Job Stress Essays - Economic Ideologies, Working Time,

Job Stress The official working week is being reduced to 35 hours a week. In most countries in the world, it is limited to 45 hours a week. The trend during the last century seems to be less work, more play. Yet, what may be true for blue-collar workers or state employees is not necessarily so for white-collar employees. It is not rare for these people lawyers, accountants, consultants, managers, academics to put in 80 hour weeks. This trend is so widespread and its social consequences so known that it acquired the unflattering nickname workaholism, a combination of the words work and alcoholism. Family life is disrupted, intellectual horizons narrow, the consequences to the workaholics health are severe: fat, lack of exercise, stress take their toll. Classified as alpha types, workaholics suffer three times as many heart attacks as their peers. But what are the social and economic roots of this phenomenon ? Put briefly, it is the result of the blurring borders and differences between work and leisure. The distinction between these two types of time the one dedicated to labor and the one spent in the pursuit of ones interests was so clear for thousands of years that its gradual disappearance is one of the most important and profound social changes in human history. A host of other shifts in the character of the work and domestic environments of humans converged to produce this momentous change. Arguably the most important was the increase in labor mobility in the workplace. The transitions from agricultural to industrial, then to the services and now to the information age. and knowledge societies, each, in turn, increased the mobility of the workforce. A farmer is the least mobile. His means of production are fixed, his produce was mostly consumed locally because of lack of proper refrigeration, preservation and transportation methods. A marginal group of people became nomad-traders. This group exploded in size with the advent of the industrial revolution. True, the bulk of the workforce was still immobile and affixed to the production floor. But raw materials and the finished products traveled long distances to faraway markets. Professional services were needed and the professional manager, the lawyer, the accountant, the consultant, the trader, the broker all emerged as both the parasites of the production processes and the indispensable components to any enterprise. Then came the services industry. Its protagonists were no longer geographically dependent. They rendered their services to a host of employers in a variety of ways and geographically spread. This trend accelerated today, at the beginning of the information and knowledge revolution. Knowledge is not locale-bound. It is easily transferable across boundaries. Its short-lived quality gives it a-temporal and non-spatial qualities. The location of the participants in the economic interactions of this new age are geographically transparent. These trends converged with an increase of mobility of people, goods and data (voice, visual, textual and other). The twin revolutions of transportation and of telecommunications really reduced the world to a global village(Idea stolen from Mrs. Clinton). Phenomena like commuting to work and multinationals were first made possible. Facsimile messages, electronic mail, other modem data transfers, the Internet broke not only physical barriers, but also temporal ones. Today, virtual offices are not only spatially virtual, but also temporally so. This means that workers can collaborate not only across continents but also across time zones. They can leave their work for someone else to continue in an electronic mailbox, for instance. These last technological advances precipitated the fragmentation of the very concepts of work and workplace. No longer the three Aristotelian dramatic unities. Work could be carried out in different places, not simultaneously, by workers who worked part time whenever it suited them best, Flextime and work from home are quickly replacing commuting as the preferred venue of the workplace. This fits exactly into the social fragmentation, which characterizes todays world. The disintegration of previously cohesive social structures, such as the nuclear (not to mention the extended) family. This was all neatly wrapped in the ideology of individualism which was presented as a private case of capitalism and liberalism. People were encouraged to feel and behave as distinct, autonomous units.

Student Expectations for Beginning Teachers

Student Expectations for Beginning Teachers As a beginning teacher, youve probably set the bar high when it comes to student expectations. After all, you want to be perceived as competent and in control of your classroom. You can enhance this aspect of your formal education by exploring helpful tips and advice from experienced teachers on ways to set realistic and achievable behavioral goals for your students. Managing Your Classroom At the outset of your new career, its normal for you to struggle with feelings of insecurity about your ability to manage your classroom. You may think, for example, that if youre too nice, your students won’t respect your authority. Still, its possible for you to create a warm, friendly classroom and gain your students respect at the same time. Allowing your students to make simple decisions, such as which assignment to do first, will improve your chances of developing a cooperative classroom and give your students a boost in confidence. A time is coming, of course, when things dont go as you planned. Be prepared for these moments with emergency strategies and time fillers, like math drills and journaling activities. Learning the Ropes One of the biggest challenges youll face in configuring your classroom to run smoothly is dealing with time management. It may take weeks for you to learn the schools policies and procedures and for your students to learn your classroom routines. If you cant remember the school policies regarding lunch count, library books, or the like, ask a fellow teacher. Likewise, encourage your students to ask questions if they forget something important. Allocate as much time as you can during the first few weeks of school to learning school procedures and developing your own within these parameters. The more time you devote to this, the easier it will be later on. Be careful not to overwhelm your students; instead, establish simple routines that they can handle. Once you see that your students are getting the hang of basic routines, you can expand or alter them. Understanding Basic Expectations Each classroom and school will require the development of a unique set of expectations, but there are some that have stood the test of time: Follow classroom rules.Be on time.Be prepared for class.Be considerate and respectful.Show respect for school property and other students.Hand in assignments on time.Wait to be dismissed.Use an inside voice.Actively participate in class discussions.Stay seated during classroom activities and events.Help each other.Work quietly and follow directions.Raise your hand before speaking. Cultivating Success You want to see your students succeed, but you may feel pressured to get through the curriculum and may not devote sufficient time to learning about your students personal abilities and interests. Before barreling through the content, get to know your students so you can better comprehend what to expect of them. Starting with the first day of school, create an open dialogue with your students and encourage them to share information about themselves. For example, ask the students to pair up and interview each other, and then share what they learned with the class. Practicing Self-Management Skills To build confident, independent students who can think for themselves, practice self-management skills early on. If you plan to have your students participate in learning centers and small groups at some point, they will need to practice working independently. It may take weeks to build independent learners. If this is the case, then hold off on the learning centers and small groups until your students are ready. Keeping It Simple When you keep routines and independent work simple, youre helping students to build their confidence and self-management skills, which in turn will help them become more successful learners. As these skills become more ingrained in your students, you can increase their workload and their access to a greater variety of academic materials. Sources Bluestein, Jane. â€Å"Great Expectations!†Ã‚  Dr. Jane Bluestein Instructional Support Services, LLC, 15 Aug. 2017, janebluestein.com/2012/great-expectations-for-new-teachers/.

