The Exorcism of Emily Rose Essay

Although demonic possession is not an appealing subject, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, directed by Scott Derrickson, presents many Catholic teachings and is important to watch and understand the reality of the Devil. This movie, in depth, shows the true evilness of the Devil and has many themes that go along with it. So what is it that makes possessed person so scary, its only actor’s right? The reality of demonic possession is so frightening in this film; there is no doubt about the reality of the devil after watching. The reality of the devil is displayed in many ways. For example, one of the most obvious displays is when the lawyer is affected. She goes home to her apartment and the devil starts â€Å"messing† with her, opening doors and intimidating her. Another way that the reality of this exorcism creates horror in the viewers is that it is based on a true story. The girl that was possessed was named Anneliese Michel from Germany. Both of these displays of the reality of the devil show the power of evil as well as the power of the divine. Emily, or Anneliese, is possessed by the devil and her body is taken over, showing this power. These events have many effects on the audience. It makes them think about the reality of possession and challenges them to come to their own understanding about possession. Another effect on the audience is the realization that â€Å"facts† are interpretations and not always concrete. Although the prosecutors brought in doctors to prove the priests neglect, they did not have anything that truly eliminated the supernatural possibility. Another major and important theme in the Exorcism of Emily Rose is the concept of the â€Å"victim soul† and redemption is possible. With this in The Exorcism of Emily Rose, it is seen that the good always overcomes evil. Erin Bruner, the defense lawyer says â€Å"Either these things exist, or they don’t.† This means that she believes it is a fact that if there is a God, there is a devil and if there is a devil, there is a God. This was a good defense because it was an emphasized point that the prosecutor was as methodist, therefore he believes in God, leading to him HAVING to believe in the Devil. The Exorcism of Emily Rose is such a worthwhile film to watch because of its accurate interpretation of the supernatural and evil world. Scott Derrickson developed the reality and conception of the â€Å"victim soul† phemonionally in  this movie. This movie is very important in demonstrating the true evilness of the devil, and true redemption offered by God.

Fast Fashion

Introduction The clothing industry, as one of the most globalizes industries in the world (Fibonacci et al 1994), is currently undergoing a restructuring, especially the fast fashion sector. Fashion markets are synonymous with rapid changes and short product life cycles. Therefore, changes in consumer demand for newness and fashion trend force the emergence of fast fashion' strategy in retailers like Ezra and H;M and shifts in the focus of competitive advantage from price towards quick response.That is to say, clothing firms, which are adopting global or offshore sourcing strategy, are not noninsured to have more competitive advantages as before. However, the question is: should fast fashion retailers adopt quick response strategy instead of overseas sourcing strategy immediately, or adopt both strategies? In the first section, a literature review of the nature of fashion market and related arguments will be introduced. The overseas sourcing strategy and the quick response strategy w ill be explained with examples of existing clothing firms in the second and the third section.The fourth section will compare and contrast the advantage and disadvantages of these two strategies. Combining theoretical knowledge with empirical case studies, it is argued that companies could reach the maximum profit by adopting overseas sourcing strategy as well as quick response strategy. 1 . Literature Review Fashion retailers, such as Ezra, H;M, Benton and Marks ; Spencer have revolutionized the fashion industry by creating a concept of fast fashion'.The change in the culture of fashion from haute couture to fast fashion has attracted numerous researchers to identify and explore the nature of fast fashion market (Tokomak 2008, p. 22, Christopher et al 2004, p. 367, soul and -raccoon 2008, Tactile et al 2008). Accordingly, short life cycles, rapid prototyping and high volatility are identified as the key features of the fashion market. Compared to other industries, apparel product m anufacturing has unique features, for instance, numerous SKIS (stock keeping unit) in a season, hard to estimate customers' demand and wide range of products for basic to fashion items Non 2004).All these unique characteristics require a different approach to production sourcing, Soul and Turn-on (2008) pointed out that fast fashion retailers prefer using an opportunity-pull approach to the traditional designer-push model. By adopting the new approach, retailers could respond to the shifts in the market as quickly as possible. As a result, the more continuous production schedule (eight to twelve fashion ‘seasons') has substituted for the traditional two to four ‘seasons' calendar (Tactile et al 2008, p. 264, Dickens 2011, p. 316).In relation to global production networks, Dickens (2011) identified the ‘core' of a global production network as the circuit of four basic operations, which refers to inputs, transformation, distribution and consumption. Theoretically, th e quicker the production circuit flows, the higher the gross margin the company can gain. When we apply the theory into the clothing industry, the cost of production and the speed to response to changes in consumer demand are equally important. Both of them could contribute to the flow of production circuit.Since numbers of studies have elaborated the benefit of production relocation, the implementation of quick response strategy by fashion retailers has attracted the interest of researchers in recent years (Bristle et al 2003, Perry and Shoal 2000, leer and Bergen 1997). However, results of an exploratory study (Bristle et al 2003) shows that the advantages of quick response strategy have not been fully understood by fashion retailers. They tend to implement quick response strategy for internal supply chain management.Moreover, leer and Bergen (1997) tried to use formal model to examine the impact of quick response strategy on fashion retailers. Although there is companies already adopted both strategies, limited attention has been paid to the combined effect of these two strategies by researchers. Hypothesis: In an era of fast fashion, companies that adopt both global sourcing strategy and quick response strategy have better chance to succeed in the fashion looting market. 2. Cost, the most basic consideration. In order to have higher profit margin, one of the most effective ways is to cut down production costs.In view of the low labor cost in developing countries, global sourcing seems to be a good choice to reduce costs. With the development of global production networks and the increasing competition, fast all fashion clothing firms have shifted their manufacturing operations to low lost locations over the past decades. The shifts in the Shares manufacturer Levi Stratus's global strategy could vividly demonstrate how global sourcing strategy works and affect its supply chain. At first, the company was created in the USA.As it developed and became a global company, they began to employ workers all over the world. However, in face of fierce competition, Levi Strauss started to shift its operation to lower-cost countries in the late sass. By the year 2003, Levi Strauss closed the last four plants in North American and ‘has become an entirely offshore producer' (Dickens 2011 p. 318). The German fashion company Hugo Boss also provides similar example. In face of high production cost, namely high labor cost in domestic market, more and more fashion retailers choose to outsource their production.Moreover, some fast fashion retailers even have no manufacturing competency (Tokomak 2008). The representatives of this kind of retailers are Gap, H&M and Mango. As they do not own any factories, the only way for them do produce their products is outsourcing. The success of these retailers without factories proves the feasibility of global sourcing strategy. By contrast, when most retailers were busy outsourcing their production to lower cost countries, some fast fashion retails still insist on domestic sourcing strategy, for instance, Ezra, Benton and Marks & Spencer.They held the view that ‘market legibility and lean inventories may be more important than cheap labor' (Tokomak 2008). However, could efficiency really overcome the lost in higher production cost? Maybe no one could answer this question. If we take Ezra as an example and find out where Ezra produce the products, we could develop our own view. As a Spanish company owned by Inedited, Ezra produce its products mainly in Spain and Portugal (Wood 2010). Whereas their competitor found suppliers from worldwide low-cost countries, Ezra choose to produce products near its domestic market.That maximizes time efficiency. In fact, the unit labor costs in these two countries were low enough in the sass (Tokomak 2008), therefore, there is no need for Ezra to outsource its productions to other locations. It has the similar competitive advantage as other companies have, besides, by domestic sourcing and producing Just-in-time, Sara's production cycles are much faster than its competitors. In this respect, it is better for Ezra to adopt the domestic sourcing strategy. However, recent years, the geography of Sara's production network has become diverse.Ezra started to outsource and 34 percent of its production was carried out in Asia (Dickens 2011). Similar situation have also occurred in Benton and Marks & Spencer. On one hand, the unit labor cost among European countries has increased in recent years. On the other hand, the supplier firms in countries like Turkey, India and Asia have gained the ability to meet the higher requirement of flexibility and speed. It is inevitable for fast fashion retailers sourcing from these countries. However, companies should also be aware of the potential risks and hidden cost brought by overseas sourcing.Global sourcing strategy requires close coordination of R&D, manufacturing, and marketing activities on a global basis. Managing geographically separated R&D, manufacturing, and marketing activities, those companies face difficult coordination problems of integrating operations and adapting them to different legal, political, and cultural environments in different countries (Daniels et al 2013). Furthermore, separation of manufacturing activities involves an inherent risk that manufacturing in the value chain will gradually becomes neglected.Such neglect can be costly as continued involvement in manufacturing tends to lead to pioneering product design and innovation over time. An effective global sourcing strategy calls for continual forts to streamline manufacturing without sacrificing marketing flexibility. 3. Time, the growing consideration. With the wide spread of fast fashion' principle, fast fashion retailers are aware of the importance of efficiency. They notice that consumer demand is changing more rapidly and customers more discerning about quality and choice.Although a substan tial cost advantage can be gained by adopting overseas sourcing strategy, it cannot compress time in the supply system. To solve this problem, companies tend to choose the quick response strategy, which focuses on providing shorter lead times. According to Bristle et al (2003), quick response strategy was first developed as a result of the need to compete with offshore manufacturers in the USA. The quick response strategy emphasizes on flexibility and product velocity and relies on a measure of trust in sharing information (Barnes and Lea-Greenwood 2006 p. 63). In addition, while maximizing the diversity of products, quick response could minimize lead-times, expenditure, cost and stock of inventory. Quick response is not merely about reducing lead-time by the use of domestic or nearby sourcing strategy, it also involves the ability to gather latest information and use real-time data to understand the needs of the consumers. To some extent, quick response help to shorten the product cycle times and decrease risks and inventories at each stage of manufacturing and retailing operations.The Spanish Ezra, as mentioned before, is ‘an excellent example of a vertically integrated retailer using quick response methods' (Bristle et al 2003). Despite successful application of the concept â€Å"fast fashion† in H;M and Top Shop, Ezra utilizes the â€Å"fast fashion† strategy in all aspects dominant, fast fashion in Ezra meaner, within only two weeks from concept to sales faster than any other company. Unlike most of its competitors, Ezra still produces most of the products in Spain and Portugal and only outsource basic items in lower cost countries.By adopting quick response strategy, Ezra focused on creating a short, flexible, tight and innovative supply chain and tried to balance the higher labor cost by shorter (3-6 weeks) lead times. As a result, Sara's short deliveries have made it ‘as much as 12 times faster than the competition' (Newsweek 2001, p. 36, cited in Tokomak 2008, p. 30). Ezra launches almost 11000 new products in a year, which meaner the update speed is about two or three times a week. In 2005, sales grew by 21 percent over the prior fiscal year in Ezra, which makes Inedited ahead of H&M for the first time (Daniel et al 2013).The good result indicates that domestic sourcing still works as long as the company finds out a way to compensate for the losses in production cost. Having witnessed the successful experience of Ezra, competitors started to follow the lead of Ezra. For instance, Benton now replenishes stores once a week, Forever 21 Inc. And Unique are able to get new products in store thin 6 weeks (Ordered and Johnson 2008). Another example that worth to be mentioned is the Next brand in the ELK. Base on the quick response strategy, the company uses a limited edition approach to accelerate the update speed.Moreover, in order to respond to the changes in demand as soon as possible, next has even purcha sed part of a multi-national clothing supplier to enable constantly changing ranges by reducing lead time (Bristle et al 2003). As we can learn from the case studies, time becomes a priority consideration in the fashion market. The adoption of quick response method should be able to make manufacturer to ‘adjust the reduction of different styles, colors and sizes in response to retail sales during the season' (Seen 2007). 4.Comparison between overseas sourcing strategy and quick response strategy One of the biggest differences is that overseas sourcing strategy uses cost as a competitive weapon while quick response strategy uses time. As we known, both cost and time are the keys for retailers to gain more market share and profit; The dilemma for fast fashion companies is: Whether fashion retailers should outsource production overseas for lower production cost or keep manufacturing nearby to facilitate speed. As highlighted earlier, the fashion market is volatile and unpredictab le.Quick response strategy emerges in such an environment. Compared to overseas sourcing strategy, which faces long transport times and difficulty in controlling over production, quick response strategy enables retailers to cope with uncertainty or changes in the fashion market. On the other hand, although domestic sourcing provides companies from paying for higher logistic cost and other hidden costs, offshore sourcing secures lower cost inputs, (Christopher et al 2004). It is argued that fast fashion companies need to adopt strategies that optimally mix overseas sourcing ND quick response to win the market.The changes occurred in Marks & Spencer over these years could help us understand the advantages and disadvantages of both strategies. As a major British retailer, it chooses to use local suppliers for decades. However, in face of the downward pressure on price, it abandoned its domestic sourcing strategy and started to relocate production overseas (Christopher et al 2006). Acco rdingly, the average hourly labor cost in the I-J is nine times higher than in Morocco and even nineteen times higher than in China, Pakistan and Indonesia.After adopting oversea suppliers, Marks & Spencer on noticed that they overlooked the related problems, such as the cost of transportation, the need to forecast styles, colors and volumes in advance and the risk of stock inventory. Facing the challenge of adopting global sourcing, Marks & Spencer tend to use â€Å"dual supply chains†. By combing global sourcing strategy and quick response strategy, â€Å"fashionable items† are manufactured in locations with a journey time no more than four days.For â€Å"basic items†, for which demand is easier to be predicted, Marks & Spencer continue producing them in lower cost locations (Christopher et al 2006). Likewise, Ezra has also adopted both strategies for its supply chain. Today, price is no longer the determined factor that concerned by customers. Many companies consider not simply price but also quality, reliability, and technology of components and products to be procured. These companies design their sourcing decision on the basis of the interplay between their competitive advantages and the comparative advantages of various sourcing locations for long-term gains.By contrast, they care more about the quality, design and the level of popularity. Therefore, companies have to find the balance between cost and time. If fast fashion tillers make good use of these two strategies, like M&S and Ezra did, the negative effect could be covered to a large extent. Conclusion Volatile markets, short product lifestyles and high product variety are the characteristics of today are clothing industry. This essay mainly discusses the adoption of two common strategies- global sourcing strategy and quick response strategy, in fast fashion clothing sector.Although most companies already have chosen outsourcing strategy to maintain the competitive advantage, t he nature of today's fashion market forces companies to consider the importance of speed and flexibility. The analysis of both strategies with the help of real companies' experience shows that both of them have positive and negative effects on fast fashion retailers. However, overseas sourcing strategy and quick response strategy are not mutually exclusive. In practice, the successful examples of M&S and Ezra have proved the feasibility of combing global sourcing with quick response strategy.

