1992, p. 8). Similarly, Luke (2005), stated that globalization is how the world is shrinking in the sense that people can communicate to each other instantaneously through the use of technology especially the internet. On a different plane, Waters (1995, p. 3) looks at globalization as a social change where physical boundaries of place on the social and cultural aspects are diminishing and the public are aware that it is diminishing. Looking from a social perspectives or point of view, globalization is the escalation of global social relations which connect far localities in such a way that local events are influenced by events occurring in the far distance and vice versa. (Held, 1991 cited in Morrow Torres, 2000, p. 29). Therefore, it can said that globalisation is the weakening of the physical boundaries surrounding the nation or states, in which affects aspects of human life such as culture, social interaction, economy, politics and many other aspects. The less visible boundaries mean that people are more likely to interact with each other. If the interaction is between people or party of same position or status, the interaction could be in a neutral way. However, if the interaction is between people or party of unequal status or power, the m ore privileged will tend to influence the less privileged it can also happen that the less privileged might want to imitate the more privileged in order to live the same condition as the opposite party. When looking at the definitions of globalisation, it is important to also highlight the different types of globalisation. Here, cultural, economy and political globalisation will be discussed closely. Cultural globalisation is about the spread of one stronger element of culture, which in many cases, would be the American culture. This is done through the American media which penetrates most parts of world. Songs, films, and many more are easily available around the world (Jarvis, 2007). Besides, he also argues that many new cultural institutions have become industries where these institutions are trying to sell their culture. However, one would argue that cultural globalisation could also strengthen the culture in particular society if the member of the society choose to resist the wave of global influx of different foreign culture. According to Jones (1998, p. 146), cultural globalisation includes deteriorating religious mosaic, a deteriorating cosmopolitanism and diversity, widespread consumption of simulations and representations, global distribution of images and information and universal tourism. Therefore, it can be said that cultural globalization is the process where the l ocal cultural aspect of a community disappears in certain rate and substituted with a global culture. On the other hand, economy globalisation includes several aspects such as transnational companies. Transnational companies are companies that operate at a global level without needing to follow a certain nations law and regulation (Bottery, 2006). These companies bring profit to the nation through taxation. These companies possess a huge influence as they are not bound to a countrys law. Transnational companies have power beyond the nations or the states (Jarvis, 1998). Besides, economy globalisation also includes the bigger organisations such as International Monetary Fund (IMF) which provides loan and fund to developing countries. However, it is crucial to highlight here that this economy globalisaton is the setting of other types of globalization (Bottery, 2006). This is because economy is the source of income and the setting of work for people. According to Jones (1998, p. 145), economy globalisation includes freedom of exchange between localities with flows of services and symbo lic commodities, balance of production activity in a locality determined by its physical and geographical advantages, minimal direct foreign investment, flexible responsiveness of organisations to global markets, decentralised, instantaneous and stateless financial markets and free movement of labour. Political globalization looks at the diminishing power of the state where due to globalization, the power is local authority might be weakening. According to Jones (1998 p. 146), political globalisation is portrayed through an absence of state sovereignty and multiple centres of power at global, local and intermediate levels, local issues discussed and situated in relation to a global community, powerful international organisations predominant over national organisations, fluid and multi-centric international relations, a weakening of value attached to the nation-state and a strengthening of common and global political values. Thus, the meaning of being a certain country or nations citizen also gets blurred. The notion of citizen is not as a unified and unifying concept as before when there is certain loss of nation-state sovereignty, or the erosion of national autonomy (Burbules and Torres, 2000, p. 14). The Effect of Globalisation in Education Having looked at the brief categorization of globalization in general, this section will focus on the effect of globalization in education. This section will look at commodification, internationalisation, citizenship and accessibility of knowledge. Commodification is the term used to describe commodification can be seen in two ways, the displacement of use values by exchange values or in general to describe how consumer culture becomes embedded in daily lives through various ways (Ball, 2004, p.4). This consumer culture that is a global phenomenon today has also