Business strategy, researching tesco Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Business strategy, researching tesco - Essay Example It is clear that the high standards set by those in leadership and management positions at Tesco have tremendously contributed to the company’s success. The company’s ‘Every Little Helps’ philosophy ensures that its customers, the community, and company employees form an integral part of its operations. 1.1 Company Core Values and Objectives The most outstanding values of the company are its commitment to providing high standards of service and quality products to its customers by being a responsible retailer. The company continues to offer a great shopping experience to its customers who shop online or it its many other service provisions. This is manifest in the company’s desired future strategic position of reaching zero-carbon operations by the year 2050. In order to do so, the company opened the initial zero-carbon hypermarket in Ramsey in 2010, which led to Tesco winning the tribute as the Green Retailer of the Year in 2012. The continued succe ss the giant retailer enjoys depends on the reassessment and formulation of business strategies in order to remain competitive and increase profitability (David, 2011). Tesco aspires to improve customer loyalty and its core UK business base through various programs such as the club card program introduced in 1995 and is currently the most popular card in the UK. The company also continues to develop various strategies aimed at improving competitiveness and such strategies are mainly driven by price, quality, range of products and innovation. This paper examines corporate strategies at Tesco, the reasons informing each component, how vision and company values interrelate to make the strategies successful, and finally draws on a conclusion on the best alternative strategies that the company can adopt by giving recommendations based on the evaluation. 2.0 Tesco’s Corporate Strategic Position Over the years since it started operations, Tesco has developed a firm and deeply rooted strategy for growth, which is mainly focused on reinforcing the company’s core UK business operations and growth thrust in new markets. The primary tenet of the giant retailer’s strategy, formulated in 1997, encompasses the expansion of scope of operations that allows delivery of a robust and sustained long-term growth. To realize such an expansion of scope of business operations, Tesco constantly pursues existing customers with the aim of introducing them to various other Tesco products and services such as non-food, telecommunications, and financial services. Tesco’s business strategy is based on five principles including desire to remain successful in its global retail business while at the same time developing its core UK business. The company also aims to sustain its business strength both in the food and non-food sectors. Moreover, the company develops strategies that will enhance expansion of other retailing and financial services, and place its customer s and communities at the heart of its operations. 2.1 Customer Loyalty Despite the fact that Tesco Clubcard was introduced to the customers in 1995, there has been a higher degree of data collection especially over the last decade manly due to the company’s embracement of technological advances. Currently, the card can collect essential information

The Engineers Concern about the Overhead Rate Going Up and Up in Assignment

The Engineers Concern about the Overhead Rate Going Up and Up in Managerial Accounting - Assignment Example A single hour of the labor carries an additional burden amount of $1,500 (Wagener, 2010). Moreover, the underlying labor cost contributes up to five percent of the prevailing cost of the product thus making it the main propeller of the all the cost of Fabricator Inc. Since one cost is utilized as the main pricing standard and in the case of the Fabricator Inc they use labor, their main concern that the underlying set standard might be cumbersome to accomplish (Warren, Reeve, Duchac, & Warren, 2012). Therefore, lost labor in its entity is inadequacies as an example is depicted by the prevailing management as either poor pricing or production (Warren, Reeve, Duchac, & Warren, 2012). Even though overhead is fundamental and normally demanded the production process, bid pricing that is mainly driven by labor as the standard would eventually be more expensive. The most effective means would be utilizing activity-based costing because Fabricator Inc mainly specializes in executing underlying customer orders and every order is unique and possesses different requirement. Utilizing single overhead rate is thus not acceptable (Wagener, 2010). The engineer has also mentioned that the standard was being worked around by the corresponding design engineering thus rendering the prevailing standard utilized by Fabricator Inc unreliable (Kaplan & Anderson, 2007). The engineer meant that high job cost standard for the project biding might infrequent the prevailing project managers mandated by pricing a job forbid when he said that a relatively large overhead rate is a disadvantage to the company in terms of placing bids and seeking new business (Lal & Srivastava, 2009). Any errors in the estimate for the labor hours would definitely possess massive implications in the operation of the company (Warren, Reeve, Duchac, & Warren, 2012). Moreover, miscalculation or rather a failure by few hours  could definitely imply that the company would either be losing the bid or correspondingly be losing money in case the job is acquired.  