Stages in the marketing research processNike Sprint Ahead of the Essay

Stages in the marketing research processNike Sprint Ahead of the competition - Essay Example The opportunities and threat faced by the company and the scope of market research is being discusses in this case analysis. From the day Nike had its ad campaign with top athletes like John McEnroe, the ads created for Nike have been icons in setting standards for creativity. The Nike should not switch its focus from celebrities to its product. The campaigns were very effective with their image transfer approach, they casually transmits the message that how fashionable and trendy a person can become by buying a pair of Nike. Nike became a self-fulfilling image statement: if you want to be hip, wear Nike; if you are hip, you are probably wearing Nike (1). By focusing on the aura and image conveyed by the celebrity, Nike was able to attract those who wanted the image. Also the advertisements from Nike are very intensely inward focused concepts. It does not focus on the product, but has its entire focus on the person who wears it. The success of Nike in the market can be attributed mainly to its understanding of the consumer psyche. During the fitness crazy 1980s, Nike's campaign was totally tuned to the expectations of the consumers. This kind of understanding of the consumer results from market research. The research Nike should be doing now is a lifestyle study of its consumer to check whether a change approach adopted for advertising. The study that has to be done by Nike is of Descriptive in nature. For the research, the design will be as follows: 1. Interest/ theory - to find out various factors that affect the lifestyle of consumers which has an impact on the purchase of Nike 2. Conceptualization - lifestyle study involves identifying the kinds of products/ services consumed and a relationship with the demographic and psychographic factors. 3. Choice of research method - the research methods that can be used are market survey and unobtrusive methods like content analysis carried out longitudinal and cross-sectional across the target markets. 4. Population and sampling - the population for the study will be all the target markets for Nike across the world and the sample of the study can be selected randomly after segmenting the market into target groups 5. Operationalisation - the survey can be carried out online to elicit responses from various target markets globally. The content analysis can be carried out through observation and comparison of the people who buy Nike and their patterns of purchase 6. Date processing and analysis - after the data is collected a comparison and correlation study of the various factors and the lifestyle of consumers and their perception on Nike can be analyzed. Buyer behavior The Customer Focus(R) 2004: Sporting Goods study(2)by Vertis reveals that price and selection motivate consumer purchases more so than quality in case of athletic footwear. The results of the study show that consumers want choices and variety at a good price. A key tool in influencing buying behavior is advertising inserts and Customer Focus can provide guidance on the best way to use media synergistically. According to the survey, female shoppers with young children (ages 6-11) also see quality as less important than price in terms of being a key factor on why they shop at athletic footwear specialty stores. Price, selections are the key factors which play a more important role in deciding the brand and model for purchase. It is evident from the survey that, the consumers of the

Twitter in Our Life Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Twitter in Our Life - Essay Example To potentially support Twitter’s relevancy toward citizen journalism, one can explore the 2012 presidential campaign between incumbent Barack Obama and new candidate Mitt Romney. On October 30, one month prior to the actual election, analysis of Twitter activity regarding both candidates identified that Romney maintained more negative tweets than his opponent, who ultimately won the election for a second term. Of Romney’s total tweet volume, 34 percent were attributed to negative discussion whilst Obama maintained a 33 percent negative tweet volume (TNS 2012). Analysis of the content of these negative tweets identified that major socio-political topics such as taxation, immorality, worry, and disaster were attributed, in higher volume, toward the loser Romney (TNS). On October 30, one day prior to the aforementioned analysis, mainstream journalism (CNN) had moderated a debate between the two candidates where the moderator inquired of Romney his stance on disaster relief in the wake of a large superstorm that ravaged the U.S. East Coast. Romney on national television indicated that the Federal government should have a limited role in disaster relief to avoid incurring more debt, calling it immoral (Taylor 2012). After these debates, the mainstream Huffington Post maintained a neutral reporting position regarding Romney’s criticisms of immorality and disaster prevailing negative tweets, suggesting that Romney also stated he would ensure adequate funding to America’s FEMA organization to provide such relief.

Interpretative Phenomenological Approach Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Interpretative Phenomenological Approach - Essay Example They found that interactive environmental activities in an outdoor programme had a significant impact on attitudes and that passive instruction had little impact on retention of knowledge. A scale of this type consists of a series of bipolar adjective pairs (e.g. good-bad, beneficial-harmful) listed on opposite sides of a page, with seven spaces in between. The attitude object is identified at the top of the scale and may be a word, statement or picture. The respondent is instructed to evaluate the attitude object by placing a mark in one of the seven spaces between each adjective pair. Development of semantic differential scales stems from the use of theory of reasoned action to investigate science-related attitudes. This is particularly important in the field of Psychology education where behaviour is a clear objective. In their theory, suggest that attitude measures should focus on a person's attitude toward behaviour rather than on the person's attitude toward particular objects. That is, instead of asking about students' attitudes towards the r researchers should assess their attitudes toward learning about the experience. This method is called the Interpretative Phenomenological Method, which is the approach used in this study in analysing the experience of Zoe, a teenager who has been adopted by a family. Interpretative Phenomenological Approach is a method which is considered as consonant with the picture presented above is introduced. Interpretative phenomenological analysis is a method which attempts to tap into a natural propensity for self-reflection on the part of participants (Abraham and Sheeran, 2001). Obviously the degree to which individuals are used to expressing such reflections, orally or in writing, can vary and some people need more encouraging and facilitating than others. But a central premise of the method is allowing participants to tell their own story, in their own words, about the topic under investigation. However, research is not a simple, singular process and the original account from the participant in the form of an interview transcript or diary entry, for example, then needs to be analysed closely by the investigator. Interpretative phenomenological analysis is about attempting to discover meanings, not eliciting facts, but trying to find out what a person's health condition means to them requires considerable interpretative work on the part of the researcher (Abramson et al., 2003). The resultant analytic account can therefore be said to be the joint product of the reflection by both participant and researcher. This study will provide a brief theoretical contextualisation for interpretative phenomenological analysis and then argues for the particular relevance it has for health psychology. It is worth pointing out that this approach aims to have a dialogue with, and to help enlarge, the discipline of psychology not to attack or stand outside it. As will become apparent, interpretative phenomenological analysis can make a valuable contribution in enriching the way mainstream psychology conceives of the individual's experience of adoption. Method The interpretative phenomenological analysis applied to the social psychology as an application to the study on the experience of the subject Zoe as an adopted in a family. The first example is from a study examining how Zoe feels of him being adopted. The project involves analysis of long semi-structured interviews with Zoe. Because the study is

Individual report Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Individual report - Essay Example One realized that it was hard to interact with group members who have met for the first time where no one led the group discussion and no roles were designated. This stage is consistent with Tuckman and Jensen’s forming stage (Tuckman and Jensen 1977). On the second meeting, the group members decided to assign tasks to give everyone a part of the presentation; so we all participated equally. Everyone was happy about the part and roles assigned. We arranged a meeting the week after it so we can add our work together. This stage could be indicative of the storming stage (Tuckman and Jensen 1977) where members realized the need to work and to accomplish the identified goal. No one referenced anything. Some of the group members were getting lazy about the work. It was so disappointing. I believe that this phase is still normal within the group since members expected that other members would perform and there was a wait and see phase. Due to the realization that we needed to accomplish more, during the fourth meeting, we did many things together as a group. The work and cooperation between us was good. All the tasks that were assigned have been prepared and we were ready to practice for the presentation. This stage is consistent with the perform stage of Tuckman and Jensen’s model (Tuckman and Jensen 1977). Everyone was satisfied. It was during the completion as all meetings, and upon realization that when members did the jobs assigned to them, then goals that were initially set were achieved. This state is the adjourning stage where members recognized and was satisfied with the result of the group’s efforts and will surely miss having worked together; but look forward to other group activities in the near future. The success of the teamwork was primarily due to the identification of the members on the need to accomplish the defined goal, which is the

Time management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Time management - Essay Example INTRODUCTION A lot of people often say and wish they had more time. Time is something that is always out of our reach. We need time like we need water and air. But we can never get enough of it. But is this really true? Or is it just we have time but we don’t know how to make the most of it? We have 24 hours a day, 168 hours in a week and about 480 hours a month less 8 hours of average sleep. We just need to manage it properly and make the most of it. TIME MANAGEMENT Considering our time, we have to balance it to 3 major factors namely work, family and pleasure. We see our work differently. To some people, work is drudgery which is a necessary evil (Koscec, n.d.). To others, work means fame and fortune, or a life’s mission and contribution of love (Koscec, n.d.). These differences on how we see work will affect us on how we do our work. Some people see work as joy, as a monotony, and as an escape. But work should truly become love for our family made visible (Koscec, n. d.). This is the means to support them, the means to send the children to school and even to provide their wants. Thus, it is very important to manage our time to do our job effectively. Many people consider family as the one of the most important things in life. However, there are a lot of times that people cannot manage time effectively that they cannot spend more quality time with their families. This greatly affects family relationship. It is very hard to choose which one to prioritize over the other. But I believe that we don’t need to choose, we just need to know how to manage. Aside from family and work, we also have issues on our personal time for leisure and enjoyment. This is the time that we pamper ourselves after all the stress that we got from work or life. Sometimes, we really need to have a good break from all the stress or even just a short time to please ourselves. Guys usually go to the gym or have good drink and poker night with friends. Women usually pampe r themselves to the spa and go shopping. The question is, do we still have time for all of this? Yes, we do. And this is the reason of this paper. Time management is the art of arranging, organizing, scheduling, and  budgeting  one’s time for the purpose of generating more effective work and productivity (www.wisegeek.com, What is Time Management?). Since we live in a busy world, we need time management to do all our tasks and responsibilities. A lot of researches, books, magazines are dedicated to provide the people steps on how to manage their time. It is very important to all of us to be able to manage our time. Our work, family and our happy selves are all waiting for us to spend our time with them. Time Management at Work There are a lot of steps on how to start managing our time. It is just a matter of setting ourselves that we have to be responsible in following the steps and that it is for our own good. We may have a rough start but getting through the ways will m ake us realize the steps are just so easy to do. We just have to put our minds and hearts to it. Here are the steps to follow on how to manage our time at work. Step one, make a plan. According to Christina Crowe (n.d.), setting a time to plan out our day, whether it is going to be in the morning or later at night is a swift start. We should think about the most important tasks that need to get done and how to get them done. It will help to keep us focused on our tasks if we make a detailed plan.

Overview of Information Systems and Technology Essay

Overview of Information Systems and Technology - Essay Example This paper presents a detailed overview of business management technologies for Riordan Manufacturing. Riordan Manufacturing Corporation is now expanding and, as a result, it requires an excellent information technology based support for better management of its business. In fact, information technology based solution (i.e. information system) is the only choice for this kind of business management. This paper outlines specifications of the new information system for Riordan Manufacturing. Business Technology Needs and Solutions Riordan Manufacturing requires an information technology based solution to effectively manage its business operations. The company has different offices located at different locations. The business desires to expand the company’s IT infrastructure by setting up the IT system in new office. The business also requires new technology based systems connectivity to main business head office. For this purpose they need a web based technology that could allow them to assess and manage the business using internet. In this paper, we suggest Riordan Manufacturing to implement a corporate management information system. This kind of information system offers an excellent support for the management of corporate operations and working. In addition, this business also needs to implement a secure communication arrangement. This business network for online communication and collaboration will be a Virtual Private Network (VPN). Management Information System Management information system (MIS) is a combination of software and hardware utilized to handle and process corporate data and information automatically. In fact, a management information system is implemented inside an organization to allow many individuals to access data and information simultaneously. In addition, the MIS mostly works behind the scenes, and the client community is infrequently concerned or even aware of the procedures that are handled by the system (Schauland, 2012; Stair & Reynolds, 2003). MIS at Riordan Manufacturing This section of the paper discusses various uses of a management information system with respect to the business of Riordan Manufacturing. The business can implement an information system to allow its customers to place orders online. In addition, this system also offers an excellent support for the online payment of the bills for instance when a bill is planned to be paid. In this scenario, an MIS will offer us data and information intended for the system to perform against specified plan of payment. The MIS then performs operations according to the payment plan when the suitable date comes near. Additionally, the computerized process will be performed by the information system to disburse the bill as demanded. Moreover, when the bills inside an online bill payment system are planned can be automatically paid, and clients do not need to offer additional details and information. For Riordan Manufacturing Corporation, MIS will offer an excellent support for managing and updating staff details and also their preferred processes to maintain existing systems and applying new technologies inside the firm. An information system can also be used to manage the information regarding available stock. In this scenario,

