Criminal law Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words - 3

Criminal law - Essay Example First, stop and search is an important tool for policing in the modern age, particularly with concerns about gang violence, illicit drug use and trafficking and terrorism. Secondly, the use of police stop and search have generated significant public mistrust in the legitimacy of police practices and this is important since police legitimacy depends largely on public trust and support.4 This paper, is an exploratory study and examines and analyses police stop and search powers and the safeguards implicit in the powers from the perspective of police and the community. This paper is divided into two parts. The first part of this paper describes the law related to police stop and search powers. The second part of the paper analyses stop and search powers from the perspective of police and the public. Police Powers of Stop and Search Police powers of stop and search under ordinary criminal law are contained in three statutes: PACE, the Misuse of Drug Act 1971 and the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994.5 Therefore, police stop and search powers are subject to legislative oversight. ... Moreover, stop and search powers may not be exercised on the basis of ethnic or racial profiling. This is arguably the most sensitive issue to which the reasonable suspicion test applies. As Lord Devlin stated, reasonable suspicion would arise where there are indications of guilt although there was insufficient proof.7 Thus, a person’s race, gender and so on, should not constitute grounds for stop and search as these factors do not constitute indications of guilt It can be argued however that the counterterrorism legislation, may leave open the possibility of racial and/or ethnic profiling. This legislation confers upon senior police officers much broader powers of stop and search. In particular, reasonable grounds to suspect are unnecessary.8 Constables however, may stop and search anyone that they reasonably suspect to be a terrorist.9 Again this would involve the same limitations on stop and search powers as seen with ordinary powers of stop and search. Section 44 of the Te rrorism Act 2000 permits a constable to stop and search vehicles and drivers and pedestrians in specifically authorized places under authorization by senior officers in the prevention of acts of terrorism.10 This is particularly controversial since it can be argued that under Section 44 police may stop and search individuals on the basis of a hunch and there is nothing preventing police exercising this broad power on the basis of racial and ethnic profiling. Section 44 was the subject of debate in Gillan and Quinton v UK. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHRt)ruled that the authorization powers contained in Sections 44-45 of the Terrorism Act 2000 did not contain sufficient safeguards against the protection of privacy guaranteed by Article 8 of the European

Chapter10 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Chapter10 - Essay Example In an example, when Dan comes into agreement with Mary that he will purchase her car for 1,000, the payment given by Dan is consideration. A key aspect in to understanding rules of consideration. The main rule used in lack of consideration is that for a promise to be enforced by the law of court there must be consideration. The types of consideration are considered in the law of intellectual property include a benefit to the promisor, a detriment to the promise, a promise to do something and a promise to refrain from carrying out an activity (Kubasek and Nancy, 2015). Promissory estoppel can be defined as a legal enforcement of an otherwise unenforceable contract as a result of detrimental reliance on the contract. Promissory estoppel is considered in different aspects including when one party makes a promise knowing that the other party will rely on it, the only way to avoid injustice is to enforce the promise and when the other party does rely on the promise (Kubasek and Nancy, 2015). In an example, when one receives a job offer and the person the job is offered cancels all the other activities involved in using finances and then told there is no job, the person under Promissory estoppel is able to sue the employer. According to the court, there is consideration of adequacy of consideration. The rule used in this aspect is that there is no weighing of whether there was making of a good bargain. In an example, when one is in the verge of bankrupt and the person’s creditors are posing threats of legal action, the person knows that when there is default of mortgage, there is ability of selling the assets so that the creditors are able to be paid (Kubasek and Nancy, 2015). The person may decide to sell all the assets and claim he is bankrupt knowing that the creditors will have nothing to collect. The court in this aspect will look at the adequacy of

Psychological Portraiture Essay Example for Free

Psychological Portraiture Essay Another distingished legacy that Halsman left behind was essentially a product of a probing psychologist in him who could treat his subjects with a deep insight and empathy and could make them reveal their characters in profound and extraordinary shades, which he eventually employed superbly in his works of photography. Also, with courteous manners, sauve witticism and stylish European accents, Halsman could establish an immediate connect with his American subjects (who, incidentally, dealt with psychology with an amused cynicism, of sorts) which greatly facilitated him to extricate the very best out of his subjects with rare aplomb and liveliness. In fact, he employed an extremely innovative technique, when he worked on a photography session with Marilyn Monroe, on an important assignment from Life. He made her stand in a corner and took around 40 –50 snapshots, as encircled by few admiring men, Monroe could put her spontaneous and effortless best as she ‘smiled, flirted, giggled and wriggled with delight† and enjoyed herself superbly, there-by, almost unknowingly, giving a large number of photo-opportunities to Halsman, who utilised the same to rare perfection. (Jones, 2001) While Halsman could craftily avoid any livid or lurid references of any â€Å"physical assests† of his character (an off-shoot of his somewhat traditional disposition? ), he was a modernist enough in his approach to employ all his subtle finery and sophistication to provoke his subjects into actually emoting the best reactions which, in effect, constituted the very staple of his subject of portraiture photography, bringing him world-wide recognition and acclaim.