Discuss inequality in the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Programme Essay

Discuss inequality in the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Programme (SAWP) in relation to employment and citizenship - Essay Example The employment for immigrant seasonal agricultural workers is fast rising as the industry expands. However, there had been many complaints of abuses and practices of inequality in the treatment of the seasonal-hired workers even if the manual tasks in the farm for the farm growers were rejected by Canadians and residents themselves. This paper will discuss how SAWP and non-citizenship of workers lead to practices of inequality and abuse. Discussion The SAWP has good intensions: to fill in the need for more workers for economic growth, and provide employment for foreigners who need them. They were chosen for gender (mostly males), have commitment at home or dependents to make them want to return (temporary) and from needy countries without lands to till and poor (Preibisch and Ecalada Grez, 297). However, many of these seasonal workers report negative experiences of inequality from their employers and local co-workers. The documentary film El Contrato of Min Sook Lee showed the stark condition of Mexican contract workers in Canada under the SAWP. The film through the accounts of several workers narrates allegations of exploitation to the point of slavery for these short-termed workers. Accusations ran from seven-days a week of continued work, taxed salaries which were said to be provided to them in full at $7/hour of work time, cramped living quarters, farm factory kitchens without chairs for dining, forced work more than the specified hours in their contract (Preibisch and Ecalada Grez, 298) and even reduced salaries. The film also showed how the workers sought to have dialogue with their employers and consulate, and sought help whichever way they can. However, despite the promises, the abusive practices of the workers’ supervisors of yelling, physical attack, reduced compensations, health hazards and accidents, lack of medical assistance, among others, were sustained. Preibisch and Ecalada Grez (297) spoke of other abuses on workers that include segrega tion of workers, and preference for majority of males for manual and work requiring carrying of loads, while females for fruit handling and packaging. These practices were seen to be reinforced by their status as non-migrants and non-citizens who have no legal option to become migrants and citizens. The SAWP was an answer to the refusal of residents and Canadians to tackle agricultural work for reasons of low wages, unsafe and unacceptable working conditions, its seasonal character, and poorly regulated labor environment (Sharma, 248). The farm jobs given the SAWP workers have been described as 3D- dirty, dangerous and difficult (Villegas, 9 Lecture notes). Another unacceptable practice is the lack of safety among workers such as the absence of information of the dangers posed by pesticide exposures, farm machineries and equipment. Seasonal workers are not aware that these are threats to their health. Where there was harm done, medical attention was also delayed if provided at all. Since, these workers live in the farm, their employers provide housing. However, most of these housing units were substandard (Lee, film; Sharma, 249). These has been seen to be promoted in part by Bill C-11 introduced in March 2001 of which there is increased security in Canadian borders, provision of flexible employment terms for

Systems development life cycle.