Nonaligned Movement Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 4000 words

Nonaligned Movement - Essay Example As the world continues to trail towards policies that aim to resolve the problems of capitalist overproduction, there is a growing propensity to establish avenues that will resolve it. These avenues are neo-colonialism, liberalization, trade multi-lateral agreements (i.e. GATT-WTO), and securing the cooperation of third world nations in order for their smooth operation. However, the current global order is also characterized by hard-core terrorism, of which the Muslim fundamentalists are culprits, socialist-led movements that rattle the global system, global poverty, and third world underdevelopment. All of these characterize the politics of the 21st century and NAM's relevance vis--vis all these is the concern of this paper. Today's world politics may be described as turbulent. Turbulent in a sense that problems besetting world imperialism have driven the first world nations to modify certain imperialistic tactics out of a pursuit to dispose effectively their problems of overproduction. The world hegemony has transformed itself into a new pattern, in which although the Cold War has ended for more than fifteen years now, imperialist tactics want to maintain their domination in the world. This is due to the inherent character of the capitalist system in which these states are founded, and the likewise inherent character of the imperialist order to dominate the world economy in the epoch of neo-colonialism. Laying down this position, it is important to link the political schemes of imperialist states with their economic activities since there is a great connection between the two as exemplified by the construct of political economy (Gilpin, 1987). The political pursuits of states in the 21st century are geared towards improving the capitalist market and disentangling themselves from a boom-bust market existence like what Japan has experienced with its Bubble economy during the 90's (Brenner, 2003). This is caused by the very capitalistic character of the system, both locally and globally. The 21st century laissez faire allows industrialized nations to thrive for more lucrative outcomes of globalization, in which all nations, including poor ones, are participants (Bonner, 2004). It may be pointed out that newer and more effective political trends are introduced by the economically leading nations in addressing the boundless problem of economic surpluses, the natural outcomes of unplanned and massive production in the capitalist structure. In resolving this problem, the presence of regional organizations preempts leading nations ion performing unlikely conducts like direct domination, which were the thriving occurrences of the world history in the past (Keohane and Nye, 2004). Regional organization, thus, act like 'world police' that check on the conduct of nations whose 'proper behavior' exemplify their being carriers of democracy. Democracy, being the leading political ideology, has beset a new trend in dealing with world conflicts. Alongside the presence of international organizations that allow nations to become members of the international community, the thriving presence of democracy allows them to bid adieu to the conduct of direct domination prevalent during bygone eras. However, it needs a thorough scrutiny to say that with the new trend of 'world pacification,' only mutual friendship and cooperation exist among states

Sociology of Food Essay Essay Example for Free

Sociology of Food Essay Essay I had never actually given thought to what I ate, who I ate with, and where I ate, till now. I understood that eating was a need henceforth not thought about. The food log assignment has actually open the topic of eating and allowed me to have a different perspective of my eating habits. Food is a form of survival. However it also bring about with it; habits, rituals, and characteristics to its consumers. Before reading Belasco I took eating for granted. I now have begun to see how much food actually does affect our past, present, and our future. The theory of the Food Triangle that Belasco discusses in his book tries to simplify this phenomenon of â€Å"food. † Although simple in form the triangle holds a great weight in meaning. The realization that came to me while reading the chapters and also viewing the hunger planet photo essay, is that I am more a part of the convenience corner of the food triangle. I think this is because of the American culture that I have grown up in. I state this because of the common ideal that â€Å"time is money† which is persistent in our culture. By writing the food log I saw that I seem to always be eating on the go. Whether I stop to get drive thru McDonalds or bring my food with me I am constantly eating alone. This is convenient for me since I have school, work, and a family to balance and eating on the go allows me handle all my responsibilities as a student, an employee, as well as a mother. This may show that we are moving away from the trend of sitting down for meals or even making food part of a social event. The triangle however allows a person or a group to be a part of any combination of the three corners of the triangle which include the responsibility and identity corner as well as the convenience corner. For example for myself I may say I am part of the convenience corner but when it comes to feeding my children I definitely partake in the other two corners. When my schedule allows me to cook for my children the cooking involves more ethnic Salvadoran foods. I also try to include healthier foods such as vegetables and fruits. I may eat fast foods but I hardly ever feed it to my children. This puts me in both the identity corner and responsibility corner of the triangle, since I want my children to taste foods from their heritage as well as try to improve their health by eating better foods. Belasco? s reference that culture is depicted by a cuisine also triggered my interest. Farb and Armelagos comparison between cuisine to a culture’s language states that cuisine like communication is a communication system that’s inherited form birth and will always be a part of that person even if the travel elsewhere. I agree to this point of view but also believe that people adapt to their surroundings. As Dr. Grigorian stated in class food culture is not stagnant we are always evolving and there for our methods of food consumption have changed to. As a first generation Salvadoran-American I have become accustomed to both my heritage foods but the food culture of the U. S. is also a major part of my life. Although it may be a belief that America cannot have a culture because we have no set ? cuisine? I would to tend to disagree because throughout the world the â€Å"American culture† is seen. For example in many of the photographs in, the Times article, Hungry Planet many American items are seen in the pictures, such as Coke. I believe this also helps my idea that the convenience corner of the food triangle comes more into play. I believe the ideology of time is expanding and prepackaged foods are just another way to save time. However not everyone is seen with prepackaged items. This may relate to economic factors and it may be more convenient for some people to use what’s readily available to them rather than to have to travel to acquire the prepackaged items. I do believe that Identity plays a big role of why some communities (cultures) may not use prepackaged items but then again availability of these items might be a greater issue. All in all, the convenience corner seems to be where I stand but that may be because of the culture that I am part of. Identity has a role in my eating habits but honestly the responsibility corner is not something I actually give much thought too. It seems maybe because of where I live that the world around me has about the same connection to the food triangle.