effected the education sector. Commodification of education is evident from the primary school to the higher education. Many are affected by, especially the parents and the students. Due to the competition for the entrance of an excellent school, parents and the learner will be under a lot of pressure to prepare themselves so they can qualify to this prestigious or high-league table-ranked schools. The society without noticing is drawn to this concept of education commodification due to the societal pressure. Similarly, the teachers and staff in this schools are forced to work hard to maintain the schools league table position so they can maintain the financial support from the government. The demands of competition, the information provided by League Tables, pressures from the state for performance improvement and target-achievement and per-capita funding, in a period of spending constraints, work together to create local economies of student worth where schools compete to recruit those students, most likely to contribute to improvements and performance (Ball, 2004, p. 10). Therefore, in this situation the commodification of education does not really seem to benefitting the learners, or the even parents. This cycle of incentives for performance is not something good as it contradicts with the value of education. .Another effect of globalization is the internationalization of education. Internationalisation is the process of intergrating an international or intercultural dimension into the teaching, research and exercise function of the institution (Knight, 1994, p. 16 cited in Knight, 1999) . Internationalisation is about globalization. Internationalisation happens usually at higher level education. There are many reasons for the internationalisation of the higher education. One of it is the internationalisation will help foreign policy of a country. Through internationalisation, a country will be perceived as welcoming and friendly to the different cultural aspects. In other words, internationalisation will indicate that the country appreciates the various cultures that exist are open to accepting them. On an economic point of view, internationalisation will help attract investment from foreign countries to a country. This will boost the countrys economy through the investments (Knight, 199 9). By internationalisation, the quality of teaching and learning process could be improved. This is because internationalisation encourages acceptance of various culture and integrates this in the teaching and learning process. The students will be exposed to various source of knowledge about the world. This knowledge of the world will help the learners to understand and make sense the difference and similarities people around the world have from one culture to another. Besides, internationalisation will also en courage partnership between various universities around the world. This is because through internationalization, one common medium of interaction will be chosen between the cooperating universities, which will likely to be English. Having a common language and some similarities will further encourage cooperation work between universities from different countries. Citizenship Another effect of globalization in education is that the accessibility of knowledge. Through the internet, many different kind of knowledge are readily accessible on the internet (Robertson, 1992). This means the acquisition of knowledge by students are much faster since there they have wide range of knowledge available for them. This would help students and teachers in their learning process. This rapidly growing information on the net could facilitate learning process by providing references and validating certain concepts that the learners are confused or unable to comprehend. Besides, the teachers and learners can build a network system through the net where they can talk and communicate with teachers and students from any part of the world through the internet. This would help teachers and learners to create a global view of education n based on their communication with people from around the world. However, this might also be a problem for the students since with the huge amoun t of information available on the net, the reliability of some of the information is sometimes questionable. Therefore, it is important for the learners to be able to distinguish between reliable and unreliabale information. Besides, it is also important for them to be able to choose and pick which information that is suitable for them. The downside of this body of knowledge available on the internet is that it cannot be accessed by people in certain parts of the world where the communication technology is not at par with the latest communication technology (Burbules, 2000). This in a way widens the gap between the education progress in a developed country with a well-equipped information technology facilities and the education progress in a developing country with poor information technology facilities. In a less progressed country where it is already a struggle to maintain teaching and learning process, the people will not know what they have missed by the lack of facilities. Another aspect of the manifestation of the accessibility information is the distance learning (Foley, 2003). Distance learning is the teaching and learning process which does not happen in a physical classroom, but instead happens in a virtual classroom. This distance learning was already available before the existence of the internet through the use of post. However, the invention