Systems development life cycle. SYSTEMS DEVELOPMENT LIFE CYCLE. Business Dilemma There is no potential issue as unique employee identification is important to any business that wants to provide security to its organization and its employees, thus is also convenient. The issue here is that tracking employee hours worked based on their last name is not suitable as employees might have similar last names. Therefore might be convenient for it to be based on their employee identification as the identification card will have a unique pin number for each employee. The issue here is that the employees should be given options regarding discretion for working hours since some of the employees might not have the necessary to work 8 hours due to some reason that should be made known at the beginning of employment. The main potential issue here is that there shouldnt be a standard rate and that double time and time and a half rates should be taken into consideration. Managers should be scheduled to work morning and evening shifts. In other words they should be their throughout the day to oversee the running smoothly of the business. Also, when unseen circumstances arise managers are there to offer support, help and make the necessary decisions. The issue here is that employees might have to attend to unforeseen circumstances so therefore the 8 hours of working time might be a lot for some of the employees because emergencies can occur at any given moment. Server s should be allowed to work all three shifts as it will provide them with options. There is no issue here as managers are in charge of who to hire and therefore should also be allowed to delete and change employees from the system. MAKING BUSINESS DECISION 1 1. ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF USING AN EMPLOYEE TO BUILD A CUSTOM SYSTEM. ADVANTAGES An employee building the custom system will be cheaper than it being purchased. It will be easier for employees to use and understand as it is build by one of their own colleagues. There will be less time for training. (Explain) DISADVANTAGES It will take valuable business time for the employee to build the custom system. The business might have to hire a professional to look at the new system hence will be costly for the business. The new system might be prone to error which will contribute to the expense of the business as they will have to refer to professional help. ADVANTAGES COTS allow for just purchasing of the components and putting it together which will be cheap for the business instead of developing a new system. It will include a description of the software functions; hence will be documented to good commercial standards as it will give the names of the resources needed to run the software. Decreases the development time for new products. The components will be readily available, comprehensive functionality and therefore potentially frequent upgrades. DISADVANTAGES The initial cost of purchasing the COTS components might be costly for the business. The components would be limited to only certain functionalities. It might cause potential unreliability. There might also be difficulty in the integration procedures. The older employees will have competency issues because they will have to learn to adjust to the new system as education will become a primary focus. There will be resistance to change by the older employees as a new system might cause insecurity of jobs. Therefore, to ensure a smooth transition training must be offered to the older employees and also ensuring that jobs are not at risk. MAKING BUSINESS DECISION 2 From reviewing the employees testimony, it is most obvious that the payroll system is functioned manually beginning from their payroll manager John Tahoe who collect the timesheets, calculates regular , overtime and holiday hours and then sends it for approval by the manager. Finally he adds the staff members commissions. From John the payments are sent to Mary Jane the tax manager for the coffee shop. Her task is to calculate city, state and federal taxes; she has to correct the incorrect check amounts issued, employees who have gone pass their sick and vacation time must be tracked by her and lastly she has to generate checks for the salaried employees. Ted Whitetaker is the store manager for the coffee shop. He is the person who signs off on all the time sheets, he checks the staff members schedule so as to validate the times on the employees timesheets, tracks vacation and sick time, thus when employees go pass the sick and vacation time when quitting he will sign a form detailin g that they have to pay back all negative vacation or sick time. Adding on, the payroll department must be finding it very time consuming and error prone when most if not all of their tasks are done manually. Firstly, the payroll manager John Tahoe is in need of a system that automatically tracks sick and vacation time and also a system that calculates regular, overtime and holiday hours that will validate the time sheet. If a new system is to be implemented than it would have to be very capable in that it is easy to use and understand. I think it would be wise to put in place a system that calculates working hours on a timesheet that is done by employees and in that they can clock in and clock it when work is done. Hence, at the end of the day John just has to check with the system. The issue here is that the employees are honest in when they clock in and clock out. Mary Jane the tax manager needs a system that automatically determines taxes and does quarterly tax filing statements, performs audits and allows for employees to perform direct deposits. The main issue here is that even if a system can automatically calculate the taxes at the end of the day it is dependent on the input of the payroll department so as to determine the right tax amount. Thus, the payroll department will have to be very thorough in their input in that it is accurate. A question that should be asked is if there is a system that performs quarterly tax auditing automatically. Additionally the input will still have to be done manually so consistency and accuracy is vital. In the case of the direct deposits, the business can just directly deposit the employees salary straight to their bank accounts but some of the employees might prefer receiving their salary from their managers on their pay day which can become an issue for the coffee shop. Lastly, Ted Whitetaker the store manager requires a system that calculates commissions, handles sales forecast and what if analysis on staff commissions rates and also a system that could design promotions for their best customers, repeat customer and customers who have never used their coffee club cards before. The main issue here is a system handling sales forecast in the sense that it is accurate and gives attainable methods of forecasting. A question that should be asked in this scenario is if there is such a system that could design promotions for customers so as to increase sales. Ted I assume will have to do this without using a system; he may have to do some research to find ways in which he can do promotions that will attract customers such as advertising. In conclusion, the three