Solar Radio Emissions: Investigating Reactivated Prominences

Solar Radio Emissions: Investigating Reactivated Prominences Madeleine Eve Andrew Johnston Solar Radio Emissions in Investigating Reactivated Prominences Literature Review Abstract Astronomical objects that have a changing magnetic field can produce radio waves, which are the longest waves in the electromagnetic spectrum. By studying the radio waves emitted by the Sun, astronomers can acquire information about its composition, structure and motion. This aim of the present project is to use solar radio emissions produced during the re-activation of prominences in order to investigate possible energy sources for the activation. The purpose of this literature review is to analyse relevant papers on the subject matter that will be covered in this project, and give a summary of the literature in the field, whilst covering the history and importance of the topic, along with what types of instruments can be used to measure radio waves, and how radio waves are useful in studying prominences and their reactivation. 1 Introduction Radio waves are a type of electromagnetic radiation, which is a form of energy produced whenever charged particles are accelerated. They have frequencies from 3kHz to 300GHz, with corresponding wavelengths ranging from just 1mm to 100km. The understanding of solar radio emissions began in 1942, when an English physicist and radio astronomer, James Hey, was tasked to work on radar anti-jamming methods for the military. He had several reports of severe noise jamming of radars signals in the 4-8 meter wavelength range, and after examination, he realised that the direction of maximum interference was coming from the Sun, and concluded that the Sun radiates radio waves (M. Pick, 2008). The observation of solar radio emissions has proved to be a useful tool in our efforts to understand solar physics., In particular solar radio emissions can be used to study local plasma density and magnetic reconnection, which relates to the release, over periods of a few minutes, of magnetic energy stored in the corona and which accompany solar eruption events like prominences which this project will be focusing on. In addition, radio wave emissions from solar flares offer several unique diagnostic tools which can be used to investigate energy release (A. O. Benz; 2005), plasma heating, particle acceleration, and particle transport in magnetized plasmas. A Solar flare is an observed sudden flash of brightness over the Sun’s surface or the solar limb, powered by magnetic reconnection. Scientists study the Sun through radio emissions and other electromagnetic emissions and this has an additional advantage in that it provides a better understanding other stars, and the important processes they have to offer, such as nuclear fusion, which is a potential alternative energy source scientists have been trying to recreate on Earth for decades. The study of prominences and other eruptive events is important for providing an insight into the mechanics of the interior of the Sun, and also to assist us in the prediction of ‘space weather,’ which can effect satellites, and the Earth’s atmosphere and magnetic field. A solar prominence is a large, bright, gaseous feature that is anchored to the surface of the Sun in the photosphere, and extends outwards into the Sun’s corona in a loop shape. Solar prominences are made from plasma that is roughly 100 times cooler and denser than the plasma in the corona and so, when viewed with the sun as a backdrop, they appear dark, and are referred to as ‘filaments.’ They can last for several months, and are held in place above the Suns surface by strong magnetic fields. The exact composition of prominences is currently unknown, but it has been proposed that they are made up of roughly 10% helium and 90% hydrogen. Solar prominences, like other erupting projectiles, are useful to observe as they are good indicators of the magnetic field pattern of the sun, since they lie above the magnetic neutral lines. There are two basic types of prominences: quiescent and active-region prominences. Quiescent prominences are typically larger than active-region prominences, and also extend further into the corona, often reaching up to and over 30 000 kilometres above the Sun’s corona (T. E. Berger, 2012). In addition, quiescent prominences have a magnetic field of roughly 0.5-1mT, allowing them to extend further from the surface of the Sun than active-region prominences, which are much smaller, have much larger magnetic fields of around 2 – 20mT, and mostly do not travel over 30 000km. This project will largely be focusing on Quiescent prominences, as, extending further away from the Sun, they are easier to study using radio waves. Prominences are always projected from filament channels, which are along polarity inversion lines; where the magnetic field is highly non-potential (J. Chaf, 2005). These channels are the source of all major solar eruptions, such as coronal mass ejections and flares. The temperature of a prominence that hasn’t erupted, is typically , and these often appear as a long horizontal sheet of plasma. Several different models have been proposed in order to explain how cool, dense objects like prominences can be supported and thermally isolated from the surrounding hot coronal plasma. It is generally accepted that these models can generally be placed into one of two main categories: dip models, and flux rope models (for example: D. H. Mackay, 2010, D. J. Schmit, 2013, P. F. Chen; 2008). The main similarity between dip models and flux rope models is the suggested existence of concave-upward directed magnetic fields to support the prominence plasma against the downward gravitational force. Following this mechanism, it can be assumed that the plasma in a prominence is frozen to the magnetic field lines. Prominence plasma, however, is actually only partially ionised, and so it is not entirely clear how the non-ionized portion of plasma is supported, and how rapidly the neutral material might drain across the magnetic field lines. Scientists are still researching how and why prominences are formed, and the cause for their reactivation. The models proposing how prominences are supported are vital in understanding their formation and reactivation. 2 Radio Emissions with Prominences Measurable coherent radio emissions occur during flares, and are intermittent and in bursts, driven by the magnetic reconnection process, giving them the term ‘radio burst.’ Previous experiments (J. P. Raulin; 2005, J. P. wild; 1956, R. F. Wilson; 1989, G. Swarup; 1959) in measuring radio emissions produced from prominences have found that Type I bursts are predominantly emitted, Type I being characterised by their long lifespan lasting from hours to days, having a frequency of 80-200mHz with corresponding wavelengths of roughly 2m, and being produced by electrons with a charge of several keV within coronal loops. Moving Type IV radio bursts are also associated with prominence eruptions, these last from half an hour to 2 hours, with a frequency of 20-400MHz, and a corresponding wavelength range of 1 to several meters. As mentioned in the introduction, scientists can use radio waves to gain an insight into how plasmas behave during the prominence eruption process. This can be done through magnetohydrodynamics (MHD), which is the study of the dynamics of electrically conducting fluids. Scientists have previously used MHD equations in investigations to understand the formation and reactivation of prominences (J. A. Linker; 2001, D.J. Schmit;2013, G. P. Zhou;2006, A. K. Srivastava; 2013). An investigation using SDO/AIA (T. E. Berger; 2012) on the formation of prominences produced a series of images that showed the reactivation of a prominence. The sequence showed that after a prominence has completed its eruptive cycle, it slowly disappears due to drainage and the lateral transport of plasma, and a bright emission cloud forms in the upper regions of the coronal cavity. The cloud descends towards the lower region of the cavity while successively becoming brighter, and a new prominence then forms, rapidly growing in both the vertical and horizontal dimensions. The new prominence is the reactivated old prominence. The coronal cavity core in the image then grows darker as the reactivated prominence continues to grow. The reactivated prominence reaches its maximum size after a number of hours, and the emission cloud in the cavity reduces correspondingly. Using the time sequence of images from this T. E. Bergers paper, an idea of what to search for in data to find reactivat ed prominences can be formed. Work has been performed (by C. Chifor; 2006; D. H. Mackay; 2010, D. J. Schmit, 2013) which also investigates how prominences are formed, concluding that reconnection events trigger different phases in prominence eruption. The flux rope model discussed earlier has been found to be a good model in several investigations (S. E. Gibson; 2006, P. F. Chen; 2008, G. P. Zhou, 2006). Helical field lines provide a support for the mass of the prominence, and are capable of storing the magnetic energy needed to propel the prominence. A coronal flux rope can be interpreted as a magnetic structure which consists of field lines that intricately twist around each other a number of times between the two ends that are anchored to the photosphere. Studies mentioned earlier involving MHD have been found to support the flux rope model, making the model a good investigation point for the project. Further research has been carried out into the cause of reactivated prominences (R. F. Wilson; 1989), producing evidence that suggests that as the initial prominence dissipates, a ‘feed-back’ mechanism occurs, during which interactions of the large scale loops trigger burst activity in lower lying loops. 3 Instruments There are two main types of instruments that can be used to observe objects in the radio wave portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, the type selected for use depending on the strength of the signal and the amount of detail needed. The first type of instrument comprises radio telescopes, which are a form of directional radio antenna. As the range of frequencies in the radio wave portion of the electromagnetic spectrum is very large, there are a variety of different antennae that are used in radio telescopes, differing in their size, design and configuration. When measuring wavelengths of 30-3 meters, the radio telescopes use either directional antenna arrays, or large stationary reflectors with moveable focal points. At shorter wavelengths dish style radio telescopes are more largely used. The second type of instrument comprises radio interferometers, which are made up of arrays of telescopes or mirror segments. The main benefit of using a radio interferometer is that the angular resolution is similar to that of a radio telescope with a large aperture, however, radio interferometers do not collect as many photons as radio telescopes, and they cannot detect objects that are too weak. However, an array of telescopes will provide very good resolution as a result of aperture synthesis. Aperture synthesis is an imaging process that mixes signals from the array of telescopes to produce images with an angular resolution equivalent to that of a single instrument with a diameter equal to the overall size of the array of telescopes. This makes it easy to obtain high resolution images of the Sun. SDO/AIA EUV Several different types of data that can be used to review the radio emissions of the Sun in order to extract information on prominences have been researched. The first is SDO/AIA EUV data; SDO being the Solar Dynamics Observatory, which is a NASA mission that has been observing the Sun since 2010. The goal of the SDO is to understand the influence of the sun on the Earth and close space by studying the solar atmosphere over time and space in many wavelengths at the same time. Currently, investigations are focused on how the Suns magnetic field is generated and structured, and how the stored magnetic energy is converted and released into the heliosphere and geospace in the form of solar wind, energetic particles, and variations in solar radiance, which is the measure of the power per unit area on the Earth’s surface. The SDO uses the Atmosphere Imaging Assembley (AIA), an instrument which provides continuous full-observations of the solar chromosphere and corona in seven extreme ultraviolet channels. The AIA is comprised of four telescopes providing individual light feeds to the instrument. The Extreme Ultraviolet Experiment (EUV) is the instrument that measures the Sun’s extreme ultraviolet irradiance, and incorporates physics based models in order to further understand the relationship between EUV variations and magnetic variation changes in the Sun (N. Labrosse, 2011). Fig 1. This image is an example of SDO/AIA data, taken from (T. E. Berger; 2012) from a time sequence which investigates the radio emissions from the Sun leading up to the reactivation of a prominence event. Using the data produced by the two, an image can be created of the Sun that combines physical processes such as prominences, with information on the magnetic field at the time. An example is shown in ‘Fig 1’ above, which shows a reactivated prominence eruption and its corresponding radio emission in the form of a cross-sectional image of the surface of the Sun. Data collected from the AIA has been made public through online databases, providing a ready set of images and films that can be analysed in order to observe prominences and their reactivation for this project. NoRH The second type of data that will be focused on in order to infer radio emissions from the Sun is Nobeyama Radioheliograph data. The Nobeyama Radioheliograph is an array of 84 antennas dedicated for solar observation at the Nobeyama Radio Observatory, located in the Japanese Alps, and was constructed with the purpose of observing the Sun, using non-thermal emissions in particular. The Nobeyama Radioheliograph is a radio interferometer, and the original data comprises sets of correlation values of all the combination of antennas. The antennas correspond to the spatial Fourier components of the brightness distribution of the solar disk. The Nobeyama Radioheliograph is particularly useful in studying prominences (M. Shimojo, 2005), as due to its large daily observation window, combined with the low time resolution of 1 second, and a spatial resolution of roughly 13†, it can produce highly dynamic images. Even though the NoRH is ground based, the consequences of the surrounding weather conditions are minimal compared to that of other ground based observations, and observations can take place even in turbulent unclear weather. NoRH has also developed an automatic detection method, the most important factor in using the instrument to detect prominences, as data will be recorded automatically when there is an eruptive projectile. However, due to the limited time resolution and the field of view, NoRH cannot detect vary fast or very slow eruptive events, simultaneous events, and events where the structure has a weak brightness. Fig 2 This is an image taken by the NoRH (M. Shimojo) which is an example of a prominence eruption, recorded by the automatic limb detection method. The panels are negative images, so the dark region indicates the high temperature. NoRH uses the radio interferometer to create images of the Sun such as in ‘Fig 2,’ which is an example of use of the automatic limb detection method to record images of prominence eruption. Data recorded from the NoRH automatic limb detector has also been made public through online databases, giving a further set of images that can be analysed in order to extract information on prominences and their reactivation. 4 Conclusion The topics covered in the papers that were researched lead to an adequate proposal of how to investigate the reactivation of prominences. Using NoRH and AIA data from SDO, the radio bursts emitted during the collapse and reformation of a prominence, an idea of what causes the reformation can be found. The investigation will centre on the different models, primarily the magnetic flux rope model, and the magnetohydrodynamics behind them that have been proposed for the formation of prominences, and how these models could support the ‘feed-back’ theory. 5 References J. P. Wild, H. Zirin. On the Association of Solar Radio Emission and Solar Prominences (1956) 320, 322, 323 G. Swarup, P. H. Stone, A. Maxwell. The Association of Solar Radio Bursts With Flares and Prominences. Radio Astronomy Station of Harvard College Observatory (1959) 725,726 R. F. Wilson, K. R. Lang. Impulsive Microwave Burst amd Solar Noise Storm Emission Resolved with the VLA. Department of Physics and Astronomy (1989) 856, 864, 866 J. A. Linker, R. Lionello, Z. Mikic. Magnetohydrodynamic Modeling of Prominence Formation with a Helmet Streamer. Science Applications International, California (2001) A. O. Benz, H. Perret, P. Saint-Hilaire, P. Zlobec. Extended Decimeter Radio Emission After Large Solar Flares. Institute of Astronomy, Switzerland (2005) 954, 955 J. Chaf, Y. Moon, Y. Park. The Magnetic Structure of Filament Barbs. (2005) 574-578 J. P. Raulin, A. A. Pacini. Solar Radio Emissions. Universidade Presbiteria Mackenzie (2005) 741-745 M. Shimoji, T. Yokoyama, A.Asai, H. Nakajima, K. Shibasaki. One Solar-Cycle Observations of Prominence Activities Using the Nobeyama Radioheliograph 1992-2004. University of Tokyo, School of Science (2005) 85, 86 S. E. Gibson, Y. Fan. Coronal Prominence Structure and Dynamics: A Magnetic Flux Rope Interpretation (2006) 1-5 G. P. Zhou, J. X. Wang, J. Zhang. Two Successive Coronal Mass Ejections Drivin by the Kink and Drainage Instabilities of an Eruptive Prominence (2006) 1244 C. Chifor, H. E. Mason, D. Tripathi, H. Isobe, A. Asai. The Early Phases of a Solar Prominence Eruption and Associated Flare: a Multi-Wavelength Analysis. Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, Centre for Mathematical Sciences (2006) 966-968 P. F. Chen, D. E. Innes, S. K. Solanki, SOHO/SUMER Observations of Prominence Oscillations Before Eruption. Department of Astronomy, Nanjing University (2008) 4,5 M. Pick, N. Vilmer. Sixty-five years of Solar Radioastronomy: Flares, Coronal Mass Ejections and Sun-Earth Connection. Astron Astrophys Rev (2008) 6,7 D.H. Mackay, J.T. Karpen, J.L. Ballester, B. Schmieder, G. Aulanier. Physics of Solar Prominences: II – Magnetic Structure and Dynamics. Springer Science and Business Media (2010) 335-338 N. Labrosse, K. McGlinchey. Plasma Diagnostics in Eruptive Prominences from SDO/AIA Observations at 304 A. University of Glasgow (2011) 2-4 T. E. Berger, W. Liu, B. C. Low, SDO/AIA Detection of Solar Prominence Formation Within a Coronal Cavity. National Solar Observatory (2012) 1-4 D. J. Schmit, S. Gibson, M. Luna, J. Karpen, D. Innes. Prominence Mass Supply and the Cavity. Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (2013) 1-5 A. K. Srivastava, B. N. Dwivedi, M. Kumar. Observations of Intensity Oscillaations in a Prominence-Like Cool Loop System as Observed by SDO/AIA: Evidence of Multiple Harmonics of Fast Magnetoacousic Waves (2013) 31

Depression in Teenagers: A Growing Problem Essay -- Essays Papers

Depression in Teenagers: A Growing Problem Who has not, at some time or another, said, â€Å"I am depressed?† It is a line that slips off the tongue of people all too readily when they are bored or unhappy. But most people, when they say that, do not mean that they are clinically depressed, possibly wanting or needing treatment. Sadness is unpleasant but it is not as bad as depression. When people are sad, they keep their self-respect and they feel better after a good cry or a talk with a friend. When people are depressed, self-respect fades, crying does not help at all, and people who are depressed feel alienated around others because they feel like no one understands what they are going through (Brenton 67). Depression is a serious, life-threatening illness that affects approximately thirty million Americans (Brenton 3). Age, race, religion, or educational background is not a factor. Depression strikes anyone at anytime. However, the biggest rise in depression today is in teenagers. Depression in adults is a sad, lonely, and sometimes tragic experience (Cytryn & McKnew, 17). In teenagers it can be even more devastating. Depression gets in the way of teenager’s daily lives. The years of adolescence are supposed to be the â€Å"best years of their lives† and depression robs them of those years. How can life be fun when problems interfere with social life or schoolwork? Teenagers need to know that they cannot simply ignore their symptoms. They need to get help because without the proper help, depression leads to suicide (Bender 70). There are two sides in the current controversy over depression. Some experts believe that depression is an illness while others believe that teenagers are simply making themselves fee... ...talk to. It always helps to discuss problems with someone else. I believe that if a person knows someone who has two or more of the symptoms of depression they should get that person help, before it is too late. Today’s teenagers are the future of our world. Teenagers that are depressed find everything in life to be more complicated and that is simply no way to live. Works Cited Bender, David L. Suicide: Opposing Viewpoints. 1999. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2004. Brenton, Sue. Depression. 1996. Rockport: Element Books, 2000 Cohen-Sandler, Roni, Ph.D. â€Å"Do you need a therapist?† Seventeen Dec. 2004: 95. Cytryn, Leon M.D., and Donald McKnew M.D. Growing Up Sad. 1996. Washington: Norton & Company, 1999. Depression in Teenagers. November 2003. Hearts and Minds Network. 8 November 2004 http://www.heartsandminds.org/self/depression.html>.

Gun Control Essay -- essays research papers fc

The Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights gives people the right to keep and bear arms. The ideas of setting strict laws that allow only hunting rifle use, and laws that allow more freedom has been argued over for many years. The best argument protecting the Second Amendment is that people have more security when possessing a gun. Although this is possibly true, gun control provides much more than comfort for the people. The second amendment has some benefits, but many dangers also come with having the right to own a gun. One of these dangers includes violence and death with our youth. If Gun Control laws are put into action, they will help prevent deaths of innocent people who carry guns. Gun Control will also help prevent terrorism against us or anyone else with the terrorists using guns from our own country. Gun control will also help prevent robberies and other treacherous hostage situations. In order to shelter the populace of the United States, we have an obligation as voting citizens to enact a strict Gun Control law ridding all weapons, except for hunting rifles, from public use. According to the NCVS (National Crime Victimization Survey) the fifty-four and a half percent of people that threaten an attacker with a gun are more likely to get a gun drawn out in return. The other percentage of the victims who use self-protection or do not do anything have a much better chance of getting away without the attacker pulling out a gun (Gun). Under a strict Gun Control law, when a holdup happens, the attacker is less likely to have a gun, and even if the attacker did somehow obtain a firearm, the victim would not have one to use carelessly and get himself killed. Crimes with Gun Control will be much less violent for the people that obey the law, and most criminals will be deterred from even attempting a crime if they cannot buy a gun. Similarly, Gun Control will help prevent terrorism of this country. Terrorism, now a big issue for the United States, can be prevented in many cases if Gun Control laws are put into affect. Many terrorists use easily concealed guns that come from the United States, getting the guns from either exportation or in the country. America cannot suffer as a victim of many more terrorist attacks, and Gun Control laws will help filter out terrorist attacks. Research done by the ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms) shows that ... ...n our country and others. Gun Control will help protect the guiltless people of our nation from violent attacks and robbery. The best thing Gun Control will prevent is violence with our youth because Americans need to preserve the lives of the next generations to come. Controlling handguns means that everyone and their friends can enjoy life more without worrying about being held up at AM-PM, or being caught up in the middle of a very dangerous terrorist attack. When deciding on gun control, think first about preserving the safety of the citizens of this nation. Works Cited Buchanan, John M. â€Å"Gun Play† Christian Century   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  17 May 2003: 3 â€Å"Brady Campaign.† Brady Campaign   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   12 Oct. 2003. â€Å"Calm Before The Storm The Littleton School Massacre† Court TV’s Crime Library   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   12 Oct. 2003. â€Å"Is a Gun an Effective Means of Self-Defense?† Guncite   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   12 Oct. 2003. â€Å"CNN- State by State Look at Gun Laws in the U.S.† CNNi   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   12 Oct. 2003. â€Å"HELP Network – Firearm Injury Prevention State Status Report† Help Network   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   12 Oct. 2003.