of the internet has taken distance learning into a whole new level. Distance education has enabled more people to gain access to education through the many different types of online courses offered by universities and other online course providers. One of the benefits of this distance learning is that the learning process can be done in learners own time, without any peer pressure form classmates. However, the drawback of distance learning is that the reduced or loss of the human touch in the learning and teaching process. Human touch in the form of communication with one another is important in learning. Implications to Teaching and Learning Process in a Malaysian Secondary Classroom. Having discussed the impact of globalization in education on a global level, tis section will try to relate back the impact of globalization in education in a Malaysian context, specifically in a Malaysian secondary classroom. Malaysian secondary classroom consist of students for the age of thirteen to seventeen. These students come from various backgrounds. First and foremost, one of the main implications the effect of globalization in a Malaysian context is the teachers and students should be aware of the effect of globalization in education to the Malaysian education system and also to the global education policy and reforms. Here, the teacher training college plays a crucial part in incorporating the effect of globalization in education to the teacher trainees. This is so that future teachers will be aware of the effects of globalization and then try to inform the students and then create awareness in the students. Besides, it also a teachers responsibility to make the learners aware of the multi dimension of globalization that exist beyond Malaysia. This will help the learners to be able develop critical thinking based on their awareness of the world around them. Futhermore, the appreciation of unique multicultural society that exists around the world, not only in Malaysia should be made known to the learners. On a similar note, as an future educator, it is important to realise that a teaching method or education policy that is a sucess not necessarily u can take everything and put it into another context. Think about the context in which a teacher is teaching so that it is relevant to the students and context. Another implication that can be drawn from the discussion above is that it is important to realize that the abundance of information and knowledge available on the internet comes with a price as well. The implication of these to the Malaysian education especially in a secondary classroom is that the learners should be equipped with the necessary skill to filter the knowledge and than distinguish between facts and non-facts. In order to do this, the teachers should give some exposure of this kind of activity in the classroom. This will help learners, the secondary school students to be able to pick and choose the fact from the rest. Besides, it is also important to be able to pick the information which is useful for the individual rather than using all the information available. Distance learning CONCLUSION 100

Feminist Perspective of The Lie :: Feminism Feminist Women Criticism

Feminist Perspective of The Lie  Ã‚   Women have long struggled and battled against men in an attempt to obtain equality. In the story, "The Lie," the character Sylvia Remenzel portrays many of the qualities in a stereotypical female that women for generations have been trying to prove wrong. Her thoughts and actions, plus the possible opinions of females reflecting upon her character, and the fact that this character was written by a male will show the neglect by which the role was depicted.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   To begin, Sylvia's questions throughout the story are naive and juvenile.   For example, â€Å"I wonder how many Remenzels have gone to Whitehill,† and â€Å"You think those people will like those rooms?† Questions such as these are simply put and rather unnecessary because they only take up space and disrupt the flow. The question concerning the number of Remenzel family members who have gone to Whitehill has a pretty obvious answer. Her husband in the book even thinks so, That's like asking how many people are dead in a cemetery. To have a female character ask questions that are seemingly simple is putting them back, and placing them in a group outside those with intelligence. The second question concerns a new wing being built onto Whitehill where a group of Africans will be staying. By calling the Africans, those people, gives the   impression that she doesn't see them as equals to herself. In the time period that this story was written, (during the 1970s), the issue of racism was partly over. This character was not trying to be rude, but she did not have the intelligence to think differently. That alone is a very degrading way of thinking, such as giving women less power of thought than men. For example, Mr. Remenzel sees no problem with the Africans attending the school, when he says, The rooms aren't for them, they aren't going to be segregated. By observing these thoughts of Sylvia, one might see the lack of intuition and observation put upon her. These are all examples of the possible feminist view placed upon her.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Next, the actions that Sylvia performs show her incomplete personality when it comes to being unique. Her role follows the example that females should be seen and not heard, also, that they are to stay at home and take care of the children. These are qualities that women have been fighting to remove from the minds of society.