employees list of requirements for systems they want seem reasonable in that there are systems that can help them with the work but some of their need will just have to be done manually. Furthermore even with systems that could make their jobs easier, the system itself will be dependent on the input of the employees and while introducing a new system an issue that should be considered is the cost the business will have to pay in relation to time and money. Employees in the payroll department need to be accurate and precise with the data that is input into the system so as to get the best reliable and relevant information that is needed and must get the best training possible so as to use the new payroll system if implemented. APPLY YOUR KNOWLEDGE To involve all relevant stakeholders i.e. 1 from the Management, 1 representative from the IT department and a representative from the user. It is vital to get the system implemented with input from all perspective, mostly the users. This, system specification, is the most important aspect of system implementation. Risk Management can just implement the system without getting feedback and approval from users and other representatives in the company. It is important to interact with users in all stages of implementation, design, testing and ‘go-live. ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURES BUSINESS DILEMMA The difficulty in determining the rate of return of components in the enterprise architecture is that components are sometimes not used in the business until circumstances arise when they have to be used. Especially in a small coffee shop where components are used when serving customers are said to fetch a high rate of return on investment but during an emergency then items such as a fire extinguisher can be useful and thus will have a high rate of return as it prevented destruction to the business. For example, coffee cups when purchased are used to serve customers can be said to have a return on investment for the business, thus when not in use can cause a low rate of return on investment for the business. Therefore it is difficult to determine rate of return on investments as it will depend on the structure of the business and when components are in use. Also, damaged components will bring a low rate of investment or no rate of investment at all and components that are always in use will bring a high rate of return on investment. To determine the cost vs. benefit of the proposed dishwasher, keyboard and mouse, the business will have to look at costs such as how much these three components are, will it need regular maintenance (dishwasher), whether the components are a necessity to the business or not. The benefits can be determined by how much the business will make out of this components, how long it will last the business, the rate of return on the investment of this three components, the ease of use, training is easy to dictate to employees on how to use the tree components and finally if it makes work easier and faster. MAKING BUSINESS DECISIONS 1 BENEFITS OF DEPLOYING A NEW, UNPROVEN TECHNOLOGY This will increase revenue for the coffee shop. Broadway Cafà © can have a general rule of space occupation that the customer has to buy a product. Most customers are technology savvy and they need access to internet from time to time throughout the day. It can increase productivity in that customers will be attracted to the coffee shop especially since it will offer customers the chance to access the internet from their shop via a power line. There will be advancement in communicating such as in emails, thus messages can be received instantly. CONS OF DEPLOYING A NEW AND UNPROVEN TECHNOLOGY Introducing a new system maybe costly for the business to implement, and especially in this case an unproven technology. The management team will have to perform a cost and benefit analysis and whether introducing a new technology will be an advantage or not. Regular maintenance may have to be performed which can be costly to the business. Setting up of a new technology might be time consuming for the business and thus might result in unexpected costs. Based on my findings I wouldnt implement BPL. The reason being is that it is dependent on power lines that can cause interference for other users. Also, a small coffee shop doesnt really need an internet access since it will be very costly to the business. Furthermore, BPL might not have a competitive advantage as there are other technologies that can perform better and faster than BPL. MAKING BUSINESS DECISION 2 Some of the strategies that can be used to backup a computer in case of data loss are: To make regular data security backups of data used in the business and to have it kept away safe in a remote place. Make a backup of the hard disk if a new software is being installed hence it will ensure business to get back on track in case the hard disk fails or is corrupted. All transaction and records should be well documented and kept in a safe remote place. The first third party utility that could be used is called Norton Ghost 15 Symantec New PC Backup win 7/Vista/XP. Features Protects the PCs application, settings, folders and files. It has advanced backup and recovery. Provides powerful protection such as offsite backups and Symantec. Offers incremental backups and enhanced compression that help reduce the amount of required storage, thus helps keep everything safe. It works well with most storage devices including external hard drives, networked drives and recordable and rewriteable CDs and DVDs. The price of this is in US dollars cost $29.95 converted to Fiji dollars is $53.95 excluding transportation costs to ship it from the US to Fiji. (http://www.metasearch.com/www2search.cgi?p=third+party+utilities+that+perform+backup%2Crestore+and+ghostingl=20s=o) Another third party utility is Norton Ghost 15 Backup win 7/ XP/Vista. Features It creates full system and file backups. Recovers system and data even when computer cannot be restarted. Enables convenient, secure offsite backups. Lets you decide what is backed up and when to customize backups based on how you use the computer. The cost of purchasing Norton Ghost 15 Backup is USD 25.98 (FJD $46.19). The exchange rate used for this conversion is 0.555. The cost of purchasing this software in US dollars is $25.98 and so when converted to Fiji dollars will accumulate to $46.19. (http://www.metasearch.com/www2search.cgi?p=third+party+utilities+that+perform+backup%2Crestore+and+ghostingl=20s=o) The final third party utility that can be used is the New Norton Ghost 15 Symantec, Backup Restore, and X/Vista/7. Features It has multiple storage options that offer backup to almost any media. Backups your file to network attached storage devices. It has a full system backup thats back up everything on a hard drive. Incremental and differential backups. Backups only files that have changed. In US dollars the utility would cost $25.95 and so in Fiji dollars would be $46.13. These charges are without the transportation and other costs included in getting it to Fiji. (http://www.metasearch.com/www2search.cgi?p=third+party+utilities+that+perform+backup%2Crestore+and+ghostingl=20s=o)