History of Australian Cattle Dogs :: essays papers

History of Australian Cattle Dogs The Australian Cattle Dog was originally born in Australia. It was bred to help outback ranchers round up their cattle and to withstand the harsh outback conditions. The breed is loyal and devoted to its owner. The joy of owning an Australian Cattle Dog directly relates to the breed origin, why it was bred, the general appearance, its unique traits, simple diet and easy health care. According to Katherine Buetow in â€Å" The History of the Australian Cattle Dog† she states, â€Å"There is continuing controversy over which breeds were actually used in its development. One of the difficulties in researching the history of this breed is that there was a lot of experimentation going on in trying to find the perfect combination of dogs to make up the ultimate heeler that could live and work in the Australian outback †( 1). The Australian Cattle Dog was thoughtfully blended with several different dogs including the dingo, which is native to Australia, to heard cattle for ranchers on the Australian outback. Originally, ranchers let their cattle roam the outback for months or even years to fatten up before rounding them up and taking them to the market for sell. Since this round up could consist of hundreds of miles, they needed a dog that could go with them and survive the round up. This is when the Australian Cattle Dog was born (Sunset 1). The â€Å"Australian Cattle Dog† describes the breed as a unique blend of five different dogs. The breeds are the smooth-coated collie, Dalmatian, kelpie, dingo, and the bull terrier. This diversified blend that makes up the Australian Cattle Dog was obtained by many years of trial and error. There are the blue and red varieties called the Heeler or the Queensland Heeler. The heeler breed is designed to work with cattle, sheep, hogs, and fowl (Beauchamp 10). The trainability of the Australian Cattle Dog is a reflection of its intelligence and strong desire to please their owner. The breed can be taught to work without their owner’s supervision. They can also evaluate and solve complex situations on their own. The Australian Cattle Dog owner knows the breed for its incredible stamina, intelligence, and loyalty. This is why the Australian Cattle Dog naturally takes upon itself to be not only a protector but also a companion (Beauchamp 30). History of Australian Cattle Dogs :: essays papers History of Australian Cattle Dogs The Australian Cattle Dog was originally born in Australia. It was bred to help outback ranchers round up their cattle and to withstand the harsh outback conditions. The breed is loyal and devoted to its owner. The joy of owning an Australian Cattle Dog directly relates to the breed origin, why it was bred, the general appearance, its unique traits, simple diet and easy health care. According to Katherine Buetow in â€Å" The History of the Australian Cattle Dog† she states, â€Å"There is continuing controversy over which breeds were actually used in its development. One of the difficulties in researching the history of this breed is that there was a lot of experimentation going on in trying to find the perfect combination of dogs to make up the ultimate heeler that could live and work in the Australian outback †( 1). The Australian Cattle Dog was thoughtfully blended with several different dogs including the dingo, which is native to Australia, to heard cattle for ranchers on the Australian outback. Originally, ranchers let their cattle roam the outback for months or even years to fatten up before rounding them up and taking them to the market for sell. Since this round up could consist of hundreds of miles, they needed a dog that could go with them and survive the round up. This is when the Australian Cattle Dog was born (Sunset 1). The â€Å"Australian Cattle Dog† describes the breed as a unique blend of five different dogs. The breeds are the smooth-coated collie, Dalmatian, kelpie, dingo, and the bull terrier. This diversified blend that makes up the Australian Cattle Dog was obtained by many years of trial and error. There are the blue and red varieties called the Heeler or the Queensland Heeler. The heeler breed is designed to work with cattle, sheep, hogs, and fowl (Beauchamp 10). The trainability of the Australian Cattle Dog is a reflection of its intelligence and strong desire to please their owner. The breed can be taught to work without their owner’s supervision. They can also evaluate and solve complex situations on their own. The Australian Cattle Dog owner knows the breed for its incredible stamina, intelligence, and loyalty. This is why the Australian Cattle Dog naturally takes upon itself to be not only a protector but also a companion (Beauchamp 30).

Nutrition and Body Essay

All macromolecules are essential to the body. One has to have the right amount of all of the macromolecules in order to be healthy. It is believed that high protein diets with carbohydrate restriction causes weight loss. However as a result of high protein diet, one damages his/her kidney which is responsible for filtering proteins from blood. In the article, Janine says, â€Å"If you eat too much proteins and not enough carbs you can ruin your kidneys forever.† I agree with Janine, one has to have enough carbohydrates. Carbohydrates are important in the body as they provide energy for short term storage. However if one does not have enough carbohydrates in his/her diet, it affects the brain. Glucose from carbs is the fuel that brain uses to produce energy that moves and motivates one therefore one has to have glucose in the body. Mitchell has this misunderstanding about carbs and fat. Mitchell thinks that if one cuts down on carbs, he/she is actually training the body to burn fat instead. Fats and carbohydrates are two different things. If one is gaining weight, that’s because of calories. The amount of calories one takes causes obesity. Obesity is linked with poor body image. A positive body image is maintained by eating foods that contain fewer calories in it. A person’s weight is affected by genetic inheritance, nutrition and physical activity. Perceived body size is affected by media, puberty, and peer groups. All these factors affect body weight and perceived body size. Metabolism refers to all chemical processes that go on continuously inside the body. The amount of kilojoules your body burns at any given time is affected by your metabolism. Thyroid gland located below the larynx produces thyroid hormone which controls metabolism, growth, body temperature, muscle strength and appetite. Homeostasis is the process used by the body to maintain a stable internal environment. Hormonal regulation of metabolism such as when blood sugar levels rise in the body, insulin is secreted by the pancreas to covert glucose into glycogen, and when sugar levels in blood fall, glucagon is secreted by the pancreas to convert glycogen into glucose. If people have high blood sugar, they get diabetes. If people have low blood sugars, they get headaches, hunger, pale skin etc. Maintaining a normal blood sugar level is very important in the body. In the article, Mitchell says, â€Å"I get pretty hungry and I was getting headaches.† I think it’s because of having low blood sugar level. Mitchell has high  insulin and less glucagon hormone in the body. The advice I would give to Mitchell is to stop dieting and eat healthy foods that contain fewer calories. Mitchell needs to have physical exercises, healthy foods and self-concept.

