...In attempting to answer the ominous and age-old issue of what religion is, Emile Durkheim and Clifford Geertz offer two quite in-depth and distinct definitions that can be viewed as very similar, yet truly different on a number of levels. In this essay, I will examine the similarities and differences between the two authors’ definitions of religion and offer my own perspective on each. Both anthropologists provide definitions that share the emphasis on religion as specific to a people, and also share the acknowledgement of rituals or practices within religion. However, Durkheim and Geertz have different fundamental, explicit concepts of religion, and in turn emphasize different aspects of religion and its social function. Many critiques on both definitions have provided a number of pros and cons to each, which in turn have led to my preference of one over the other. In examining the similarities between Durkheim and Geertz’s definitions of religion, one must observe that both authors conceptualize religion as specific to the group of people that it is present in, with limited applications outside of the group. At the heart of Emile Durkheim’s definition of religion is the concept that religion is central to society and that “religion is an eminently social thing” (DURKHEIM 2008: 39). Embedded in this idea of religion as a social entity is the concept of religion as socially-specific; as applicable only to the specific group it exists in. He goes on to claim that beliefs and...
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...Organisational culture is defined as the shared values and beliefs that interact with an organisations’s structure and control systems to produce behavioural norms (Uttal 1983). Strategic management consists of the analysis, decisions, and actions an organistion undertakes to sustain a competitive advantage (Gregory 2005) . Scholars, such as a Drucker, argue that “culture eats strategy for breakfast”, meaning organisational culture is far more significant and influential compared to strategic management. No matter how brilliant your strategy is, it won’t be accomplished if it is not supported by your ogranisation’s culture. However, some scholars argue that due to the intermittent challenges facing organisations in the contemporary business enivornment, culture can often be influenced by strategy. An organisation’s culture is extremely influential to business success. The organisation’s values and beliefs affect marketing, productivity and customer interaction. A strong organisational culture is achieved through the use of language, rituals and symbols to communicate key values throughout the organisation. A weak organisational culture exists when core values are not clearly defined, not clearly communicated or not widely accepted within the organisation. This can lead to inconsistant customer experiences and a unfavourable business reputation. (1) presents a strong organisational culture as a competitive advantage, “ A strong culture helps you attract and keep top talent,...
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...Jason Francis Herbert Pimlott Rhetorical Analysis November 13, 2012 This essay argues that the Globe and Mail (G&M) article, ‘Don’t Teach Until You See the Whites of Their Eyes’ (18 August 2012), is persuasive with its primary target audience of G&M readers. Clifford Orwin, the author of this article, is a professor of political science at the University of Toronto. Furthermore, the main focus of this article deals with the fact that: “Real education requires real teachers and students, not disembodied electronic wraiths.” Through the rhetorical analysis of this editorial, this paper will demonstrate that its persuasiveness can be attributed to four key aspects: through an emphasis on the use of deliberative stasis; its use of ethos and logos; and through its effective use of rhetorical imagery. Before the case can be made for understanding how and why this article is persuasive, we need to begin with setting the context of the issue or exigence to which the article was responding and whether that response was timely and appropriate. To understand the exigence of this article, the interpretation of Orwin’s implied audience is necessary to grasp how the two concepts within exigence, kairos and phronesis, both link text, context and audience together. Through an extensive analysis of the assumptions made by Orwin, the implied audience consists predominantly of instructors. Moreover, Orwin’s motto: “Don’t teach until you see the whites of their eyes.” Also used as...
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...conceptual precedence. But it is to maintain that the huge transformative processes of our time that globalization describes cannot be properly understood until they are grasped through the conceptual vocabulary of culture; likewise that these transformations change the very fabric of cultural experience and, indeed, affect our sense of what culture actually is in the modern world. Both globalization and culture are concepts of the highest order of generality and notoriously contested in their meanings. This book certainly does not aim at an exhaustive analysis of either: more modestly it tries to grasp the main elements of globalization in what might be called a cultural register. In this first chapter I offer an orientating understanding of the concept of globalization within this register, and then try to show why culture and globalization matter intrinsically to each other. Globalization as Complex Connectivity To construct this argument I begin with a simple and relatively uncontentious basic understanding of globalization as an empirical condition of the modem world: what I shall call complex connectivity. By this I mean that globalization refers to the rapidly developing...