The Issues Surrounding the Amazon Rainforest Essay -- Environmental Am

The Issues Surrounding the Amazon Rainforest   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   The battle for the Amazon rainforest is a daunting task. It’s a long going battle between miners, loggers, and developers against the indigenous people who call it home. It’s a battle like any battle in a war; it affects lives, families, the economy, politics, and the environment amongst other things. The main topic of this debate is the effects of the Amazon deforestation on the people who live in it, this will be the focus of this research paper. In this paper, I will discuss the history, causes, effects and solutions for the Amazon rainforest deforestation.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The environmental problems of today started a long time ago, before automobiles, electricity, and the Industrial Revolution. From ancient times to present day, humans have changed the world in which they live. As population increase and technology advances, more significant and widespread problems arise. The Amazon rainforest has not been spared from this. The Amazon region has long been seen as a land of great riches. â€Å"Early Europeans and others have long been fascinated by the Amazon, with early visions of a land of gold, the legend of ‘El Dorado’† (Faminow 32). The European invasion bought with it the increased population and new technologies that had a drastic effect to the Amazonian region, which was once considered safe from exploitation. This problem has continued to the present, with higher consequences. Ehrlich explains, â€Å"today, unprecedented demands on the environment from a rapidly expanding human population and from advan cing technology are causing a continuing and accelerated decline in the quality of the environment and it’s ability to sustain life† (98). As a result, the Amazon rainforest is being destroyed at an alarming rate, affecting all those that live in the region.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  To understand the scope of the changes taking place, Howard Facklam has come up with some staggering statistics, he says, â€Å"it was estimated at one point in the 1980’s that the Amazon basin was being cleared at the rate of 50 acres a minute; another estimate put the rate at 78,000 square miles per hear† (53). These are astronomical numbers when you come to think of it, to put it into perspective, that’s roughly the size of the state of Idaho. Such deforestation has an alarming affect, â€Å"it means the loss of a multiplicity of products: Food, fibers, medicine... ...e papers about it. It doesn’t mean that the problem has gone away, it’s still very much alive. It’s just not getting the coverage and attention it has before and that’s where the shame lies. People need to know about this, the more the better. It’s a valuable resource that mankind cannot afford to lose. Bibliography Ehrlich, Anne et al. Earth. New York: Watts. 2007. Facklam, Howard. Plants: Extinction or Survival?. New Jersey: Enslow. 2000. Faminow, Merle D. Cattle, Deforestation, and Development in the Amazon. New York: CAB International. 2002. Gradwohl, Judith & Russel Greenburg. Saving the Tropical Forests. Washington D.C.. Island Press. 2003. Hecht, Susanna. The Fate of the Forest. London. 2001. Hornaday, Anne. â€Å"Earth’s Threatened Resources.† Congressional Quarterly. 2 Sept.   2003: 28-29. Linden, Eugene. â€Å"Paradise Lost?† Time. 19 July 2000: 50-51. Smith, Duane A. â€Å"My Trip to the Rain Forest.† Mining America: The Industry and The Environment. 3 Sept. 2001: 66. Stewart, Douglas Ian. After the Trees. Austin: University of Texas Press: 2004. Tropical Deforestation: the human dimension. Ed. Leslie E. Sponsel. New York: Columbia UP. 2006.