French and British Colonialism and Imperialism in Africa Essay examples

French and British Colonialism and Imperialism in Africa Africa is home to countless cultures that all have their own unique ideas and customs. During the past couple of centuries, these cultures were threatened to the point where they almost ceased to exist. The Berlin Conference was a very important occurrence in Africa and Europe's history. It legitimized what the European powers, mainly France and Britain, had been doing for the past hundred years, without the approval of any African country. During the late nineteenth century, France and Britain began imperialistic ventures into Africa, which eventually led Leopold II to conquer the Congo. It was Leopold's II presence in Africa that to led the Berlin Conference. The Berlin Conference took place first and foremost to legitimize what was already taking place in Africa (Berlin). Africa had recently experienced the European countries' greed. The British and the French, along with a few other European nations, had started to carve up Africa however they pleased. By 1880, about half of the coastal countries saw some type of European presence (Wessling cover). The French began to take control of Algeria and parts of Gabon and Senegal. The British occupied much of Southern Africa and parts of the western coast. Until 1884, no one could encroach upon inner Africa. Before this, the imposing countries had mainly concentrated on the coasts. By 1884 there was road connecting the Congo River to the coast, and the remaining European powers wanted in a piece of the action. The disagreements that resulted from this sudden urge to conquer Africa were what made the Berlin Conference so important (Part IV). Many reasons beyond the obvious also existed. The Berlin Conference was ... ... to an African nation. Works Cited Bennett, Norman. Africa and Europe: From Roman Times to National Independence. New York: Africana Publishing Co, 1984. "Berlin, Conference of." Vers. 3. 1994. The Concise Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia. 5 Mar. 2000 <http://www.encyclopeida.com>. "Bismarck, Otto Von." Vers. 3. 1994. The Concise Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia.  Ã‚   5 Mar. 2000 <http://www.encyclopeida.com/>. Hugon, Anne. The Exploration of Africa: from Cairo to the Cape. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc, 1991.   Ã‚  Ã‚   "Part IV Anti-Colonialism & Reconstruction." 5 Mar. 2000 <http://www.cocc.edu/cagatucci/classes/hum211/timelines/htimeline4.htm>. Sempell, Charlotte. Otto Von Bismarck.New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc, 1972. Wessling, H. H., Divide and Rule: The Partition of Africa, 1880-1914. Westport: Praeger, 1991. French and British Colonialism and Imperialism in Africa Essay examples French and British Colonialism and Imperialism in Africa Africa is home to countless cultures that all have their own unique ideas and customs. During the past couple of centuries, these cultures were threatened to the point where they almost ceased to exist. The Berlin Conference was a very important occurrence in Africa and Europe's history. It legitimized what the European powers, mainly France and Britain, had been doing for the past hundred years, without the approval of any African country. During the late nineteenth century, France and Britain began imperialistic ventures into Africa, which eventually led Leopold II to conquer the Congo. It was Leopold's II presence in Africa that to led the Berlin Conference. The Berlin Conference took place first and foremost to legitimize what was already taking place in Africa (Berlin). Africa had recently experienced the European countries' greed. The British and the French, along with a few other European nations, had started to carve up Africa however they pleased. By 1880, about half of the coastal countries saw some type of European presence (Wessling cover). The French began to take control of Algeria and parts of Gabon and Senegal. The British occupied much of Southern Africa and parts of the western coast. Until 1884, no one could encroach upon inner Africa. Before this, the imposing countries had mainly concentrated on the coasts. By 1884 there was road connecting the Congo River to the coast, and the remaining European powers wanted in a piece of the action. The disagreements that resulted from this sudden urge to conquer Africa were what made the Berlin Conference so important (Part IV). Many reasons beyond the obvious also existed. The Berlin Conference was ... ... to an African nation. Works Cited Bennett, Norman. Africa and Europe: From Roman Times to National Independence. New York: Africana Publishing Co, 1984. "Berlin, Conference of." Vers. 3. 1994. The Concise Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia. 5 Mar. 2000 <http://www.encyclopeida.com>. "Bismarck, Otto Von." Vers. 3. 1994. The Concise Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia.  Ã‚   5 Mar. 2000 <http://www.encyclopeida.com/>. Hugon, Anne. The Exploration of Africa: from Cairo to the Cape. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc, 1991.   Ã‚  Ã‚   "Part IV Anti-Colonialism & Reconstruction." 5 Mar. 2000 <http://www.cocc.edu/cagatucci/classes/hum211/timelines/htimeline4.htm>. Sempell, Charlotte. Otto Von Bismarck.New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc, 1972. Wessling, H. H., Divide and Rule: The Partition of Africa, 1880-1914. Westport: Praeger, 1991.