Ulrich Beck

Sociology http://soc. sagepub. com Beck's Sociology of Risk: A Critical Assessment Anthony Elliott Sociology 2002; 36; 293 DOI: 10. 1177/0038038502036002004 The online version of this article can be found at: http://soc. sagepub. com/cgi/content/abstract/36/2/293 Published by: http://www. sagepublications. com On behalf of: British Sociological Association Additional services and information for Sociology can be found at: Email Alerts: http://soc. sagepub. com/cgi/alerts Subscriptions: http://soc. sagepub. com/subscriptions Reprints: http://www. agepub. com/journalsReprints. nav Permissions: http://www. sagepub. com/journalsPermissions. nav Citations (this article cites 6 articles hosted on the SAGE Journals Online and HighWire Press platforms): http://soc. sagepub. com/cgi/content/refs/36/2/293 Downloaded from http://soc. sagepub. com by Madhu Menon on September 24, 2007  © 2002 BSA Publications Ltd.. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. 022761 Elliott 13/5/2002 9:49 am Page 293 Risk Society Sociology Copyright  © 2002 BSA Publications Ltd ®Volume 36(2): 293–315 [0038-0385(200205)36:2;293–315;022761] SAGE Publications London,Thousand Oaks, New Delhi Beck’s Sociology of Risk: A Critical Assessment s Anthony Elliott University of the West of England AB ST RAC T The German sociologist Ulrich Beck has elaborated a highly original formulation of the theory of risk and re? exive modernization, a formulation that has had a signi? cant impact upon recent sociological theorizing and research. This article examines Beck’s sociology of risk in the context of his broader social theory of re? xivity, advanced modernization and individualization. The article argues that Beck’s work is constrained by several sociological weaknesses: namely, a dependence upon objectivistic and instrumental models of the social construction of risk and uncertainty in social relations, and a failure to adequately de? ne the relations between institutional dynamism on the one hand and self-referentiality and critical re? ection on the other. As a contribution to the reformulation and further development of Beck’s approach to sociological theory, the article seeks to uggest other ways in which the link between risk and re? exivity might be pursued. These include a focus upon (1) the intermixing of re? exivity and re? ection in social relations; (2) contemporary ideologies of domination and power; and (3) a dialectical notion of modernity and postmodernization. K E Y WORDS domination / modernity / postmodernity / re? exivity / risk / social theory A s competent re? ective agents, we are aware of the many ways in which a generalized ‘climate of risk’ presses in on our daily activities.In our dayto-day lives, we are sensitive to the cluster of risks that affect our relations with the self, with others, and with the broader culture. We are specialists in carving out ways of coping and managing risk, whether this be through active engagement, resigned acceptance or confused denial. From dietary concerns to 293 Downloaded from http://soc. sagepub. com by Madhu Menon on September 24, 2007  © 2002 BSA Publications Ltd.. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. 022761 Elliott 294 13/5/2002 Sociology 9:49 am Volume 36 s Page 294 Number 2 sMay 2002 prospective stock market gains and losses to polluted air, the contemporary risk climate is one of proliferation, multiplication, specialism, counterfactual guesswork, and, above all, anxiety. Adequate consideration and calculation of risktaking, risk-management and risk-detection can never be fully complete, however, since there are always unforeseen and unintended aspects of risk environments. This is especially true at the level of global hazards, where the array of industrial, technological, chemical and nuclear dangers that confront us grows, and at an alarming rate.Indeed the Germa n sociologist, Ulrich Beck (1996a), de? nes the current situation as that of ‘world risk society’. The rise of risk society, Beck argues, is bound up with the new electronic global economy – a world in which we live on the edge of high technological innovation and scienti? c development, but where no one fully understands the possible global risks and dangers we face. My aim in this article is to explore some of the issues that concern the relation between risk and society by focusing on the work of Beck.A profoundly innovative and imaginative social theorist, Beck has developed powerful analyses of the ways in which the rise of the risk society is transforming social reproduction, nature and ecology, intimate relationships, politics and democracy. 1 It is necessary to state at the outset that I am not seeking in this article to provide a general introduction to Beck’s work as a whole. Rather, I shall offer a short exposition of Beck’s risk society thesis, in conjunction with his analysis of re? exivity and its role in social practices and modern institutions. The econd, more extensive half of the article is then critical and reconstructive in character. I try to identify several questionable social-theoretic assumptions contained in Beck’s risk society thesis, as well as limitations concerning his analysis of re? exivity, social reproduction and the dynamics of modernity. In making this critique, I shall try to point, in a limited and provisional manner, to some of the ways in which I believe that the themes of risk and social re? exivity can be reformulated and, in turn, further developed in contemporary sociological analysis.Outline of the Theory Let me begin by outlining the central planks of Beck’s social theory. These can be divided into three major themes: (1) the risk society thesis; (2) re? exive modernization; and (3) individualization. The Risk Society Thesis From his highly in? uential 1986 volume Ris k Society through to Democracy without Enemies (1998) and World Risk Society (1999b), Beck has consistently argued that the notion of risk is becoming increasingly central to our global society. 2 As Beck (1991: 22–3) writes: Downloaded from http://soc. agepub. com by Madhu Menon on September 24, 2007  © 2002 BSA Publications Ltd.. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. 022761 Elliott 13/5/2002 9:49 am Page 295 Beck’s sociology of risk Elliott [T]he historically unprecedented possibility, brought about by our own decisions, of the destruction of all life on this planet †¦ distinguishes our epoch not only from the early phase of the Industrial Revolution but also from all other cultures and social forms, no matter how diverse and contradictory.If a ? re breaks out, the ? re brigade comes; if a traf? c accident occurs, the insurance pays. This interplay between before and after, between security in the here-and-now and security i n the future because one took precautions even for the worst imaginable case, has been revoked in the age of nuclear, chemical and genetic technology. In their brilliant perfection, nuclear power plants have suspended the principle of insurance not only in the economic but also in the medical, psychological, cultural, and religious sense.The ‘residual risk society’ is an uninsured society, in which protection, paradoxically, decreases as the threat increases. For Beck, modernity is a world that introduces global risk parameters that previous generations have not had to face. Precisely because of the failure of modern social institutions to control the risks they have created, such as the ecological crisis, risk rebounds as a largely defensive attempt to avoid new problems and dangers. Beck contends that it is necessary to separate the notion of risk from hazard or danger.The hazards of pre-industrial society – famines, plagues, natural disasters – may or m ay not come close to the destructive potential of technoscience in the contemporary era. Yet for Beck this really is not a key consideration in any event, since he does not wish to suggest that daily life in today’s risk society is intrinsically more hazardous than in the pre-modern world. What he does suggest, however, is that no notion of risk is to be found in traditional culture: pre-industrial hazards or dangers, no matter how potentially catastrophic, were experienced as pre-given.They came from some ‘other’ – gods, nature or demons. With the beginning of societal attempts to control, and particularly with the idea of steering towards a future of predictable security, the consequences of risk become a political issue. This last point is crucial. It is societal intervention – in the form of decision-making – that transforms incalculable hazards into calculable risks. ‘Risks’, writes Beck (1997: 30), ‘always depend on d ecisions – that is, they presuppose decisions’.The idea of ‘risk society’ is thus bound up with the development of instrumental rational control, which the process of modernization promotes in all spheres of life – from individual risk of accidents and illnesses to export risks and risks of war. In support of the contention that protection from danger decreases as the threat increases in the contemporary era, Beck (1994) discusses, among many other examples, the case of a lead crystal factory in the former Federal Republic of Germany. The factory in question – Altenstadt in the Upper Palatinate – was prosecuted in the 1980s for polluting the atmosphere.Many residents in the area had, for some considerable time, suffered from skin rashes, nausea and headaches, and blame was squarely attributed to the white dust emitted from the factory’s smokestacks. Due to the visibility of the pollution, the case for damages against the factory was imagined, by many people, to be watertight. Downloaded from http://soc. sagepub. com by Madhu Menon on September 24, 2007  © 2002 BSA Publications Ltd.. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. 295 022761 Elliott 296 13/5/2002 Sociology 9:49 am Volume 36 s Page 296Number 2 s May 2002 However, because there were three other glass factories in the area, the presiding judge offered to drop the charges in return for a nominal ? ne, on the grounds that individual liability for emitting dangerous pollutants and toxins could not be established. ‘Welcome to the real-life travesty of the hazard technocracy! ’ writes Beck, underlining the denial of risks within our cultural and political structures. Such denial for Beck is deeply layered within institutions, and he calls this ‘organized irresponsibility’ – a concept to which we will return.The age of nuclear, chemical and genetic technology, according to Beck, unleashes a destruction of the calculus of risks by which modern societies have developed a consensus on progress. Insurance has been the key to sustaining this consensus, functioning as a kind of security pact against industrially produced dangers and hazards. 3 In particular, two kinds of insurance are associated with modernization: the private insurance company and public insurance, linked above all with the welfare state.Yet the changing nature of risk in an age of globalization, argues Beck, fractures the calculating of risks for purposes of insurance. Individually and collectively, we do not fully know or understand many of the risks that we currently face, let alone can we attempt to calculate them accurately in terms of probability, compensation and accountability. In this connection, Beck emphasizes the following: s s s s risks today threaten irreparable global damage which cannot be limited, and hus the notion of monetary compensation is rendered obsolescent; in the case of the wors t possible nuclear or chemical accident, any security monitoring of damages fails; accidents, now reconstituted as ‘events’ without beginning or end, break apart delimitations in space and time; notions of accountability collapse. Re? exive Modernization Beck develops his critique of modernity through an examination of the presuppositions of the sociology of modernization. Many mainstream sociological theories remain marked, in his view, by a confusion of modernity with industrial society – seen in either positive or negative terms.This is true for functionalists and Marxists alike, especially in terms of their preoccupation with industrial achievement, adaptation, differentiation and rationalization. Indeed, Beck ? nds an ideology of progress concealed within dominant social theories that equate modernization with linear rationalization. From Marx through Parsons to Luhmann, modern society is constantly changing, expanding and transforming itself; it is clear th at industrialism results in the using up of resources that are essential to the reproduction of society.But the most striking limitation of social theories that equate modernity with industrial society, according to Beck, lies in their lack of comprehension of the manner in which dangers to societal preservation and renewal in? ltrate the institutions, organizations and subsystems of modern society itself. Downloaded from http://soc. sagepub. com by Madhu Menon on September 24, 2007  © 2002 BSA Publications Ltd.. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. 022761 Elliott 13/5/2002 :49 am Page 297 Beck’s sociology of risk Elliott In contrast to this grand consensus on modernization, Beck argues that we are between industrial society and advanced modernity, between simple modernization and re? exive modernization. As Beck (1996b: 28) develops these distinctions: In view of these two stages and their sequence, the concept of ‘re? exive moder nization’ may be introduced. This precisely does not mean re? ection (as the adjective ‘re? exive’ seems to suggest), but above all self-confrontation.The transition from the industrial to the risk epoch of modernity occurs unintentionally, unseen, compulsively, in the course of a dynamic of modernization which has made itself autonomous, on the pattern of latent side-effects. One can almost say that the constellations of risk society are created because the self-evident truths of industrial society (the consensus on progress, the abstraction from ecological consequences and hazards) dominate the thinking and behaviour of human beings and institutions. Risk society is not an option which could be chosen or rejected in the course of political debate.It arises through the automatic operation of autonomous modernization processes which are blind and deaf to consequences and dangers. In total, and latently, these produce hazards which call into question – inde ed abolish – the basis of industrial society. It is the autonomous, compulsive dynamic of advanced or re? exive modernization that, according to Beck, propels modern men and women into ‘self-confrontation’ with the consequences of risk that cannot adequately be addressed, measured, controlled or overcome, at least according to the standards of industrial society.Modernity’s blindness to the risks and dangers produced by modernization – all of which happens automatically and unre? ectingly, according to Beck – leads to societal self-confrontation: that is, the questioning of divisions between centres of political activity and the decision-making capacity of society itself. Society, in effect, seeks to reclaim ‘the political’ from its modernist relegation to the institutional sphere, and this, says Beck, is achieved primarily through sub-political means – that is, locating the politics of risk at the heart of forms of social and cultural life. Within the horizon of the opposition between old routine and new awareness of consequences and dangers’, writes Beck, ‘society becomes self-critical’ (1999b: 81). The prospects for arresting the dark sides of industrial progress and advanced modernization through re? exivity are routinely short-circuited, according to Beck, by the insidious in? uence of ‘organized irresponsibility’. Irresponsibility, as Beck uses the term, refers to a political contradiction of the self-jeopardization and self-endangerment of risk society.This is a contradiction between an emerging public awareness of risks produced by and within the social-institutional system on the one hand, and the lack of attribution of systemic risks to this system on the other. There is, in Beck’s reckoning, a constant denial of the suicidal tendency of risk society – ‘the system of organized irresponsibility’ – which manifests itself in, s ay, technically orientated legal procedures designed to satisfy rigorous causal proof of individual liability and guilt. This self-created dead end, in which culpability is passed off on to individualsDownloaded from http://soc. sagepub. com by Madhu Menon on September 24, 2007  © 2002 BSA Publications Ltd.. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. 297 022761 Elliott 298 13/5/2002 Sociology 9:49 am Volume 36 s Page 298 Number 2 s May 2002 and thus collectively denied, is maintained through political ideologies of industrial fatalism: faith in progress, dependence on rationality and the rule of expert opinion. Individualization The arrival of advanced modernization is not wholly about risk; it is also about an expansion of choice.For if risks are an attempt to make the incalculable calculable, then risk-monitoring presupposes agency, choice, calculation and responsibility. In the process of re? exive modernization, Beck argues, more and more areas o f life are released or disembedded from the hold of tradition. That is to say, people living in the modernized societies of today develop an increasing engagement with both the intimate and more public aspects of their lives, aspects that were previously governed by tradition or taken-forgranted norms.This set of developments is what Beck calls ‘individualization’, and its operation is governed by a dialectic of disintegration and reinvention. For example, the disappearance of tradition and the disintegration of previously existing social forms – ? xed gender roles, in? exible class locations, masculinist work models – forces people into making decisions about their own lives and future courses of action.As traditional ways of doing things become problematic, people must choose paths for a more rewarding life – all of which requires planning and rationalization, deliberation and engagement. An active engagement with the self, with the body, with rel ationships and marriage, with gender norms, and with work: this is the subjective backdrop of the risk society. The idea of individualization is the basis upon which Beck constructs his vision of a ‘new modernity’, of novel personal experimentation and cultural innovation against a social backdrop of risks, dangers, hazards, re? xivity, globalization. Yet the unleashing of experimentation and choice which individualization brings is certainly not without its problems. According to Beck, there are progressive and regressive elements to individualization; although, in analytical terms, these are extremely hard to disentangle. In personal terms, the gains of today’s individualization might be tomorrow’s limitation, as advantage and progress turn into their opposite. A signal example of this is offered in The Normal Chaos of Love (1995), where Beck and Beck-Gernsheim re? ct on the role of technological innovation in medicine, and of how this impacts upon conte mporary family life. Technological advancements in diagnostic and genetic testing on the unborn, they argue, create new parental possibilities, primarily in the realm of health monitoring. However, the very capacity for medical intervention is one that quickly turns into an obligation on parents to use such technologies in order to secure a sound genetic starting point for their offspring.Individualization is seen here as a paradoxical compulsion, at once leading people into a much more engaged relationship with science and technology than used to be the case, and enforcing a set of obligations and responsibilities that few in society have thought through in terms of broad Downloaded from http://soc. sagepub. com by Madhu Menon on September 24, 2007  © 2002 BSA Publications Ltd.. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. 