Pierre Bourdieu

Pierre Bourdieu (1930–2002), Professor of Sociology at the College de France, might come into view an unlikely candidate for inclusion under the rubric of critical theory. An erstwhile structuralist, whose work sometimes appeared to run equivalent to that of Foucault, an erstwhile anthropologist and former student of Levi-Strauss, he was in numerous respects a characteristically ‘French’ theorist.However he distanced himself from the ‘objectivism’ of structural anthropology, at the same time as remaining stubbornly opposed to to post-structuralist deconstruction (Bourdieu, 1977; Bourdieu, 1984, p. 495). Furthermore, his work engaged very directly with both Marxist and Weberian traditions in social theory. One critic has even observed that it â€Å"is best understood as the attempt to push class analysis beyond Marx and Weber† (Eder, 1993, p. 63).Definitely, if critical theory is described in terms of its objective to change the world, then Bour dieu was as significant a theorist as any. Throughout the late 1990s, he appeared as by far the most well-known academic intellectual to join in active solidarity with the new ‘antiglobalisation’ movements. His La Misere du monde, first published in volume in 1993 and in paperback in 1998, turned out to be a bestseller in France and a main source of political motivation to the movement, both in the original and in its English translation as The Weight of the World.He was directly implicated in militant ‘antiglobalisation’ activism, speaking at mass meetings of striking railway workers in 1995 and unemployed workers in 1998 (Bourdieu, 1998, pp. 24n, 88n); he initiated the 1996 formally request for an ‘Estates General of the Social Movement’ and its May Day 2000 successor, the petition for a pan-European Estates General; he confounded the radical ‘Raisons d'agir’ group and its associated publishing house; he overtly called ‘for a left Left’ (Bourdieu, 1998a); and he was a regular contributor to the radical French monthly, Le Monde diplomatique.We may add that, like Marx, Bourdieu attached a distinguishing subtitle to what is still his best-known work Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (Bourdieu, 1984). Bourdieu's reputation as a sociological thinker revolves around the ‘theory of practice’, in which he tried to theorise human sociality as the result of the tactical action of individuals operating within a constraining, however not determining, context of values.Notably, the term Bourdieu coined to explained this was ‘the habitus’ (Bourdieu, 1977), by which he meant â€Å"an acquired system of generative schemes objectively adjusted to the particular conditions in which it is constituted† (p. 95). It is at the same time structured and structuring, materially produced and very frequently generation-specific (pp. 72, 78). Elsewhere, he explained i t as ‘a kind of transforming machine that leads us to â€Å"reproduce† the social conditions of our own production, but in a relatively unpredictable way’ (Bourdieu, 1993, p.87). Like Marx and Weber, Bourdieu thinks contemporary capitalist societies to be class societies. However for Bourdieu, their dominant and dominated classes are discernible from each other not simply as a matter of economics, however as well as a matter of habitus: ‘social class, understood as a system of objective determinations’, he insisted, ‘must be brought into relation †¦ with the class habitus, the system of dispositions (partially) common to all products of the same structures’ (Bourdieu, 1977, p. 85).Bourdieu's most extensively cited study, though, and undoubtedly the most powerful in cultural studies, has been Distinction, a work that takes as the object of its critique specifically the same kind of high modernism as that privileged in Frankfurt Schoo l aesthetics. Where Adorno and Horkheimer had insisted on a radical discontinuity between capitalist mass culture as well as avant-garde modernism, Bourdieu would focus on the latter's own profound complicity with the social structures of power and domination.The book was footed on an extremely thorough sociological survey, conducted in 1963 and in 1967/68, by interview and by ethnographic observation, of the cultural preferences of over 1200 people in Paris, Lille and a small French provincial town (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 503). Examining his sample data, Bourdieu recognized three main zones of taste: ‘legitimate’ taste, which was most extensive in the educated sections of the leading class; ‘middle-brow’ taste, more extensive among the middle classes; and ‘popular’ taste, prevalent in the working classes (p.17). He characterised lawful taste mainly in terms of what he named the ‘aesthetic disposition’ to state the ‘absolute prim acy of form over function’ (pp. 28, 30). Artistic and social ‘distinction’ is consequently inextricably interrelated, he argued: ‘The pure gaze implies a break with the ordinary attitude towards the world which, as such, is a social break’ (p. 31).The popular aesthetic, by contrast, is ‘based on the affirmation of continuity between art and life’ and ‘a deeprooted demand for participation’ (p. 32). The distinguishing detachment of this ‘pure gaze’, Bourdieu argued, is part of a more general disposition towards the ‘gratuitous’ and the ‘disinterested’, in which the ‘affirmation of power over a dominated necessity’ implies a claim to ‘legitimate superiority over those who †¦ remain dominated by ordinary interests and urgencies’ (pp.55–6). Bourdieu's general sociology had posited that, without exception, all human practices can be treated as ‘eco nomic practices directed towards the maximizing of material or symbolic profi’ (Bourdieu, 1977, p. 183). Therefore his leaning to view the intelligentsia as self-interested traders in cultural capital. For Bourdieu, it followed that professional intellectuals were best measured as a subordinate fraction of the same social class as the bourgeoisie.Defining the leading class as that possessed of a high overall volume of capital, whatever its source whether economic, social or cultural he located the intellectuals in the dominant class by virtue of their access to the latter. The dominant class therefore comprises a dominant fraction, the bourgeoisie proper, which excessively controls ‘economic capital’, and a dominated fraction, the intelligentsia, which disproportionately controls ‘cultural capital’. The most apparently disinterested of cultural practices are thus, for Bourdieu, fundamentally material in character.Even when analysing the more ‘p urely artistic’ forms of literary activity, the ‘anti-economic economy’ of the field of ‘restricted’ as opposed to ‘large-scale’ cultural production, he noted how ‘symbolic, long-term profits †¦ are ultimately reconvertible into economic profits’ (Bourdieu, 1993a, p. 54) and how avant-garde cultural practice remained dependent on the ‘possession of substantial economic and social capital’ (p. 67). Finally, Bourdieu comes to discuss current practices in the visual arts. He sees the current bureaucratization and commercialization of the limited modernist field as a threat to artistic autonomy.He registers with disquiet certain recent developments which put at risk the precious conquests of the elitist artists-the interpenetration of art and money, through new patterns of patronage, the growing dependence of art on bureaucratic control, plus the consecration through prizes or honours of works successful