Lord of the Flies Essay

The title of this book, Lord of The Flies, refers to Beelzebub, a figure that is often linked with the devil. The book also has several references to Jesus Christ of the new testament, which shows us the religious integrity of the book. This essay refers to a specific character in that book, Simon, a boy who is lost on an island with a group of other boys. Simon has just been killed by the other boys. The other boys have embraced their inner savage, and have disregarded their previous civilized lives. Simon however, is the only one who has not. In the last four paragraphs of â€Å"Chapter Nine: A View to a Death†, of Lord of the Flies, Golding makes clear the use of light imagery to suggest the apotheosis of Simon. The changing environment around Simon suggests his apotheosis. The sky shows us that Simon is being deified. When Simon is killed, â€Å"the rain cease[s]† (153) and the sky becomes scattered with â€Å"incredible lamps of stars† (153). This text suggests that Simon’s death has gone noticed, from which the setting turns from a dark rainy night, into a clear, starlighted evening, as if Simon has been summoned by fellow deities. Golding describes nearby holy organisms using light imagery. The passage states that the shoreline â€Å"was full of strange, moonbeam-bodied creatures with fiery eyes† (154). The creatures that are present in the scene are bright and full of light, which indicate the holiness of the scene, as only a deity could attract such mysterious and bright creatures. The shoreline itself is also used to describe imagery. The shoreline Simon’s body was on â€Å"became a streak of phosphorescence† (153). The word phosphorescence is another indicator of light, which shows the imagery of the scene. It is suggestes that this is spontaneous phosphorescence, which means it suddenly luminated the dark scene upon Simon’s death. Golding uses several factors of the environment to create light imagery, which suggest the divine change that Simon’s body is going through. The imagery used to describe the transformation of Simon’s body suggests a divine change. Golding describes how Simon’s body becomes outlined. On the beach, â€Å"the line of [Simon’s] cheek silvered† (154). The reference of silver, which is referenced multiple times in this passage, shows that Simon is being encrusted in a outline that is abnormal to mortals. As in, he may be dead, but his body is being immortalized like a god. Imagery is used to describe the creatures that surround Simon and their actions. These creatures â€Å"with their fiery eyes†¦ busied themselves round his head† (154). The creatures are rounding Simon’s head, which creates a halo, an angelic symbol. The halo is often drawn on angels, which are prophets of deities. Simon’s body becomes permanently preserved as a deity. After the creatures surround him, â€Å"the turn of [Simon’s] shoulder became sculptured marble. Marble is a stone that is usually used to create statues of gods and goddesses, which is the bright stone that Golding states Simon’s body transforms into. Golding uses deity-like qualities to describe Simon’s dead body with light imagery. Simon’s environment, as well as his dead body, has been proven to show clear symbolism between him immortal deities. Golding uses light imagery to accomplish this. Simon was executed for no logical reason in this book. It is important to note that the savagery of primitive society slowly, but steadily, got the best of these boys, with the exception of the one boy, who brought reason but was rejected.

Japanese Culture Essay

AbstractIt is important to clear that an individualists perspective of finish and make it is greatly impacted by their finishing. In this paper I bequeath designer how the lacquerese cultivation approaches terminal and decease. I leave also discuss the unique archetype of electronic harmonium pipe organ transplant that surrounds that japanese culture. This paper presents the rightfulness of organ transplanting in japan, which allows people to squ be up whether question final stage bathroom be utilize to determine their wipeout in pact with their family. Japan could become a unique example of individual inborn selection in the description of devastation if the fair play is revised to allow individuals choose interpretation of stopping point independently of their family. The death and dying rituals involved in the Nipponese culture pass on be discussed.Overview of the Nipponese purificationIn the latter half of the ordinal century, developed cou ntries of the world rent do remarkable strides in organ boon and transplantation. However, in this argona of medicine, Japan has been behind to follow. Nipponese ethical motive, deeply rooted in religion and tradition, have affected their mentality on life and death. The Nipponese have simply recently started to acknowledge the concept of thinker death and transplantation of major(ip) organs has been hindered in that estate. Currently, there is a dual description of death in Japan, intended to satisfy both sides of the issue. This interest paradox, which still stands to be fully resolved, illustrates the debatable conflict between medical ethics and medical progress in Japan.The Japanese culture considers a human world both alive and cold, an integrated body, mind, and spunk (Dennis, 2009, p.12). Therefore removing an organ from a outlook-dead mortal involves a disturbance in this natural integrated unit. In the Japanese culture organ donation and organ transplant ation argon unpopular and rare (Dennis, 2009). fit in to Dennis (2009), the Japanese culture believes that a dead body must remain entire because if they are non whole, that dead individual will be unhappy