The conceptual framework of feminism

The conceptual framework of feminism The conceptual framework of feminism, as a reactionary ideology, basically consists of power, woman, rights, and equality. The same can be said of African feminism, which has on its priority list such goals as self-determination, which have economic overtones sewn on a materialistic metaphysic. African womanism, despite its pretensions to seeking co-operation or its advocacy for interdependency between men and women, uses a model of conscientisation of women that is foreign to Africa, and runs the risks of obscurantism, vulgarism, inauthenticity, and irrelevance. To put it cryptically, African womanism cant want and cant not want men at the same time. Although gender has made tremendous strides in conscientising women about their plight vis-Ã  -vis male-dominance, its future in Africa demands that it re-position itself appropriately. At least it must re-think three theories, that is, the labour theory, economic theory, and social theory. Africas contemporary socio-political scene depicts theoretical and practical confusion of gender with feminism or, for that matter, gender with broad emancipatory movements, such as African womanism, which nonetheless use gender theory as an intellectual tool for critical analysis for the supposedly discriminatory social, religious and political organisational structures. Feminist thinkers loathe these structures because they see in them deliberate mechanisms for oppressing or marginalising women. This oppression of women characterises the present economic inegalitarianism in a male-dominated status quo. Consequently, it is argued that these male-founded and male-dominated structures can only be changed so as to render them balanced or equitable if and only if revolutionary measures are employed. The usual elements of such arguers form a class of people called feminist ideologues. Feminist ideologues are those people, male and female, minority or majority in one country, who share th e ideas or beliefs or attitudes of male-dominance over women. They tend to look at society in one way; they are certainly unhappy, dissatisfied and critical of what they see around them as compared to what they would like to see. The rational justification of their discontent and critical attitude is quite another thing. Insofar as feminism comprises people, who share one set of ideas or Where is the Foundation of African Gender? beliefs or attitudes as a group or community and who are (radically) organised, feminism is an ideology,1 which is posited to displace the prevailing male-dominated ideology. It is the core of an ideology or the ideological core, which is the most difficult part to change because it is the worldview of the people. The ideological core consists of the core ideas, core beliefs, or core attitudes of a people. By implication, if the core ideas, beliefs, or attitudes are purged out then the peoples practical reality is annihilated. The revolutionary spirit is germane to any feminist ideologue because he or she believes that lasting and effective change must be moral and intellectual. These detested moral and intellectual values are in-built in society so that their removal or reduction calls for a drastic revolutionary overhaul of the whole social fabric. This drastic revolutionary overhaul of society must be no less than a critique of the prevailing ideology because it purports to subjec t to intellectual scrutiny, and eventually refute or reject prevailing ideas, beliefs, or attitudes, which are rationally unjustified or prejudicial to the position of women in society. And then feminist ideology purports to create its own better ideas, beliefs, or attitudes. In other words, feminist ideology creates its own counter-consciousness, and eventually its own counterculture. This counterculture comprises a new set of beliefs and a new style of life that is intended or hoped to challenge and eventually expose the inadequacy of the prevailing culture. Only when the ideological core of the prevailing culture is removed and replaced by a new ideological core can lasting and effective change occur. Any change less than that involving the ideological core is superficial or transitory. In a nutshell, feminism challenges the prevailing status quo and develops a counter-ideology that questions the prevailing status quo and then attempts to modify it. Feminism advocates change rather than order. It criticises the regime in power and existing social and economic arrangements. It advances schemes for restructuring and reordering society. It generates political movements in the form of womens movements in order to gain enough power and influence to effect the changes it advocates. Feminism is an ideology of action for it motivates people to demand changes in their lifestyles and to modify the existing social, religious, political, and economic relations. It also mobilises its followers and adherents to preserve what they value.2 Ultimately, feminism is political and revolutionary. The revolutionary tinge of feminism has historically at times sanctioned the use of violence,3 which has not precluded bloodshed. Gender thinking adopts this feminist stance, with little or no modification or retouching and with few or no disclaimers, so that it is conventional gender thinking to posit men as the perpetrators of female-oppression and discrimination in a society which is viewed as male-dominated, a society in which this sad scenario is ingrained in the fabric of the prevailing political regimes, and where the social, religious, political and economic relations and structures are arranged so as to embrace and promote inequality between men and women. The result is that the gender paradigm centrally addresses the problems of equality and liberty rights, more or less zeroing on a variant of welfare-state ideology. Gender thinkers see no need to take caution in distinguishing gender-ism from feminism. Feminism is taken for granted as the appropriate seed and vehicle of gender. In contemporary literary circles, the philosophical presuppositions of gender thinking and practice are not put to a litmus test because testing gender implies testing feminism, which, in any case, has withstood many a crucial test as evidenced by its record of persistence and triumph especially in Europe, Great Britain, America, Canada, and Australia. This being the case, the cogency of popular gender-isms can only be tested, or critiqued, against cross-cultural objectivity. This paper argues that the lack of demarcation between gender and feminism leads to confusion of western feminism with gender. By grounding itself in feminist ideology, gender inherits most of the weaknesses and shortfalls of western feminism. Gender finds its impetus and modes of expression in western feminism. Therefore, Africa needs to