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...right? College is an exciting, yet stressful time of our lives. The biggest problem we face about college is how much will it cost? Everyone wants to attend certain schools, but money always gets in the way. This causes students to reach towards community colleges, trade schools, and online universities. These schools offer the same degrees faster, but at a higher cost. Kevin Carey, director of the Education Policy Program, claims for-profit colleges have too many issues within and need to be reformed for the better. He points out that for-profit schools are not all that bad. These universities offer open doors for students turned down by traditional and private colleges who seek higher education. Christopher Beha complicates Carey’s argument that for-profit schools are a form of “higher education” by using providing evidence of how classes are at these universities when he posed as a student himself. Jane Clark extends Carey’s claim that these colleges are “money-making machines” by supporting a look at how for-profits make their money. Lastly, an article by Melissa Korn from the Wall Street Journal clarifies Carey’s assertion of how for-profit graduates are not getting jobs because employers are turning down their “low-value” degrees. College is a time for many students to gain a higher form of education. Carey argues that classes taken at for-profit colleges offer are equivalent to traditional colleges. Christopher Beha, editor of Harper’s Magazine, gives a different perspective...
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...Review: Coyle, Daniel. "The Sweet Spot" The Talent Code. Greatness Isn’t Born. It’s Grown. Here’s How. New York: Bantam, 2009. 11-29. What does it mean to be successful? This is one of the many questions that concern most people today. Over the years, there have been different kinds of answers to this question anddifferent roads have been suggested by different kinds of people. Related to the dilemma of whatsuccess means is the question of how to achieve it and the role talent plays in achieving it. Daniel Coyle’s book “The Talent Code” is one of many approaches to the resolution of this problem. In his book, Coyle studies talent - what it is, the reason for it and its role in success. He visitsnine places that he considers talent hot-beds so as to observe talented people. He calls these places “the chicken - wire Havards” because they produce huge amounts of talents despite being small andhumble (p. 11).He begins with the definition of talent a s “the possession of repeatable skills that don’t dependon physical size” (p. 11, footnote). The objective of the first chapter is to prove to its readers thatdeep-practicing is the way skills are gained and show how this process contributed to the success of those who were trained through it. One of the concepts involved in this process is the sweet spot, andit is defined by Robert Bjork as the “optimal gap between what you know and what you’re trying todo.” (p. 19). “Deep practice” is the art of increasing learning...
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...Harvard Referencing System In your written work, when you are drawing or referring to or quoting from the ideas of another writer you must provide a reference following the guidelines laid out below. Always cite the author(s) of a book. If the book is an edited collection, you should cite the author(s) of the individual chapters you have used and NOT the editors(s) of the book. 1. Harvard method of citation in the text: (author year) When you are drawing from, paraphrasing or summarising another writer’s work, but NOT quoting directly from them, you must provide a reference as follows: 1.a. Single author of book or chapter: In a book by Said (1978) Orientalism was investigated as.... Orientalism was investigated (Said 1978) as.... When an author has published more than one cited document in the same year these are distinguished by adding lower case letters after the year within the brackets, which should also be used in the bibliography (see 4.i. below): Blunt (1994a) has discussed the impact of travel, gender and imperialism. He has also examined the impact of globalization on travel (Blunt 1994b). 1.b. Two or three authors: In the book by Driver and Rose (1992), ..... 1.c. More than three authors: Benner et al (1996) conclude that .... If more than one citation is referred to within a sentence, list them all in the following form, by date and then alphabetically: There are indications...