in the next world.Japanese Culture on Death and destructionIt is crucial to run across that an individuals perspective of death and dying is greatly impacted by their culture. Japan is the only country, which permits individual resource in death definition for the routine of organ transplantation, and in agreement with the individuals family. The Japanese organ transplantation righteousness of 1997 is a long consult on head word death and organ transplantation. Over al nearly three decades, medical, good and public discussion has occurred a deficiency of consensus on the definition of human death caused a long delay in adopting a law on organ procurement (Akabayashi, 1997). Finally, indemnity makers in Japan have adopted a law with unique features, such as freeha nd an opportunity to individuals to choose the definition of death ground on their own views. Therefore, in Japan individuals bloodlessthorn choose whatsoever cessation of cardiorespiratory race or loss of entire brain endure for their death pronouncement (Morioka, 2001).However, the choice is permitted in Japanese law only if organs undersurface potentially be used for transplant with the agreement of the family, which means that although individuals can choose the definition of death base on their own views, the law gives position to the family to confirm or reject the choice. The law allows the family to override the individual choice in death definition (Akabayashi, 1997). The first sweat to pass a law on organ transplantation following brain death failed in 1994. The main reason why the proposed law was rejected in 1994 is said to be because it introduced that brain death is equal to death, and also because it authorise surrogate decision ma kin groupg by the family . These issues raised serious arguments and concerns among some members, resulting in defeat of the principle (Akabayashi, 1997). However, the situation has changed since and so and, as public polls show, the flesh of people who accept the concept of brain death has increased from 29% to 60%. (Lock, 1996).The current law solid grounds that for organ removal, the givers prior declaration and family agreement are both necessary requirements (Japan Ministry of wellness Labor and Welfare, 1997). The organ donation provender of the law apply for brain dead sponsors as well as any cadaver. The law authorizes organ removal from a braindead person only if the donor has, during his life expressed in writing his consent to the diagnosis of brain death, as well as, his intention to donate his organ(s). Therefore, the law authorizes individuals to choose between the traditional definition or the alternative monetary standard based on brain function by signing an Organ part Decision Ca rd. Individuals can state their wishes at the back of this card by marking one of the following items (1) I wish to be a donor based on the brain orientated definition (2) I want to be a donor after cardiac death or (3) I lower to donate organs (Bagheri, 2003).The law is non free of criticism, e finickyly in toll of adopting a double standard regarding the part of the family. On the one hand, it gives the family the power to ostracise an individuals willingness to donate. On the different hand, it does not authorize the family to be a surrogate decision maker based on the interests of their beloved ones when they are in a braindead state and the organ donor card cannot be found. Nevertheless, the unbalanced role and power of preclude of the family under the present law can be seen as a parapet to organ procurement in Japan (Bagheri, 2003). The process of dying is regarded not as an individual event but as a family event in the Japanese culture (Kimura, 1998).There is no int errogative sentence that any transplantrelated legislation should be concerned with inclusion of the vox populi of the family in the decisionmaking process. This forms a basis for social acceptance of the legislation. However, in any culture a hardheaded question arises to what extent is the familys sound judgement to be taken into consideration? check to the law, family consent is required both for organ procurement and for declaration of death check to brainbased criteria. Therefore an individual can choose the definition of death with the agreement of her or his family, but not independently (Kimura, 1998). Japan is the only country that allows individuals to choose all the traditional definition or the brainoriented definition of death, but individual choice must be confirmed by the family therefore, it is a family based choice (Kimura, 1998).Death and Dying Rituals in the Japanese CultureA Japanese funeral includes a come alive, the cremation of the dead person, a bury ing in a family cancel, and a semiweekly memorial service. According to statistics, 99.82% of all decedent Japanese are cremated. While the ashes of many another(prenominal) are buried in family graves, the aspersion of ashes has become more vulgar in recent days, including a burial at sea (Wakabayashi & Sekiguchi, 2011). Many funeral services are carried out in the form of Buddhisticic ceremonies. After a person has died, their lips are moistened with water, in a ceremony referred to as Matsugo-no-mizu Water of the last moment (Wakabayashi, & Sekiguchi, 2011). The kinsperson shrine is closed and covered with a pureness paper, to keep out bastardised warmnesss. This process is known as Kamidana-fuji. A small table rigid beside the decedents bed is also alter with flowers, scent, and a candle. A knife may derriered on the chest of the dead person to drive away evil spirit (Wakabayashi & Sekiguchi, 2011).Funeral arrangements are made and the body is wash and th e orifices are blocked with cotton