rethink a specific gender, which is appropriate to the African situation in this new millennium. Conceptual analysis of gender and feminism becomes a problem for a start because there is a plethora of such offers on the contemporary intellectual and political scenes. Below, only extant literature is reviewed on the question of gender and feminism in Malawi and elsewhere in Africa. In the case of Malawi, only a few representative papers are considered. Any other contributions outside these papers are nonetheless worthwhile but very likely to be implicitly implicated and/or critiqued in one or more of the representative papers. The choice of the papers is free and deliberate: social philosophy, education, religion, and environment, i.e., unarguably, some of the hottest beds of gender debates and activism. At this juncture, it should be appreciated that African intellectuals have for some time tried to conceptualise gender and feminism in their own situation. As far as philosophical writing is concerned in Malawi, Hermes Chidammodzi was 116 Where is the Foundation of African Gender? the first to notice and then critique this confusion between gender and feminism in the mid-nineties. Feminism is a consecration of the moral and intellectual and hence universal values of equality purportedly denied of women by the dominance of males over women and the sacrosanct ideologies developed in society to legitimatise and perpetuate male-dominance. Thus conceived, feminism as a western reactionary and sacrosanct ideology is not African in origin and development so that the contemporary gender idiom is not a full theoretical framework and expression of the paradigm of African gender. This construing of gender invokes three important thoughts: (1) Gender does not mean and is not women. (2) Gender emerges in a specific situation depicting inegalitarianism embedded in social structures where one sex (male or female) is on the losing side. (3) Gender is a social construct of sets of behaviours, dispositions, ideas, beliefs, values, and attitudes of man and woman. (4) Gender has a strong materialistic tendency, for it grounds womens qualities or modes of action in womens daily li ves in a spatio-temporal-specific resource base presumably conditioned by a sexual division of labour. Insofar as it is situationally embedded in the societys power relations, gender is a reaction to constructed, i.e. real or imagined, male- dominance and female subordination. Gender thus conceived becomes an outgrowth from feminism. 28 The history of feminism is marked by two goals: equality and rights. Pioneer American feminists like Susan Anthony and Elizabeth Stanton had to battle it out with men for their right to vote as equals with men by dint of creation. In the days of old, liberalism provided the initial momentum toward the release of women from social bondage. To womens disappointment, many a revolution (like the American Revolution in 1776 and the French Revolution in 1789) and nationalism did not specifically rescue them from subjugation by men. Social inequalities continued to prevail in the new and independent states. Britain, America and the Continent of Europe clearly illustrate the sluggish pace of women liberation progress; Switzerland is the last European democracy to grant women suffrage in 1971. Despite the universality of female subordination and male domination, the African womans situation is bound to make her suspicious of western feminist discourse, which is mostly the experience of the twentieth century middle-class woman in an industrial sexual division of labour. For the western woman of that era it was only natural for her to cry for balance of power. The feminist fight was a fight for power. She made lots of gains; her emancipatory efforts bore her more equality with men, more rights, and easier access to resources, increase in opportunities or incentives, especially in the public sphere. The yardstick was always her more privileged male counterpart in the already privileged middle-class. In labour, this historicity of western feminism has led to the misconception that women were solely fighting for the soft or top jobs such as company executive, manager, prime minister, parliamentarian, physician, news editor, professor, pilot; surprisingly, the women never zealously fought for rough jobs such as undertaker, trench-digger, dockyard worker, heavy industrial worker, soldier,30 or night-guards. In its counter-critique, western feminism penetrated the rough jobs; eventually, the west saw more women engineers, women soldiers, and policewomen, thus virtually transforming western society into a unisex club. In the inter-war period, and much more vehemently after W.W.II, feminist thinkers zeroed on marriage as the champion of female subordination, and so they strongly argued that the demolition of the marriage institution would automatically lead to total women liberation. It was then a normal spectacle for a woman feminist to be decidedly non-married, although she could be attached and have children. Domesticity, child rearing, or whatever family life stands for, was looked upon as an impediment to women involvement and participation in public life, especially to public employment. The feminist propaganda so narrowly construed was reduced to a feminist fight for space and time in the public spheres of life especially the workplace, which was supposed as a predominantly male ter ritory. Two concepts dominated and still dominate the western conceptual framework. Western gender categories dismally fail to provide a gender conceptual framework for the African woman. For instance, the category of power cannot be used to conceptualise gender in Africa. To argue that a certain normative concept like power has a gender meaning is to claim that its social usage, at least in part, is not what it ought to be for reasons that have to do with gender To claim further that the usage does not command universality and objectivity, due to considerations of differing hermeneutics, i.e. interpretation as grounded in historicity and context is not to advocate gender scepticism. Although the empirical realities of women world-wide are different, this paper argues for the abandonment of gender exclusivity in the face of equally competing, urgent and appealing discourses of, say, ethnicity, racism, and class. In western traditional masculinist literature, power is viewed as repressive, poured from a leviathan above to his subjects below. The subjects are said to need the powerful leviathan because without him, they lack security, peace and well-being. In that western literary world, power is evidently and firmly associated with the male and masculinity, like virility, thus evoking the physicality of power. The correlate of man, woman, is therefore powerless. So when feminists wrote about power over our bodies