merely with the wider public, alongside the long-cycle modernist works cherished by artists themselves. Bourdieu's critique of idealized artistic disinterestedness has been incorrectly reinterpreted as a theory of extensive egoistic domination, not least by the ‘consecrated' avant-garde.Bourdieu's socio-analysis of the artists has shown, in spite of charismatic ideology, that in practice the Impressionists and subsequent modernists lived a comfortable existence by the time of their middle age, and that usually gallery owners or dealers sold their works on their behalf, therefore relieving them of attention to the Vulgar' needs of material existence. Bourdieu as well accounts for certain recurrent features of the closed worlds of art, for example the social reality of artists' struggles over cultural politics, which the spiritualistic account cannot explain.Contrary to the orthodox expectations of sublimated suffering, Bourdieu cites numerous examples where the conflicts between arti sts over their specifically artistic interests caused open violence: the Surrealists' fight, in which Andre Breton broke a fellow artist's arm, is a case in point. Nor did the idealized expectations of art stop numerous cultural producers collaborating with the Vichy regime in the 1940s. In The Rules of Art, Bourdieu resumed many of the themes first broached in Distinction, particularly the role of cultural discernment as a marker of class position.Here he elucidated how Flaubert, Baudelaire and Manet had been critical to the institution of an ‘autonomous artistic field’ of salons, publishing houses, producers, commentators, critics, distributors, and all that; and to the establishment of a idea of ‘art for art's sake’, which measured legitimacy as ‘disinterestedness’. For Bourdieu, the latter concept marked the genesis of the modern artist or writer as ‘a fulltime professional, devoted to one's work in a total and exclusive manner, indif ferent to the exigencies of politics and to the injunctions of morality’ (Bourdieu, 1996, pp.76–7). This new artistic field had created a zone of autonomy, free from both the market and politics, in its ‘heroic’ phase, throughout the latter part of the 19th century. But in the 20th century, Bourdieu argued, modernist art had developed not as a critique of the ‘iron cage’ of instrumental rationality, however as a function of the power games of the dominant classes, its capacities for critical distance gradually eroded through cooption by both the market and the state education system.Bourdieu detected analogously ‘interested’ processes at work in the academic intelligentsia. The academic profession is a competitive struggle for authenticity and cultural distinction, he elucidated, which functions to reproduce the wider structures of social class inequality: whether applied to the world, to students, or to academics themselves, acad emic taxonomies are ‘a machine for transforming social classifications into academic classifications’ (Bourdieu, 1988, p.207). Afterwards he would stress the central significance of the elite graduate schools, the alleged ‘grandes ecoles’, to the power of the French social and economic elite, showing how their credentialism operated as a kind of ‘state magic’ for a supposedly rationalised society (Bourdieu, 1996, p. 374).Tracing the growing incidence of academic credentials among the chief executives of the top 100 French companies, he concluded that the obvious substitution of academic for property titles in fact performed a vital legitimating function: company heads ‘no longer appear †¦ the heirs to a fortune they did not create’, he wrote, ‘but rather the most exemplary of self-made men, appointed by their †¦ â€Å"merits† to wield power †¦ in the name of â€Å"competence† and â€Å"intelligen ce†Ã¢â‚¬â„¢ (p. 334).Where the Frankfurt School had worked with a model of theory as overtly critical, Bourdieu tended to have an effect on a quasipositivistic objectivism, in order that the moment of critique was often concealed behind a mask of scientific ‘objectivity’. In The Weight of the World, he used a mixture of ethnographic interviews and sociological commentary to mount a stunning condemnation of contemporary utilitarianism in the shape of ‘economic liberalism’ as creating the preconditions for ‘an unprecedented development of all kinds of ordinary suffering’ (Bourdieu et al. , 1999).However even here, in his most explicitly engaged work, he still insisted that sociological ‘science’ could itself uncover ‘the possibilities for action’ that politics will require exploring (p. 629). Where the Frankfurt School had conceived of intellectuals as considerably productive of critical sensibility, Bourdieu tende d to detect merely material self-interest. This sort of ‘reflexive’ critique is essential, he argued, to break with the ‘habits of thought, cognitive interests and cultural beliefs bequeathed by several centuries of literary, artistic or philosophical worship’ (Bourdieu 2000, p. 7).However such cynicism can easily cause a radical overestimation of the reproductive powers of the social status quo. Even though Bourdieu's vocabulary of ‘cultural capital' and ‘symbolic profits' has sometimes misled his readers, his persistence on the complex motives in artists' desire to make a mark does not permit him to forget the very important differences between the artistic field and the field of capitalist power. Bourdieu argues that the characteristic nature of artistic and other cultural fields is that they exist in the form of reciprocal gift exchange somewhat than being animated by money.Further, he does not lessen artists to their class position, nor doe s he deny that artists may certainly be singular figures. Indeed, the comparison across the limited and expanded artistic fields sharpens approval of the differences between the autonomous artists and others. The sociological analysis of the artworks, which illustrates how they are necessitated by social situation and artistic position-taking, can therefore become a ‘piquant sauce' which serves to intensify the pleasures of the works. References: Bourdieu, P (1977), Outline of a Theory of Practice, trans. R.Nice, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. ___(1984), Homo academicus, English edn 1988a, Homo Academicus, trans. P. Collier, Polity Press, Cambridge ___(1988), L'ontologie politique de Martin Heidegger, English edn 1991b, The Political Ontology of Martin Heidegger, trans. P. Collier, Polity Press, Cambridge ___(1993), ‘Concluding remarks: for a sociogenetic understanding of cultural works’ in Bourdieu: Critical Perspectives, eds C. Calhoun, E. LiPuma and M. Postone, Polity Press, Cambridge ___(1993a), The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature, ed. and introd. R. Johnson, Polity Press, Cambridge___(1996), Sur la television, English edn 1998c, On Television, trans. P. P. Ferguson, New Press, New York ___(1998), Contre-feux. Propos pour servir a la resistance contre l'invasion neo-liberale, English edn 1998b, Acts of Resistance: Against the New Myths of Our Time, trans. R. Nice, Polity Press, Cambridge ___(1998a), La domination masculine, English edn 2001, Masculine Domination, trans. R. Nice, Stanford University Press, Stanford, CT ___and L. Wacquant (1999), ‘On the cunning of imperialist reason’ Theory, Culture and Society, 16/1 ___ (2000) Pascalian Meditations. Cambridge: Polity Press Eder, K (1993). Th

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