022761 Elliott 13/5/2002 9:49 am Page 299 Beck’s sociology of risk Elliott moral and ethical implications.It is perhaps lit tle wonder therefore that Beck (1997: 96), echoing Sartre, contends that ‘people are condemned to individualization’. Critique Beck has elaborated a highly original formulation of the theory of risk, a formulation which links with, but in many ways is more sophisticated in its detail and application than, other sociological approaches to the analysis of risk environments in contemporary society (among other contributions, see Douglas and Wildavsky (1982), Castell (1991), Giddens (1990, 1991), Luhmann (1993) and Adam (1998)).Beck’s sociology of risk has clearly been of increasing interest to sociologists concerned with understanding the complex temporal and spatial ? gurations of invisible hazards and dangers including global warming, chemical and petrochemical pollution, the effects of genetically modi? ed organisms and culturally induced diseases such as Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) (see Lash et al. , 1996; Adam, 1998). In what follows, there are three core areas around which I shall develop a critique of the work of Beck: (1) risk, re? xivity, re? ection; (2) power and domination; and (3) tradition, modernity and postmodernization. Risk, Re? exivity, Re? ection Let me begin with Beck’s discussion of the ‘risk society’, which, according to him, currently dominates socio-political frames thanks to the twin forces of re? exivity and globalization. There are, I believe, many respects in which Beck’s vision of Risikogesellschaft, especially its rebounding in personal experience as risk-laden discourses and practices, is to be welcomed.In the wake of the Chernobyl disaster and widespread environmental pollution, and with ever more destructive weapons as well as human-made biological, chemical and technological hazards, it is surely the case that thinking in terms of risk has become central to the way in which human agents and modern institutions organize the social world. Indeed, in a world that could litera lly destroy itself, risk-managing and risk-monitoring increasingly in? uences both the constitution and calculation of social action.As mentioned previously, it is this focus on the concrete, objective physical-biological-technical risk settings of modernity which recommends Beck’s analysis as a useful corrective to the often obsessive abstraction and textual deconstruction that characterizes much recent social theory. However, one still might wonder whether Beck’s theory does not overemphasize, in a certain sense, the phenomena and relevance of risk. From a social-historical perspective it is plausible to ask, for instance, whether life in society has become more risky? In ‘From Regulation to Risk’, Bryan S. Turner (1994: 180–1) captures the problem well:Downloaded from http://soc. sagepub. com by Madhu Menon on September 24, 2007  © 2002 BSA Publications Ltd.. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. 299 022761 E lliott 300 13/5/2002 Sociology 9:49 am Volume 36 s Page 300 Number 2 s May 2002 [A] serious criticism of Beck’s arguments would be to suggest that risk has not changed so profoundly and signi? cantly over the last three centuries. For example, were the epidemics of syphilis and bubonic plague in earlier periods any different from the modern environment illnesses to which Beck draws our attention?That is, do Beck’s criteria of risk, such as their impersonal and unobservable nature, really stand up to historical scrutiny? The devastating plagues of earlier centuries were certainly global, democratic and general. Peasants and aristocrats died equally horrible deaths. In addition, with the spread of capitalist colonialism, it is clearly the case that in previous centuries many aboriginal peoples such as those of North America and Australia were engulfed by environmental, medical and political catastrophes which wiped out entire populations.If we take a broader view of the notion of risk as entailing at least a strong cultural element whereby risk is seen to be a necessary part of the human condition, then we could argue that the profound uncertainties about life, which occasionally overwhelmed earlier civilizations, were not unlike the anxieties of our own ? n-de-siecle civilizations. Extending Turner’s critique, it might also be asked whether risk assessment is the ultimate worry in the plight of individuals in contemporary culture?Is it right to see the means-ended rationality of risk, and thus the economistic language of preference, assessment and choice, as spreading into personal and intimate spheres of life (such as marriage, friendship and child-rearing) in such a determinate and uni? ed way? And does the concept of risk actually capture what is new and different in the contemporary social condition? I shall not pursue these general questions, important though they are, here. Instead, the issue I want to raise concerns the multiple ways in which risk is perceived, approached, engaged with or disengaged from, in contemporary culture.Beck’s approach, however suggestive it may be, is at best a signpost which points to speci? c kinds of probabilities, avoidances and unanticipated consequences, but which is limited in its grasp of the social structuring of the perception of risk. The American social theorist Jeffrey C. Alexander (1996: 135) has argued that Beck’s ‘unproblematic understanding of the perception of risk is utilitarian and objectivist’. Alexander takes Beck to task for adopting a rationalistic and instrumental-calculative model of risk in microsocial and macrosocial worlds; to which it can be added that such a model has deep af? ities with neo-classical economics and rational-choice theory, and thus necessarily shares the conceptual and political limitations of these standpoints also. Beck has also been criticized by others for his cognitive realism, moral proceduralism and lack of attention to aesthetic and hermeneutical subjectivity (Lash and Urry, 1994); failure to acknowledge the embodied nature of the self (Turner, 1994; Petersen, 1996); and neglect of the psychodynamic and affective dimensions of subjectivity and intersubjective relations (Elliott, 1996; Hollway and Jefferson, 1997).In a social-theoretical frame of reference, what these criticisms imply is that Beck’s theory cannot grasp the hermeneutical, aesthetic, psychological and culturally bounded forms of subjectivity and intersubjectivity in and through Downloaded from http://soc. sagepub. com by Madhu Menon on September 24, 2007  © 2002 BSA Publications Ltd.. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. 022761 Elliott 13/5/2002 9:50 am Page 301 Beck’s sociology of risk Elliott which risk is constructed and perceived.To study risk-management and riskavoidance strategies, in the light of these criticisms, requires attention to forms of meaning-making within socio-symbolically inscribed institutional ? elds, a problem to which I return in a subsequent section when looking at Beck’s analysis of tradition, modernity and postmodernity. In raising the issue of the construction and reconstruction of risk – in particular, its active interpretation and reconstruction – one might reference numerous studies of socio-political attitudes relating to the conceptualization and confrontation of risk, danger and hazard.The anthropologist Mary Douglas (1986, 1992), for example, argues that advanced industrial risks are primarily constructed through the rhetoric of purity and pollution. For Douglas, what is most pressing in the social-theoretic analysis of risk is an understanding of how human agents ignore many of the potential threats of daily life and instead concentrate only on selected aspects. Interestingly, Beck fails to discuss in any detail Douglas’s anthropology of risk. This would seem peculiar not only sin ce Douglas’s path-breaking analyses of risk appear to have laid much of the thematic groundwork for Beck’s sociological theory, but also because her work is highly relevant to the critique of contemporary ideologies of risk – that is, the social forms in which risk and uncertainty are differentiated across and within social formations, as well as peculiarly individuated. My purpose in underscoring these various limitations of Beck’s theory is not to engage in some exercise of conceptual clari? cation.My concern rather is to stress the sociologically questionable assumptions concerning risk in Beck’s work, and to tease out the more complex, nuanced forms of risk perception that might fall within the scope of such an approach. To call into question Beck’s notion of risk is, of course, also to raise important issues about the location of re? exivity between self and societal reproduction. Now it is the failure of simple, industrial society to c ontrol the risks it has created, which, for Beck, generates a more intensive and extensive sense of risk in re? xive, advanced modernity. In this sense, the rise of objective, physical, global risks propels social re? exivity. But again one might wish to question the generalizations Beck makes about human agents, modern institutions and culture becoming more re? exive or self-confronting. Much of Beck’s work has been concerned to emphasize the degree of re? exive institutional dynamism involved in the restructuring of personal, social and political life, from the reforging of intimate relationships to the reinvention of politics.But there are disturbing dimensions here as well, which the spread of cultural, ethnic, racial and gendered con? ict has shown only too well, and often in ways in which one would be hard pressed to ? nd forms of personal or social re? exive activity. No doubt Beck would deny – as he has done in his more recent writings – that the renewal of traditions and the rise of cultural con? icts are counterexamples to the thesis of re? exive modernization. For we need to be particularly careful, Beck contends, not to confuse re? exivity (self-dissolution) with re? ction (knowledge). As Beck (1994b: 176–7) develops this distinction: Downloaded from http://soc. sagepub. com by Madhu Menon on September 24, 2007  © 2002 BSA Publications Ltd.. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. 301 022761 Elliott 302 13/5/2002 Sociology 9:50 am Volume 36 s Page 302 Number 2 s May 2002 †¦ the ‘re? exivity’ of modernity and modernization in my sense does not mean re? ection on modernity, self-relatedness, the self-referentiality of modernity, nor does it mean the self-justi? ation or self-criticism of modernity in the sense of classical sociology; rather (? rst of all), modernization undercuts modernization, unintended and unseen, and therefore also re? ection-free, with the force of autonomized modernization. †¦ [R]e? exivity of modernity can lead to re? ection on the self-dissolution and self-endangerment of industrial society, but it need not do so. Thus, re? exivity does not imply a kind of hyper-Enlightenment culture, where agents and institutions re? ect on modernity, but rather an unintended self-modi? ation of forms of life driven by the impact of autonomized processes of modernization. Re? exivity, on this account, is de? ned as much by ‘re? ex’ as it is by ‘re? ection’. ‘It is possible to detect’, write Lash et al. (1996) of Beck’s recent sociology, ‘a move towards seeing re? exive modernization as in most part propelled by blind social processes – a shift, crudely, from where risk society produces re? ection which in turn produces re? exivity and critique, to one where risk society automatically produces re? exivity, and then – perhaps – re? ection’.Without wishing t o deny the interest of this radical conception of re? exivity as self-dissolution, it still seems to me that Beck’s contention that contemporary societies are propelled toward self-confrontation, split between re? ex and re? ection, remains dubious. In what sense, for instance, can one claim that re? ection-free forms of societal self-dissolution exist independently of the re? ective capacities of human agents? For what, exactly, is being dissolved, if not the forms of life and social practices through which institutions are structured?How might the analytical terms of re? exivity, that is social re? exes (nonknowledge) and re? ection (knowledge), be reconciled? It may be thought that these dif? culties can be overcome by insisting, along with Beck, on re? exivity in the strong sense – as the unseen, the unwilled, the unintended; in short, institutional dynamism. But such an account of blind social processes is surely incompatible with, and in fact renders incoherent, concepts of re? ection, referentiality, re? exivity.Alternatively, a weaker version of the argument might be developed, one that sees only partial and contextual interactions of selfdissolution and re? ection. Yet such an account, again, would seem to cut the analytical ground from under itself, since there is no adequate basis for showing how practices of re? exivity vary in their complex articulations of re? ex and re? ection or repetition and creativity. Power and Domination I now want to consider Beck’s theory in relation to sociological understandings of power and domination. According to Beck, re? xive modernization combats many of the distinctive characteristics of power, turning set social divisions into active negotiated relationships. Traditional political con? icts, centred around class, race and gender, are increasingly superseded by new, globalized risk con? icts. ‘Risks’, writes Beck (1992: 35), ‘display an equalizing effect’. Everyone Downloaded from http://soc. sagepub. com by Madhu Menon on September 24, 2007  © 2002 BSA Publications Ltd.. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. 022761 Elliott 13/5/2002 9:50 am Page 303 Beck’s sociology of risk Elliott ow is threatened by risk of global proportions and repercussions; not even the rich and powerful can escape the new dangers and hazards of, say, global warming or nuclear war. And it is from this universalized perspective that Beck argues political power and domination is shedding the skin of its classical forms and reinventing itself in a new global idiom. The problematic nature of Beck’s writings on this reinvention of political power and its role in social life, however, becomes increasingly evident when considering his analysis of social inequalities and cultural divisions.Take, for example, his re? ections on class. Re? exive modernization, says Beck, does not result in the self-destruction of class antagonis ms, but rather in selfmodi? cation. He writes (1997: 26): Re? exive modernization disembeds and re-embeds the cultural prerequisites of social classes with forms of individualization of social inequality. That means †¦ that the disappearance of social classes and the abolition of social inequality no longer coincide. Instead, the blurring of social classes (in perception) runs in tandem with an exacerbation of social inequality, which now does not follow large identi? ble groups in the lifeworld, but is instead fragmented across (life) phases, space and time. The present-day individualizing forces of social inequality, according to Beck, erode class-consciousness (personal dif? culties and grievances no longer culminate into group or collective causes) and also, to some considerable degree, class-in-itself (contemporary social problems are increasingly suffered alone). In short, class as a community of fate or destiny declines steeply. With class solidarities replaced by brittl e and uncertain forms of individual self-management, Beck ? ds evidence for a ‘rule-altering rationalization’ of class relationships in new business and management practices, as well as industrial relations reforms. He contends that new blendings of economics and democracy are discernible in the rise of political civil rights within the workplace, a blend which opens the possibility of a post-capitalistic world – a ‘classless capitalism of capital’, in which ‘the antagonism between labour and capital will collapse’. There is considerable plausibility in the suggestion that class patterns and divisions have been altered by rapid social and political changes in recent years.These include changes in employment and the occupational structure, the expansion of the service industries, rising unemployment, lower retirement ages, as well as a growing individualization in the West together with an accompanying stress upon lifestyle, consumption a nd choice. However, while it might be the case that developments associated with re? exive modernization and the risk society are affecting social inequalities, it is surely implausible to suggest, as Beck does, that this involves the trans? guration of class as such. Why, as Scott Lash (Beck et al. , 1994: 211) asks, do we ? nd re? xivity in some sectors of socio-economic life and not others? Against the backdrop of new communication technologies and advances in knowledge transfer, vast gaps in the sociocultural conditions of the wealthy and the poor drastically affect the ways in which individuals are drawn into the project of re? exive modernization. These Downloaded from http://soc. sagepub. com by Madhu Menon on September 24, 2007  © 2002 BSA Publications Ltd.. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. 303 022761 Elliott 304 13/5/2002 Sociology 9:50 am Volume 36 s Page 304 Number 2 s May 2002 ensions are especially evident today in new social d ivisions between the ‘information rich’ and ‘information poor’, and of the forces and demands of such symbolic participation within the public sphere. What Beck fails to adequately consider is that individualization (while undoubtedly facilitating unprecedented forms of personal and social experimentation) may directly contribute to, and advance the proliferation of, class inequalities and economic exclusions. That is to say, Beck fails to give suf? cient sociological weight to the possibility that individualization may actually embody systematically asymmetrical relations of class power.Taken from a broader view of the ideals of equal opportunity and social progress, Beck’s arguments about the relationship between advanced levels of re? exivity and the emergence of a new sub-politics do not adequately stand up to scrutiny. The general, tendential assertions he advances about business and organizational restructuring assume what needs to be demonstra ted – namely, that these new organizational forms spell the demise of social class, as well as the viability of class analysis. Moreover, it seems implausible to point to ‘subpolitics’, de? ned by Beck only in very general terms, as symptomatic of a new socio-political agenda.When, for example, have the shifting boundaries between the political and economic spheres not played a primary role in the unfolding of relations between labour and capital? Is decision-making and consciousness really focused on a post-capitalistic rationalization of rights, duties, interests and decisions? A good deal of recent research shows, on the contrary, that income inequality between and within nations continues to escalate (Braun, 1991; Lemert, 1997); that class (together with structures of power and domination) continues to profoundly shape possible life chances and material nterests (Westergaard, 1995); and that the many different de? nitions of class as a concept, encompassing t he marginal, the excluded as well as the new underclass or new poor, are important in social analysis for comprehending the persistence of patterns of social inequality (Crompton, 1996). These dif? culties would suggest that Beck’s theory of risk requires reformulation in various ways.Without wishing to deny that the risk-generating propensity of the social system has rapidly increased in recent years due to the impact of globalization and techno-science, it seems to me misleading to contend that social division in multinational capitalist societies is fully trans? gured into a new logic of risk, as if the latter disconnects the former from its institutionalized biases and processes. The more urgent theoretical task, I suggest, is to develop methods of analysis for explicating how patterns of power and domination feed into, and are reconstituted by, the socio-symbolic structuring of risk.Here I shall restrict myself to noting three interrelated forces, which indicate, in a ge neral way, the contours of how a politics of risk is undergoing transformation. The ? rst development is that of the privatization of risk. Underpinned by new trans-national spatializations of economic relations as well as the deregulation of the government of political life (Giddens, 1990; Hirst and Thompson, 1996; Bauman, 1998), the individual is increasingly viewed today as an active Downloaded from http://soc. sagepub. om by Madhu Menon on September 24, 2007  © 2002 BSA Publications Ltd.. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. 