and power of our lives they were using the very same concept of power, which pervaded traditional masculinist discourses on power. They affirmed the male conceptualisation of power rather than providing an alternative. It comes to us as no surprise that contemporary gender thinkers mimic the same masculinist notion of power in theorising gender. They are not wary of historical, social and political situation of knowledge-claims.32 Trapped in their own ideological cocoon, the western feminist women still think that western rationality is the only rationality; that western science is superior to other forms of rationality (if any), so that in regard to, say, family planning strategy, African women have to be helped by their more scientific counterparts from the west. African women, so claim the western women, need to be conscientised because it is feared that the African women have internalised the oppression or suffering and therefore are in desperate need of awareness campaigns by women animators from the west. The western feminists already fall prey to the yet another ideology of dominance they vehemently fight in their own backyard. Western feminists are totally oblivious to the reality of subject-object relations in research; the reality the helper and the helped are equals as they each experience the other from the viewpoint of their own situations and background knowledge and cultures. Each one (the helper and the helped) is the object of experience of the other so that objectivity is somehow tainted with subjectivity. 31 Oshadi Mangena argues likewise that if one is attentive to differences of ethnic origin, sexual orientation and class, the notion of gender disintegrates into fragments and cannot anymore be employed as a useful category. See K. Lennon and M. Witford, Knowing the difference: feminist perspectives in epistemology, London: Routeldge and Kegan Paul, 1994, pp. 275-282. 32 Annette Fitzsimons and Susan Strickland, Ibid. pp. 124; 265. 129 Nordic Journal of African Studies That the helper enjoys the exclusive right to the objectification of knowledge of the Other is an ingrained feature of western cross-cultural research, after all the helper has scientific skills or rational advantage over the helped, and this ontological arrangement make the helped redundant in the objectification of knowledge of the Other. The only danger though is that the consequent helpers knowledge is partial or fragmentary. The implication is that western feminists cannot emancipate the supposedly un-conscientised African women. 2.2.2 Woman Just as the concept of human, as narrowly presented in western literature, fails to command objectivity, the same literature fails to define woman. Woman is amenable to many different things; it is shrouded by ambiguities about its ontological status. It can evoke intrinsic characteristics, like caring and love, but this smacks of essentialism, which does not have many adherents in gender mainstreams. It can also evoke familial relationships as the non-male member. Both of these evocations partially conceive woman for they are normative since they are descriptive of a set of social facts or relations. As such, woman has no characterizable content and hence the challenge from postmodernist thought that woman is not descriptively adequate since, it is observed, woman is cross-culturally different. According to postmodernists, woman imposes unity over empirical reality.33 Postmodernism rejects the Enlightenment and the humanist presumptions of wonders of reason. The Enlightenment is rejected because of its veneration of masculine reason at the expense of sensuality; humanism is rejected because of its appeals to universal subjectivity or the human condition. Instead of seeking sameness postmodernism celebrates difference, partiality and multiplicity. It detests the search for coherence and hankering after the right (or Platonic or Kantian) solution. Postmodernist feminism equally opposes a hermeneutic parochialism of the present over the past or vice versaof searching for a single given goal, a single representation of reality. This new brand of feminism transcends the historicist recognition of the inevitable peculiarity and contextuality of human thought and practice and hence it advocates the continuity of dialogue between interlocutors, between text and interpreter, and between subject and object, with no advantage, marked goal or reality. This postmodernist re-orientation of feminism is a deliberate step away from essentialism and universalism: marginalisation and exclusion of the Other.34 It puts emphasis on particularity and multiplicity with due attention to difference, diversity and locale. But postmodernists also impose a tough demand on gender thinkers: why should the absence of facts for 33 See Alessandra Tanesini, Ibid. pp. 211-212. 34 See Susan Strickland, Ibid. pp. 266-7. 130 Where is the Foundation of African Gender? description of woman precludes the claim for the notion of woman, even where the possession of the notion may not warrant the description or analysis of the same? Even the points of convergence of feminism and postmodernism are not adequate grounds for their formulation of their purported common aims because their concept-lingualities are different. For example, their meanings of a concept like difference are different. In postmodernism, difference is acknowledged as typical of human experience worldwide; it is at the same time evaded as a threat to dominant perspectives of understanding or interpreting reality. It is consistent within postmodernism to demonstrate that woman was all along acknowledged as different but was included in universal humanity in name only by the dominating men. Feminists believe that the dominant ideology in world history is the root cause of the subjection of women by men. In Rousseaus language of right, the emancipation of western woman, albeit noticeably incomplete as we enter the third millennium, began as late as mid nineteenth century. However, feminism does not argue for the mere acknowledgement of difference; womens experience and perspectives should be noticed and heard along with dominant male experience and perspectives. Feminists complain bitterly that that the dominant perspectives are exclusive of women because they are ideological and hence false, since they are interested and distorted. Feminists are not content with their inclusion in or numerical addition to universal humanity as read in liberal or Marxist theories. Whereas postmodernism stops at the recognition of difference, feminism posits difference as a challenge, a paradigm of its critical dialogue with its situation, past, present and future. The concept woman is thrown into serious doubt because the notion of gender itself is slowly moulding due to its exclusiveness. What is being advocated instead of gender is a