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...Vicky Silva 30 May 2015 English 204 Professor Jimenez The Complexities of Being a Feminist If being a woman in today’s patriarchal led society is hard to be taken serious, it is hard to imagine how much harder it must have been many, many generations ago, it must have been next to impossible to express a thought, an idea when the like of Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz was roaming the earth. Hell, it has only been less than 50 years ago when women were just viewed as housewives, secretaries and nurses. Yet, it has taken more than 100 years for women to be viewed as equals. This idea of gender equality is not something new. The feminist movement has been an old, progressive one. Many women and men alike have had these gender equity ideas for centuries; this idea is not a new one as pioneers from Sor Juana to Kate Chopin to even the present-day Emma Watson, have stated time and time again, women are faced with oppression by the patriarchal society in many different ways that hurt women and men alike. Kate Chopin wrote many short stories in her time that pushed the envelope for the feminist movement. Two stories in particular were “The Storm” and “ The Story of An Hour”. Both of these stories have a female protagonist oppressed by a male antagonist, which very much can be construed as a commentary of what social normal behavior was, a patriarchal driven society that oppressed any type of female freedoms or expressions. In Chopin’s short story, “The Story of An Hour” the...
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...deemed legal. Various groups supported decriminalization and pushed for state reform. These groups included National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (commonly known as NORML), Americans for Safe Access, and Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. Advocates of the legalization of marijuana argued from the standpoint of freedom of choice, with supporters clamoring against unnecessary government interference. Promoting the therapeutic aspects of cannabis, some groups presented marijuana access as a human-rights issue and proposed that the drug be available for medical purposes. As more states decriminalized marijuana, and as proponents of decriminalization argued widely against prohibition, the argument for protecting “cherished values” began to weaken. “Charles Kelly’s Paraphrase Practice” Since the turn of the century, several states of decriminalized marijuana possession to a certain degree regardless if it was for personal use, growth, or selling. Some states have even allowed large quantities to be legal. Many national organizations of supported the decriminalization of marijuana and have argued that the U.S. government has overstepped its...
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...Compare capabilities approaches to poverty with monetary approaches. What are the strengths and weaknesses of each? In your view, which is better for understanding poverty? Explain your answer. “What a weary time those years were- to have the desire and the need to live but not the ability” (Bukowski, 1982). Poverty affects billions of people worldwide, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and East Asia. Defining poverty is almost as difficult as eradicating it. For the purpose of this essay, I will take poverty to mean the state of being exceptionally poor. Furthermore, poorness will be defined as an extremely low quality of life, which culminates as a result of social, political and economic factors. In order to examine the strengths and weaknesses of each approach, it is necessary to identify who these are strengths and weaknesses for; a strength of an approach may be considered a weakness from a different perspective. Governments and international organisations, with a common goal of lifting poverty from disadvantaged countries, are the main focus of this essay. Leading policy makers around the world have adopted a “uni-dimensional perspective on poverty” (Wong, 2012) which largely focuses on a lack of income. This definition provides the basis for the Monetary Approach to poverty. However, this is an exceptionally constricted view of poverty, disregarding many social and political factors that contribute to the current, bleak situation. The Capabilities Approach to poverty...
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...30-June-2011). Second, Total sales of telecom equipment to mobile operators fell by a drastic 24% during the last financial year despite most companies starting their roll-out of 3G services (Real Time News). Third, Decline in capital expenditure from Rs.29,600 crore in 2008 to Rs.9,500 crore in 2010 (Business Line article 15-Aug.-2011). Fourth, Decline in margins of product and, Fifth, Hyper competition in market. This shows that there is pressure to perform in competitive environment to achieve sales targets. Many authors feel that a wholesome and fair work environment on sales teams is essential for a positive work experience (e.g., Clifford, 1999; Cook, 1995). One of the issues that continue to concern sales people as well as sales managers is that of performance criteria and such criteria can be frustrating for both of them. (Clifford, 1999; Fetter, 1993; Muczyk & Gable, 1987; Swan, 1991). The sales force industry has grown since mid-1990s (Gabe & Goldberg, 1999). As the economies become increasingly knowledge intensive, sales teams tend to sell knowledge-based solution to customers. (Bettencourt et al, 2002).An essential part of selling knowledge-based solutions is transferring knowledge to customers; therefore, sales people need to act as knowledge brokers (Sarvary, 1999). Significance of the Study Sales target is the amount of sales fixed by...