022761 Elliott 13/5/2002 9:50 am Page 305 Beck’s sociology of risk Elliott agent in the risk-monitoring of collectively produced dangers; risk-information, risk-detection and risk-management is more and more constructed and designed as a matter of private responsibility and personal security. By and large, human agents confront socially produced risks individually.Risk is desocialized; risk-exposure and risk-avoi dance is a matter of individual responsibility and navigation. This is, of course, partly what Beck means by the individualization of risk. However, the relations between individualized or privatized risk, material inequalities and the development of global poverty are more systematic and complex than Beck’s theory seems to recognize. In the post-war period, the shift from Keynesian to monetarist economic policies has been a key factor in the erosion of the management of risk through welfare security.The impact of globalization, transnational corporations and governmental deregulation is vital to the social production of the privatization of risk, all of which undoubtedly has a polarizing effect on distributions of wealth and income. It has also become evident – and this is crucial – that one must be able to deploy certain educational resources, symbolic goods, cultural and media capabilities, as well as cognitive and affective aptitudes, in order to count as a ‘player’ in the privatization of risk-detection and risk-management.People who cannot deploy such resources and capabilities, often the result of various material and class inequalities, are likely to ? nd themselves further disadvantaged and marginalized in a new world order of re? exive modernization. The second, related development concerns the commodi? cation of risk. Millions of dollars are made through product development, advertising, and market research in the new industries of risk, which construct new problems and market new solutions for risk-? ghting individual agents. As risk is simultaneously proliferated and rendered potentially manageable’, writes Nikolas Rose (1996: 342), ‘the private market for â€Å"security† extends: not merely personal pension schemes and private health insurance, but burglar alarms, devices that monitor sleeping children, home testing kits for cholesterol levels and much more. Protection against risk through an investment in security becomes part of the responsibilities of each active individual, if they are not to feel guilt at failing to protect themselves and their loved ones against future misfortunes’.In other words, the typical means for insuring against risk today is through market-promoted processes. However the fundamental point here, and this is something that Beck fails to develop in a systematic manner, is that such ‘insurance’ is of a radically imaginary kind (with all the misrecognition and illusion that the Lacanian-Althusserian theorization of the duplicate mirror-structure of ideology implies), given that one cannot really buy one’s way out of the collective dangers that confront us as individuals and societies. How does one, for example, buy a way out from the dangers of global warming?The commodi? cation of risk has become a kind of safe house for myths, fantasies, ? ction and lies. The third development concerns the instrumentalization of iden tities in terms of lifestyle, consumption and choice. Beck touches on this issue through the individualization strand of his argument. Yet because he sees individualiza- Downloaded from http://soc. sagepub. com by Madhu Menon on September 24, 2007  © 2002 BSA Publications Ltd.. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. 305 022761 Elliott 306 13/5/2002 Sociology 9:50 am Volume 36 s Page 306 Number 2 s May 2002 ion as an active process transforming risk society, he pays almost no attention to the kinds of affective ‘investments’, often destructive and pathological, unleashed by an instrumentalization of identities and social relations. Of core importance here is the ‘culture of narcissism’ (Lasch, 1980) which pervades contemporary Western life, and plays a powerful role in the instrumental affective investments in individuals which a risk society unleashes. Joel Kovel (1988) writes of ‘the de-sociation of the narcissist ic character’, a character lacking in depth of emotional attachment to others and communities.Unable to sustain a sense of personal purpose or social project, the narcissistic character, writes Kovel, rarely moves beyond instrumentality in dealing with other people. Such instrumental emotional investments may well be increasingly central to the management of many risk codes in contemporary culture. Consider the ways in which some parents fashion a narcissistic relation with their own children as a kind of imaginary risk-insurance (involving anxieties and insecurities over old age, mortality and the like), rather than relating to their offspring as independent individuals in their own right.Also in risks relating to the home, personal comfort as well as safety, hygiene, health and domesticity, the veneer-like quality of pathological narcissism can be found. Some analytical caution is, of course, necessary here, primarily because the work on narcissistic culture of Lasch and Se nnett, among others, has been criticized in terms of over-generalization (Giddens, 1991: 174–80). Accordingly, it may be more plausible to suggest that narcissistic forms of identity are a tendency within contemporary cultural relations of risk management, and not a wholesale social trend.Beck’s writings, I am suggesting, are less than satisfying on issues of power and domination because he fails to analyse in suf? cient depth the psychological, sociological and political forces by means of which the self-risk dialectic takes its varying forms. To develop a more nuanced interpretative and critical approach, I have suggested, the sociological task is to analyse privatization, commodi? cation and instrumentalization as channels of risk management. Tradition, Modernity, Postmodernity The limitations in the concept of re? xivity I have highlighted are, in turn, connected to further ambiguities concerning the nature of social reproduction in contemporary culture. The produc tion and reproduction of contemporary social life is viewed by Beck as a process of ‘detraditionalization’. The development of re? exive modernization, says Beck, is accompanied by an irreversible decline in the role of tradition; the re? exivity of modernity and modernization means that traditional forms of life are increasingly exposed to public scrutiny and debate. That the dynamics of social re? xivity undercut pre-existing traditions is emphasized by Beck via a range of social-theoretical terms. He speaks of ‘the age of side-effects’, of individualization, and of a sub-politics beyond left and right – a world in which people can and must come to terms with the opportunities and dangers of new technologies, markets, experts, systems and Downloaded from http://soc. sagepub. com by Madhu Menon on September 24, 2007  © 2002 BSA Publications Ltd.. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. 022761 Elliott 13/5/2002 9:5 0 am Page 307 Beck’s sociology of risk Elliott nvironments. Beck thus argues that the contemporary age is one characterized by increased levels of referentiality, ambivalence, ? exibility, openness and social alternatives. It might be noted that certain parallels can be identi? ed between the thesis of detraditionalization and arguments advanced in classical social theory. Many classical social theorists believed that the development of the modern era spelled the end of tradition. ‘All that is solid melts into air’, said Marx of the power of the capitalist mode of production to tear apart traditional forms of social life.That the dynamics of capitalism undercut its own foundations meant for Marx a society that was continually transforming and constantly revolutionizing itself. Somewhat similar arguments about the decline of tradition can be found in the writings of Max Weber. The development of industrial society for Weber was inextricably intertwined with the ri se of the bureaucratic state. Weber saw in this bureaucratic rationalization of action, and associated demand for technical ef? ciency, a new social logic destructive of the traditional texture of society.The views of Marx and Weber, among others, thus advanced a general binary opposition of ‘the traditional’ and ‘the modern’. For proponents of the thesis of detraditionalization, such as Beck, the self-referentiality and social re? exivity of advanced modernity also necessarily implies that traditional beliefs and practices begin to break down. However, the thesis of detraditionalization is not premised upon the broad contrast between ‘the traditional’ and ‘the modern’ that we can discern in much classical social theory. On the contrary, Beck ? nds the relation between tradition and modernity at once complex and puzzling.If tradition remains an important aspect of advanced modernity, it is because tradition becomes re? exive; tradi tions are invented, reinvented and restructured in conditions of the late modern age. So far I think that there is much that is interesting and important in this general orientation of Beck to understanding the construction of the present, past and future. In particular, I think the stress placed upon the re? exive construction of tradition, and indeed all social reproduction, is especially signi? cant – even though I shall go on to argue that this general theoretical framework requires more speci? ation and elaboration. I want, however, to focus on a speci? c issue raised by Beck’s social theory, and ask, has the development of society toward advanced modernization been accompanied by a decline in the in? uence of tradition and traditional understandings of the past? Must we assume, as Beck seems to, that the social construction of tradition is always permeated by a pervasive re? exivity? At issue here, I suggest, is the question of how the concept of re? exivity shou ld be related to traditional, modern and postmodern cultural forms. I shall further suggest that the concept of re? xivity, as elaborated by Beck, fails to comprehend the different modernist and postmodernist ? gurations that may be implicit within social practices and symbolic forms of the contemporary age. In order to develop this line of argumentation, let us consider in some more detail the multiplicity of world traditions, communities and cultures as they impact upon current social practices and life-strategies. I believe that Beck is Downloaded from http://soc. sagepub. com by Madhu Menon on September 24, 2007  © 2002 BSA Publications Ltd.. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. 07 022761 Elliott 308 13/5/2002 Sociology 9:50 am Volume 36 s Page 308 Number 2 s May 2002 right to emphasize the degree to which modernity and advanced modernization processes have assaulted traditions, uprooted local communities and broken apart unique regional, e thnic and sub-national cultures. At the level of economic analysis, an argument can plausibly be sustained that the erratic nature of the world capitalist economy produces high levels of unpredictability and uncertainty in social life and cultural relations, all of which Beck analyses in terms of danger, risk and hazard.It is worth noting, however, that Beck’s emphasis on increasing levels of risk, ambivalence and uncertainty is at odds with much recent research in sociology and social theory that emphasizes the regularization and standardization of daily life in the advanced societies. George Ritzer’s The McDonaldization of Society (1993) is a signal example. Drawing Weber’s theory of social rationalization and the Frankfurt School’s account of the administered society into a re? ctive encounter, Ritzer examines the application of managerial techniques such as Fordism and Taylorism to the fast food industry as symptomatic of the in? ltration of instrumen tal rationality into all aspects of cultural life. McDonaldization, as Ritzer develops the term, is the emergence of social logics in which risk and unpredictability are written out of social space. The point about such a conception of the standardization of everyday life, whatever its conceptual and sociological shortcomings, is that it clearly contradicts Beck’s stress on increasing risk and uncertainty, the concept of re? xive individualization, and the notion that detraditionalization produces more ambivalence, more anxiety, and more openness. Of course, Beck insists that re? exive modernization does not mark a complete break from tradition; rather re? exivity signals the revising, or reinvention, of tradition. However, the resurgence and persistence of ethnicity and nationality as a primary basis for the elaboration of traditional beliefs and practices throughout the world is surely problematic for those who, like Beck, advance the general thesis of social re? exivity.Ce rtainly, the thesis would appear challenged by widespread and recently revitalized patterns of racism, sexism and nationalism which have taken hold in many parts of the world, and indeed many serious controversies over race, ethnicity and nationalism involve a reversion to what might be called traditionalist battles over traditional culture – witness the rise of various religious fundamentalisms in the United States, the Middle East and parts of Africa and Asia. These political and theoretical ambivalences have their roots in a number of analytical dif? ulties, speci? cally Beck’s diagnosis of simple and advanced modernity. Beck furnishes only the barest social-historical sketch of simple modernity as a distinctive period in the spheres of science, industry, morality and law. He underscores the continuing importance and impact of simple industrial society for a range of advanced, re? exive determinations (for example politically, economically, technologically and envir onmentally), yet the precise relations of such overlapping are not established or demonstrated in any detail.Exactly how we have moved into the age of re? exive modernization, although often stated and repeated, is not altogether clear. Beck’s main line of explanation seems to focus on the side-effects of modernization as undercutting the Downloaded from http://soc. sagepub. com by Madhu Menon on September 24, 2007  © 2002 BSA Publications Ltd.. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. 022761 Elliott 13/5/2002 9:50 am Page 309 Beck’s sociology of risk Elliott foundations of modernity. But, again, the dynamics of simple and re? xive modernization, together with their social-historical periodization, remain opaque. In addition, it is not always clear how Beck is intending to draw certain conceptual distinctions between ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ instantiations of respectively simple and advanced modernist socio- symbolic figurations. Rejecting outright any crude opposition between traditional and modern societies, Beck relates a tale of the proliferation of re? exive biographies and practices, lives and institutions, in which creative possibilities develop and new forms of risk and hazard take shape.Yet social advancement is far from inevitable: Beck speaks of counter-modernities. The question that needs to be asked here, however, is whether it is analytically useful for social theory to construct the contemporary age as characterized by interacting tropes of industrial society and re? exive modernization on the one side, and a range of countermodernities on the other. Viewed from the frame of postmodern social theory, and in particular the sociology of postmodernity (see Bauman, 1992a), Beck’s argument concerning the circularity of the relationship between risk, re? xivity and social knowledge appears in a more problematic, and perhaps ultimately inadequate, light. For postmodern so cial theorists and cultural analysts diagnose the malaise of present-day society not only as the result of re? exively applied knowledge to complex techno-scienti? c social environments, but as infused by a more general and pervasive sense of cultural disorientation. The most prominent anxieties that underpin postmodern dynamics of social regulation and systemic reproduction include a general loss of belief in the engine of progress, as well as feelings of out-of-placeness and loss of direction.Such anxieties or dispositions are accorded central signi? cance in the writings of a number of French theorists – notably, Foucault, Derrida, Lyotard, Baudrillard, and Deleuze and Guattari – and also in the work of sociologists and social scientists interested in the rami? cations of post-structuralism, semiotics and deconstruction for the analysis of contemporary society (Lash and Urry, 1987; Harvey, 1989; Poster, 1990; Best and Kellner, 1991; Smart, 1992, 1993; Bauman, 1992a, 2000; Elliott, 1996).Postmodern anxieties or dispositions are, broadly speaking, cast as part of a broader cultural reaction to universal modernism’s construction of the social world, which privileges rationalism, positivism and techno-scienti? c planning. Premised upon a vigorous philosophical denunciation of humanism, abstract reason, and the Enlightenment legacy, postmodern theory rejects the metanarratives of modernity (that is, totalistic theoretical constructions, allegedly of universal application) and instead embraces fragmentation, discontinuity and ambiguity as symptomatic of current cultural conditions.To express the implications of these theoretical departures more directly in terms of the current discussion, if the social world in which we live in the 21st century is signi? cantly different from that of the simple modernization, this is so because of both socio-political and epistemological developments. It is not only re? ection on the globalization of risk tha t has eroded faith in humanly engineered progress. Postmodern contributions stress that the plurality of Downloaded from http://soc. sagepub. om by Madhu Menon on September 24, 2007  © 2002 BSA Publications Ltd.. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. 309 022761 Elliott 310 13/5/2002 Sociology 9:50 am Volume 36 s Page 310 Number 2 s May 2002 heterogeneous claims to knowledge carries radical consequences for the unity and coherence of social systems. Bluntly stated, a number of core issues are identi? ed by postmodern analysts in this connection: s s s The crisis of representation, instabilities of meaning, and fracturing of knowledge claims;The failure of the modernist project to ground epistemology in secure foundations; The wholesale transmutation in modes of representation within social life itself. Postmodernization in this context spells the problematization of the relationship between signi? er and referent, representation and reality, a re lationship made all the more complex by the computerization of information and knowledge (Poster, 1990). What I am describing as a broadly postmodern sociological viewpoint highlights the de? iency of placing ‘risk’ (or any other sociological variable) as the central paradox of modernity. For at a minimum, a far wider range of sources would appear to condition our current cultural malaise. What is signi? cant about these theoretical sightings, or glimpses, of the contours of postmodernity as a social system are that they lend themselves to global horizons and de? nitions more adequately than the so-called universalism of Beck’s sociology of risk.Against a theoretical backdrop of the break with foundationalism, the dispersion of language games, coupled with the recognition that history has no overall teleology, it is surely implausible to stretch the notion of risk as a basis for interpretation of phenomena from, say, an increase in worldwide divorce rates through to the collapse of insurance as a principle for the regulation of collective life. Certainly, there may exist some family resemblance in trends surrounding new personal, social and political agendas.Yet the seeds of personal transformation and social dislocation are likely to be a good deal more complex, multiple, discontinuous. This is why the change of mood – intellectual, social, cultural, psychological, political and economic – analysed by postmodern theorists has more far-reaching consequences for sociological analysis and research into modernity and postmodernization than does the work of Beck. In Beck’s sociology, the advent of advanced modernization is related to the changing social and technological dimensions of just one institutional sector: that of risk and its calculation.The key problem of re? exive modernization is one of living with a high degree of risk in a world where traditional safety nets (the welfare state, traditional nuclear family, etc . ) are being eroded or dismantled. But what is