multiplicity of identities; for instance, if one widens ones horizon, one cannot fail to realise that differences of ethnic origin and class, sexual orientation (gays and lesbians), should be priority items on the liberation agenda. In spite of its usefulness in certain emancipatory projects, woman as a gender category stands to question now because it has dawned on contemporary gender thinkers that woman is essentially embedded in misogynist literature and that it is conducive to, and promotes, exclusionary practices. In short, a feminist survey of western languages shows that the meaning of some words, such as power, woman, human, reason, depicts gender bias against women; the words are not universal. The concept-lingual sources of western rightist discourses, like feminism, are liberalism or Marxism in their vicious attack of their respective archrivals, authoritarianism, and capitalism. Ironically, Karl Marx did not directly address the specific situation of women. He presumed that his communism would provide liberation for women just as it would for all the exploited masses and underprivileged minorities, male and female. 131 Nordic Journal of African Studies Friedrich Engels (Marxs lifetime friend, economic guardian, co-author, and Marxs editor) also narrowly attributed women subjugation to property relationships of the conjugal family only in capitalist societies; he remained mute on the reality of their enslavement in non-capitalist societies including communism and matriarchal societies. Marxism and capitalism cannot be plausible concept-lingual sources for the gender movement in the new millennium since both of them are ideologies of conflict: they pit man against man; the state exploits the proletariat-worker in the former, whereas the capitalist boss exploits the labourer in the latter. The importance of authentic concepts of gender needs to be stressed. More importantly, the crucial concept of power needs to be unambiguously stipulated in contemporary gender thought and practice. The feminism of the 1970s and 1980s correctly revealed that the concepts that are presented to us as universal and trans-historically valid actually embody male biases. For example, normative concepts such as reason, science and knowledge fail to pass the gender universalisation test, so to say. Even if these normative concepts embody ideals and express values, they nonetheless prescribe and evaluate behaviour in male-perspectives and so the values they express and ideals they embody are far from universal. Normative concepts function as descriptions of the endorsements of a specific society, and are faithful to past usage. Hence the complaint that feminism has taken the experience, i.e. marginalisation, of white middle class women to be representative of all women. The glaring weakness of these normative concepts is that they leave little or no room for disagreement or difference within a situation like a community. Conformity is the order of the day since they are treated as truth-conditions, instead of being emendations of current thought and action. These contemporary feminists fear that these values and ideals are codifications of norms regulating masculinity, where the womans normal is locus of the domesticity of the family, i.e. the private sphere of life. What current gender thought needs is the evolution of ongoing social practice. It should engage in evaluation of these concepts and influence the evolution of social practice in regard to concept-usage. 3. GENDER AND FEMINISM: THE AFRICAN SCENARIO The argument that African women cannot identify with doctrinaire western feminism comes with cogent force because the knowledge and experience of African women have been ignored or marginalised by a feminism that reflects only the perspectives of white western middle-class women; that it indulges in false universalism and lacks critical awareness of its situation are simple inferences drawn from the argument. Its conception of woman remains problematic and therefore vacuous because its woman is intended to deny self-evident differences between woman and woman in situation and experience, 132 Where is the Foundation of African Gender? privilege and power. It is apologetic of the peculiarities of woman since it misconceives them as functional and not as formal differences (from man). As a result, its content and purpose are not based on actual commonalties between women but on the experience and interests of some women who have the position and ability to impose upon other women their own idiosyncrasies, terms and definitions, i.e. what they mean for themselves and others. For instance, when western feminism seeks to balance or reverse the social scales, it employs conceptual polarities such as nature-culture, strong-weak, reason-intuition, public-private, male-female-neuter sexual division of labour. To explain the position of women, it says women are closer to nature; they are more intuitive; they are more private or secretive, etc, not knowing that it simply endorses masculinist (and hence exploitable) viewpoints about woman. Indeed feminism lacks a critical awareness of its situation. Feminism is not in dialogue with its context, past and present, and therefore cannot be used to forge emendations to any society, which cries for transformation of social relations. Feminism is engaged in a monologue, which mistakes its own ventriloquism for effectiveness since it is falsely generalising and insufficiently attentive to historical and cultural diversity. Another unwelcome feature of western feminism is that, although it borrows critical tools from other emancipatory theories like Reformation, liberalism and Marxism, it does not put itself forward to challenging other forms of subordination like slavery, colonialism, racism, and their accompanying prejudices and complexes, which affect women as well. Its exclusiveness to the western middle-class womans experience undermines its universality and objectivity, and therefore puts to serious doubt its relevance to the African woman of the same era.35 Worse still, its silence could easily be interpreted as its assent to slavery, colonialism and racism, experiences that western middle-class men caused on both African women and men. Though not unique, the situation of the African feminist and that of the Western feminist would not replicate. An African woman generally finds herself in a social setting where power might not be the paradigm of interpersonal life. Jobs are just as hard to get for a female as they are for her male counterpart. In a marital situation, for example, she may dispense with the battle of balancing it out with her allegedly dominant male partner in terms of sexual division of labour, involving child-care and domestic chores due to the scenario of dependency, a creation of the extended family. Dependants fill in as auxiliary or surrogate mothers or fathers and as unofficial maids or cooks, etc. Even if dependants were not around, hiring domestic staff would be more affordable in her society than it would be in the west. As is well known, in the west, it is almost impossible to hire domestic staff. 