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...Syracuse University A Literature Review: Why are stocks repurchases the best payout alternative method? Willie Reddic Table of Contents 1.0 Introduction.……............................................................................................................3 2.0 Beginning Literature of Dividends and the Movement towards Repurchases .......3 3.0 Methods of Repurchases and Key Definition ...............................................................4 4.0 The Positives and Negatives on Methods of Repurchases ……....................................5 5.0 Summary and Conclusion ...........................................................................................10 6.0 References.....................................................................................................................11 1.0 Introduction “A share repurchase distributes cash to existing shareholders in exchange for a fraction of the firm's outstanding equity. That is, cash is exchanged for a reduction in the number of shares outstanding.” (Wikipedia Foundation, Inc.) The intent of this paper is to review stock repurchases as the preferred method of alternative payout for shareholders. There are many reasons why firms choose this option. Past literature shows substantial evidence of reasons that range from capital structure adjustments to takeover defense (Bagwell, 1991). However, in my opinion the strongest reason is because stock repurchases can be used as another method of...
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...UNIVERSITY OF NAMIBIA LIZEL MUTELO 201207003 RELIGION AND SPIRITUALITY ASSIGNMENT 2 Explanation and Interpretation: three accounts When we are dealing with human subjects, their forms of thought, their types of practice, what are the respective roles of explanation and interpretation, however finely or coarsely they are distinguished? This summary discusses three accounts that can help us understand the roles of explanation and interpretation in studying or dealing with human subjects and these are the exclusivism account, the inclusive account, and the interactionism account. The exclusive account/position holds that interpretation and explanation exclude one another. The inclusive position maintains that explanation is and must be subordinated to interpretation. Inclusivists hold that the enterprise of interpretation always encapsulates explanatory pursuits. The interactionism account, proposes that interpretation and explanation inform each other. Novel interpretations employ the categories of theories already in place, whereas novel explanations depend upon the discovery of new theories which, in turn, depends upon the sort of reorganization of knowledge that interpretative pursuits involve. On the interactive view these two processes complement one another. The Exclusivism Account Exclusivism takes two forms, one emphasizing the centrality of explanation, the other the centrality of interpretation. The...
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...aware of the basic terms that they need to know in order to choose a reliable company that will give them a high return of investment. Some are also not aware of the financial options available to them. Without this knowledge, investors fail to take advantage of potentially beneficial investment opportunities. In many cases, they become victims of scams and fraud cases. The practice of investment counselling has been used for almost a century. According to the Investment Advisor article, October 2006 issue, Arthur M. Clifford opened his own Los Angeles-based brokerage firm known as Clifford Swan Investment Counsel in 1911 after serving as an analyst and broker at a brokerage company in St. Louis. Four years later, Mrs. Robert Bliss, widow of the creator of Fletcher’s Castoria, asked him to review her assets. From then on he called himself an “Investment Counsellor and Financial Analyst” and he was one of the first to use the term “Investment Counsellor”. Clifford decided in 1921 to serve exclusively as an investment counsellor. This is said to be the starting point of investment counsel option, in United States. The firm continues to exist today in Pasadena,...
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...Sleight of Hand, Sleight of Mind Orson Welles' F for Fake and the Art of the Cinematic Con Orson Welles' 1974 "film essay" F for Fake opens with a scene of Welles, in the role of a magician, performing a sleight of hand trick with a young child, "transforming" the key the young boy has presented him into a coin and then showing how the young boy had the key all the time in his pocket. The magic was the perfect illustration of Welles' purpose in the film. F for Fake was a film about fraud and deceit, about how the makers of art (and, in particular, film) use "trickery" to fool their intended audience into believing something that is not true. The film focuses on three known "charlatans" (Elmyr de Hory, Clifford Irving, and Welles himself) who used their talents to produce such magnificent forgeries that they were able to fool everyone (even so-called "experts") into believing in the truth of their claims. Despite the status of this film as one of Welles' "minor" films from late in his life (it was one of the last films he completed prior to his death in 1985), it has had a tremendous impact on filmmaking, both in a technical sense (the film's complex editing of various film stocks and styles) and in a textual sense. Welles' identification of the ways in which an audience can be manipulated into believing anything as long as it has the "air" of authenticity has had a tremendous impact on current filmmaking, especially in the realm of horror filmmaking with the current crop...
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