or gauze. The funeral c megabuckshing will consist of either a suit for a manly or a kimono if the dead person is a female. Makeup may also be applied in order to purify the appearance of the body. The body is whence effect on dry ice and placed inside the coffin with the head positioned towards the northeastern or west, along with a white kimono, sandals and six coins for the crossing of the River of three hells. Items which the deceased was fond of will also be placed inside the close in as well, so long as they are flammable. The casket is then placed on the altar in preparation of the fire up (Nakata, 2009). Guests who attend the funeral are expected to graze in unforgiving attire. The men unremarkably wear color suits with a white shirt and a cutting tie, fleck women wear either a black dress or a black kimono. A Buddhist prayer talus called juzu may also be carried by guests. Guests are expected to bring mercy money in a spec ial black and silver modify envelope. At the funeral, the guests will be seated, with the next of kin closest to the front.The Buddhist priest will read a sutra. The family members will individually in turn offer incense three bodyguards to the incense urn in front of the deceased. The closest relatives may watch and keep vigil with the deceased all-night in the equivalent room (Nakata, 2009). Japanese funerals are usually performed on the sidereal day following the wake. The funeral service is similar to that of the wake service, the difference being that during the funeral service, the deceased will receive a new Buddhist name to prevent the return of the deceased if their name is called. At the end of the ceremony, flowers may be placed inside the casket before it is sealed and carried to an elaborately decorated hearse where it is transported to the crematorium. In some regions of Japan, the casket may be nailed shut by mourners use a pitfall (Wakabayashi & Sekiguchi, 2 011). Once the casket has arrived at the crematorium, the family witnesses the sliding of the body into the cremation chamber, then leave.After the cremation process is complete, the family returns to pick the castanets out of the ashes and transfer them to an urn using chopsticks. In some instances, two family members will name the said(prenominal) bone at the same time with their chopsticks or pass the bones from chopsticks to chopsticks. According to Japanese custom, this is the only time when it is proper for two people to guide the same item at the same time with chopsticks. The bones are picked up and transferred to the urn in a manner which ensures that the deceased is not placed upside follow up in the urn. Therefore the bones of the feet are picked up first, the bones of the head last (Nakata, 2009). A typical Japanese grave is usually a family grave consisting of a stone memorial with a place for flowers, incense, and water in front of the monument and a chamber und erneath for the ashes.The date of the formation of the grave and the name of the person who purchased it may be engraved on the side of the monument. The names of the deceased may or may not be engraved on the front or left side of the monument or on a separate stone in front of the grave Nakata, 2009). The Japanese honor the dead with shrines in their homes and attention to the gravesite (Dennis, 2009). During three days in August, the Japanese Buddhist celebrate at The Bons fete in honor of the departed pot liquor of ones ancestors (Dennis, 2009). Until the early twentieth century most bodies were buried and cremation was limited to the wealthy. Cremation became more common after World War II due to its efficiency and cleanliness. In 2009, 99.9% of Japanese bodies were cremated, and some local governments ban burials (Wakabayashi & Sekiguchi, 2011). closeI learned a lot about the Japanese culture temporary hookup researching my paper. One of the things that I found move was th at the majority of Japanese bodies are cremated. The similarities that I found between the American and the Japanese culture are that both cultures were black to funerals. In both cultures items that are semiprecious are placed in the caskets and funerals are followed by the wake. While cremation is popular in Japan, I was surprised to learn that cremation is on the rise in the United States however, not everyone approves of it (Dennis, 2009).ReferencesAkabayashi A (1997). Japans sevens passes brain death law. The Lancet, 349 (9069). Retrieved from http//www.lancet.com. doi10.1016/S0140-6736(05)63895-0. Bagheri A. (2003). A criticism of brain death policy in Japan. Kennedy Institute of Ethics ledger 13 (4), 359-372.Dennis, D. (2009) Living, Dying, Grieving. Sandbury, MA Jones and Barlett Publislhers. Japan Ministry of wellness Labor and Welfare, The law concerning human organ transplants The law no. 104 1997. Translation 1999.Kimura R. (1998). Death, dying and advance directives in Japan socio ethnic and legal points of view. In Sass HM, Veatch RM, Rihito K, eds. hit directives and surrogate decision making in health care. Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Lock M. (1996). Deadly difference ideologies and brain death in Japan. In Stuart J, Youngner Laurence J, OConnell Renee C, eds. Organ transplantation convey and realities. Fox. Madison University of Wisconsin Press. Morioka M. (2001). Reconsidering brain death a lesson from Japans fifteen years experience. Hastings Center Report 31, (4), 41-46.Nakata, H. (2009). The Japan Times. Japans funerals deep-rotted mix of ritual, form. Retrieved from http//www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20090728i1.html.Wakabayashi, D., & Sekiguchi, T. (2011). After Flood, Deaths Overpower Ritual. rampart Street Journal.