3.1 TRADITION VERSUS MODERNITY: SOCIO-POLITICS IN CONTEMPORARY AFRICA Transformation is a rare occurrence in Africa. Perhaps devolution, rather than evolution or revolution, is the modus operandi for social transformation in Africa. The interface of the past and the present may not be conducive to the development of radical gender even among urban or elite women. Past attitudes and values tend to phase out far too slowly under the weight of new attitudes and values. The usual conceptualisation of woman both among the rural and urban folk might have more conservative undertones than radical gender theorists wish. In Malawi, for instance, even after the legal repeal of the indecent dress code, the woman in trousers or mini-skirt risks categorisation as a champion or promoter of moral turpitude. The continuing scenario of stripping off mini-skirted city women by vendors is testimonial enough of these slow-dying conservative undertones even in the urban or modernised areas of Malawi. Radical gender might be undaunted by this current negative public recepti on of trousers and mini-skirts in Malawi, dismissing it as a primary reaction of a bunch of male savages. Time alone will heal this negative attitude; gender activists console themselves. At this stage though, these attitudes should be of great concern because it is not unusual for radical gender women lobbyists to experience opposition and disapproval from fellow women. Another reality that might prevent replication of western gender in Africa is the social history of Africa. It is difficult to identify the dominant ideology for African societies outside Africas recent experience of slave trade, colonialism, and nationalism. However, anthropology and archaeology, which pretend to dig deeper into Africas past, and re-construct the Antique Africa antedating the three recent experiences of Africa, reveal to us that there are matrilineal and patrilineal societies in Africa. In the patrilineal societies, for example, Ngoni, Tumbuka, Sena, Ngonde in Malawi, males are dominant. However, broadly speaking, in matrilineal societies women are more powerful than men, an issue that is accentuated by the husbands settling in their wives villages upon marriage. One would expect that in a setting where land is the most valuable property, due to reliance on agriculture, a landowner would command a lot of power and influence. Husbands, as co-opted landowners, will in principle and practice have less power and influence than their wives. Therefore, if the western genders power paradigm is anything to go by, the matrilineal society depicts a reversal of the western gender model. In Malawi, Chewa, Yao, Manganja and Lomwe societies are largely matrilineal in principle. The Tonga of the northern shore of Lake Malawi can be included in gender-wise peculiar ethnic groups although the Tonga are bi-lineal. In these ethnic groups, one must distinguish the formal from informal power structures and modes of social organisation; in the formal power setting, that is the traditional chieftaincy, chiefs hold only symbolic power since what they execute in public is largely the consensus, or the communis sensus, of the ruling 134 Where is the Foundation of African Gender? Unlike feminist scholarship in the West, feminist theory and scholarship in Africa have formed neither a neatly delineated field, nor one firmly rooted in theoretically-inflected politics. With the consolidation of Western feminisms between 1960 and the early 1980s and the growth of the so-called second wave, clear political and intellectual traditions were formed around radical, liberal and Marxist/socialist feminisms. Subsequent feminisms drew on or deviated from these positions to engage increasingly with theories and politics emerging in the nineties. African theories and womens movements have taken very different paths. In certain ways, African theories and womens movements have been closely linked to politics, although this politic

Becoming A Doctor :: essays research papers fc

Becoming A Doctor A doctor is someone who can help someone else in need. There are many types of doctors, ranging from general pediatricians to specialists. They are respected people and are looked to when something is wrong. Everyone needs a doctor at some point, so doctors are very much in demand. I am interested in this career because I like to help people. Also, it pays well so I can live off the salary. Another reason is because many of my relatives are doctors, nurses, or dentists. Even though school and training are very hard, it pays off in the end, when someone can make a difference in someone's life. I am not sure if I would like to be a pediatrician, or a specialist. Specialists probably earn more money, but do not do as much, and are required to learn more. I do not think I will want to be a surgeon, because cutting people open and taking things out does not seem very appealing. To become a doctor, one must endure a lot of training and education. In college, one must study courses to prepare for medicine, such as biology, chemistry, and some advanced mathematics. It generally takes seven to eight years to finish his education. The first four years, one would take pre-med. classes. Then it's on to medical school, where for four years one learns about the area of medicine one chooses. After medical school, about one year of internship is needed. Then he becomes a resident and practice medicine under supervision of a senior doctor. All together, it is about 11 years before one actually become an independent doctor. Doctors will always be needed. Because of this, and because of the population growth, doctors will always be in demand and the profession will continue to grow. This way, a doctor will be unemployed less, and will be more secure, financially. A doctor can earn from $60,000 to $700,000. Pediatricians and doctors at free clinics earn the least, although they are probably the most needed. There are many doctors that want to help children, so they become pediatricians, even if they earn a little less than others. Specialists earn a little more, from $90,000 to $200,000. These specialists range from neurologists, dermatologists, and urologists to cardiologists. Of course, the ones that are in need will earn more. The doctors that earn the most are surgeons. Doctors that perform tonsillectomies will earn less than plastic surgeons, and plastic surgeons will earn less than cardiovascular surgeons and neurosurgeons. Anesthesiologists, who give the patients shots during surgery, earn around $250,000 a year.

YouTube Essay -- Technology, Video, Copyrights

Broadcast Yourself YouTube is an online form of entertainment. While some viewers do not appreciate its format, others enjoy watching and creating videos on YouTube. YouTube videos range from being educational, instructional, comedic to amusing. Creating videos to upload to YouTube is being done by people of all ages from all over the world. According to author Alex K. Rich, â€Å"thirty-eight percent of Americans want to distribute content online.†(Rich 1) YouTube has brought about a new form of high quality amusement and entertainment to a lot of its viewers. YouTube â€Å"is a popular video streaming website that displays uploaded video files created or disseminated by its users† (Belanger 1) writes Craig Belanger in his overview of YouTube. It is free and user friendly which makes it very popular. According to Jennifer Sexton this innovative website was founded by three former PayPal employees who had a â€Å"simple desire to capture short videos and share them with others.† (Sexton 1) While their intentions were not to make money and become a popular website, very quickly YouTube’s popularity increased and it is used by many internet users. According to the viewpoint of Alex K. Rich, â€Å"YouTube has lowered the bar for what is considered entertainment†(Rich 1) It is true that a majority of the videos created and uploaded to YouTube are not professional quality, it is a website that allows submitters of all ages and degrees of creativity to make a video. For example, the Lonelygirl15 videos were â€Å"sho t on a $150 web camera and showed that digital videos could be made by anyone.† (Hirschorn 3) The motto of YouTube is â€Å"Broadcast Yourself.† Michael Hirschorn wrote in his article, â€Å"Thank You, YouTube†, that the â€Å"start of low cost videos and its... ...s become part of the culture of the internet and influences things going on in the world today. As a viewer, people become of what is accepted and what is deemed not worth watching. In â€Å"YouTube: Guide to Critical Analysis†, some of the â€Å"videos that YouTube viewers have watched are 1) Soon after YouTube’s launch, clips from the 2006 Winter Olympics were posted, 2) Pop band OK Go won a 2006 Grammy award for a video that had originally achieved notoriety on YouTube and 3) excerpts from â€Å"The Daily Show with Jon Stewart† were regularly featured on YouTube.† (YouTube: Guide to Critical Analysis 2) So, as long as YouTube exists, while some of the videos will be done by professionals wanting to promote their product, there will always be the submitter who wants to â€Å"broadcast themselves† and upload it, even if it is using their cell phone and the use of their internet.

A Room With A View English Literature Essay

In the gap of the fresh Forster nowadayss repression within the English category system taking to a life with no position which is represented by the fact that Lucy and Charlotte did non acquire the suites overlooking the Arno that they expected. Charlotte represents the stiff and conventional society that is keeping Lucy back. Charlotte ‘s â€Å" protecting embracing † gave Lucy the â€Å" esthesis of fog † . She wants Lucy to act in a â€Å" ladylike † manner and wants her to avoid any improper behavior with immature work forces. Charlotte holds Lucy back from showing her true emotions with George Emerson possibly because of being humiliated herself in a love matter many old ages ago. â€Å" I have met the type before. They rarely keep their feats to themselves. † This has prevented Charlotte from seeing that true love exists and so nowadayss to Lucy â€Å" the complete image of a cheerless, loveless universe † with no position. Forster besi des shows the reader that there are romantic characteristics concealed inside her. This is shown when she in secret tells Miss Lavish about George and Lucy ‘s buss who so proceeds to compose her novel about it. This same repression is seen with Lucy who plays her piano with passion demoing that merely through her music can Lucy genuinely express herself otherwise she is merely an ordinary conventional miss. â€Å" If Miss Honeychurch of all time takes to populate as she plays, it will be really exciting † ( p30 ) Mr Beebe is waiting for the minute when Lucy can interrupt free from Charlotte and take a more bold and audacious life. When Lucy returns to her place in England â€Å" the drawing room drapes at Windy Corner had been pulled to run into for the rug was new and merited protection from the August Sun. They were heavy drapes, making about to the land, and the visible radiation that filtered through them was subdued and varied † . The pulling room drapes pro tect the furniture from the detrimental beams of the Sun, merely as Lucy has been protected in Italy by Charlotte. There is no position and the visible radiation has been blocked. This symbolises how Lucy is repressed and prevented from seeing the true nature of life. They are denied the beauty of a â€Å" position † . Cecil besides attempts to protect Lucy with his restricting thoughts. Cecil ‘s attitude towards adult females is chesty and dismissive: he treats Lucy ‘s thoughts as if they are of â€Å" feminine inconsequence † and wants her to conform to an image of a Leonardo picture of enigma and soundlessness, in which he is ever dominant. When Lucy thinks of Cecil â€Å" it ‘s ever in a room † and one â€Å" with no position † ( p99 ) . This illustrates how Cecil is quashing Lucy ‘s feelings, supplying her with a life of humdrum and so forestalling her seeing the true position of life. Forster uses Italy to rouse Lucy to new ways of thought and the gap up of Windowss to see the universe. â€Å" The well-known universe had broken up, and at that place emerged Florence, a charming metropolis where people thought and did the most extraordinary things † that has â€Å" the power, possibly to arouse passions, good and bad, and convey them to speedy fulfillment † ( p51 ) . Italy is uninhibited by category limitations and this esthesis of equality and freedom shakes the foundations of Lucy ‘s old position of the universe. It is a topographic point where anything can go on. Lucy ‘s position on life ab initio begins to open up by George and Mr Emerson trading suites. â€Å" I have a position, I have a position†¦ This is my boy†¦ his name ‘s George. He has a position, excessively. † Mr Emerson is talking of their positions of the river, but the Forster intends the text to hold a dual significance. The Emersons ‘ position has to make with more than the quality of their suites and Forster implies a metaphorical significance in that the Ralph waldo emersons have a superior position of life which is much freer and more exciting. Miss Lavish takes her Baedeker guidebook and later loses her in Santo Croce when â€Å" for one ravishing minute Italy appeared † to Lucy. Inside the church he meets the Ralph waldo emersons who show her how to bask the church by following her bosom non by her guidebook. Their philosophic position helps Lucy in her geographic expedition of her ain life and the universe. â€Å" The baneful appeal of Italy worked on her, and alternatively of geting information, she began to be happy † . Furthermore when Lucy witnesses the slaying and the Italian falls at her pess she is overwhelmed the spontaneousness of the incident. When she regains consciousness after fainting and is rescued by George, she realises that she â€Å" every bit good as the deceasing adult male, had crossed some religious boundary † . Lucy begins to gain that her image of the universe based on how others think she should be is being replaced by self-generated reaction and natural inherent aptitude. A new position is opening up for her. â€Å" She contemplated the River Arno, whose boom was proposing some unexpected tune to her ears † . This position of the river symbolises the great alteration inside Lucy and the journey to happen her true position of life. Lucy nevertheless is non reborn into a passionate adult female until she is kissed by George. â€Å" The position was organizing at last † . Forster is demoing how Lucy ‘s find of her position mirrors her personal find. Her experiences in Italy alteration her, giving her new eyes to see the universe, and a position of her ain psyche as good. Finally Lucy at stopping points additions freedom to look out of Windowss. She is able to see clearly what she wants from life. George tells her that Cecil merely sees her as an object to be admired and will ne'er love her adequate to allow her independency, while George loves her for who she genuinely is. â€Å" Conventional, Cecil, you ‘re that, for you may understand beautiful things, but you do n't cognize how to utilize them ; and you wrap yourself up in art and books and music, and would seek to wrap up me. I wo n't be stifled, non by the most glorious music, for people are more glorious, and you hide them from me. † She so breaks off her battle with Cecil and in making this she breaks the societal codification of society. A last minute meeting with Mr Emerson convinces Lucy to acknowledge and move upon her love for George. â€Å" How he managed to beef up her. It was as if he had made her see the whole of everything at one time. † At the very terminal of th e novel George and Lucy have eloped and have returned to the same Pension in Italy and look out from the same window to the future universe. Although they both look out to the same position of Italy it is with a really different position of the universe. George ‘s position has become clear through his relationship with Lucy who has given him a point to his being and Lucy ‘s position has changed both emotionally and by interrupting off from her societal category. They both have a actual and metaphorical â€Å" room with a position † one that involves populating for the minute and non merely for society. In decision Forster ‘s rubric â€Å" A Room with a Position † is really affectional because through Lucy ‘s eyes we have strayed through the streets of Florence and returned somewhat changed, unable to look at the universe in the same old manner. We all need the room to show our personal truths and the openness and freedom to love that the positions in Forster ‘s fresh represent.